FOR my next “ForgottenTour Indoors” (this past week there was a well-received Zoom tour called FNY By the Seashore” in which I presented some out-of-the-way waterside communities like Dead Horse Bay, Fort Tilden and Broad Channel) I am thinking of presenting a series of Queens images from the 1920s and 1930s that were photographed by the city in anticipation of highway construction. I many cases, these scenes have been comnpletely obliterated and forgotten about; since I started photographing the city on a widespread basis in 1998, dozens of buildings and scenes have been destroyed.
One such scene from 1938 is William Kriger’s bar and grill, a neighborhood establishment at 45-02 Laurel Hill Boulevard, one of hundreds such establishments located all over the city and in may cases, are still in existence. However, Kriger’s was in the way of what is labeled here “Connecting Highway” that is now part of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. There’s a wood bar with stools and an ad for Schaefer Beer mounted above. It was a “grill” in every sense, as meals could be ordered, served at tables with the checkerboard tablecloths so common in the era.
Laurel Hill Boulevard now serves as the BQE service road on its north and south sides, though “free” sections can be found at its west end at Calvary Cemetery and east end at Queens Boulevard in Woodside. Kriger’s was located in Sunnyside at Laurel Hill and Packard Street, since renamed 45th Street along with house numbering changes. This corner has been wiped out completely as it sits in the center of what are now spaghetti ramps connecting the BQE with the Queens-Midtown Expressway, which further east is called the Horace Harding Expressway and once in Nassau, the Long Island Expressway.
As for Kriger’s no doubt the owners were bought out and the bar unceremoniously demolished a few years after the 1938 time stamp.
Check out the ForgottenBook, take a look at the gift shop. As always, “comment…as you see fit.” I earn a small payment when you click on any ad on the site.
8/23/25
5 comments
There it is right there,thats when things started going downhill.
Barstools.You think Wyatt Earp would have sat on a barstool?
Marshall Dillon?They bellied up to the bar.No effeminate barstools
in them days.How would you like it if they put barstools in McSorley’s.?
Hell,hang a dozen TVs from the ceiling there too while youre at it.
I’m sure the tourists would appreciate it.
Not long ago I was thinking about Miller & Peck, a “dry goods” emporium in my old hometown that closed in the early 1990’s after having been around for over a century. Its store, obviously not the original location, had been in a plaza near me and was maybe 2/3 the size of a typical Target. So not a small business.
An online search yielded little except vintage ad photos and the occasional mention of former employment in an obituary. My theory is that it’s very hard to find meaningful information on even a larger local business that closed prior to the Internet era, at least unless you research old Census and corporate records as with 14to42.
Still room between bar stools for real men to stand at bar.
Where are the liquor bottles?
Probably locked up to prevent theft by the folks taking the photos! After all, they were stealing the property.