I was tipped off about a couple of items of interest in Forest Hills, and took the R train over there. There are a number of neighborhoods I haven’t roamed in some time. I have soft spot for Forest Hills, since I’ve seen a couple of key concerts at the West Side Tennis Club there: Elvis Costello (1982) and the Who, rather, “The Two” (2015). I braved the heat and humidity of August and plowed through. Surprisingly, in both cases, I found exactly what I was looking for. More on the Tennis Club later.
For years I’d labored under the impression that the last great representation of the Trylon and Perisphere, the central attractions of the 1939-1940 NYC World’s Fair, were the mosaics in the ticket booth and lobby at the now-demolished Trylon Theatre on Queens Blvd. and 99th St. That was before FNY correspondent and Newtown Historical Society president Christina Wilkinson spotted the Trylon and Perisphere, as well as the number 1939, on this building at 108th and Van Doren Sts. in Corona, to the west of the fairgrounds.
Over the years, I found more Trylons and Perispheres at the entrance to the old Flushing Meadows Fairgrounds on the ramp leading to the #7 train, as well as at the White Mana Diner in Jersey City, which is where the diner was built.
The Trylon and Perisphere loom over Horace Harding Blvd. (present site of the Long Island Expressway) in 1939. The Schaefer Beer exhibit (far left) and Virginia Pavilion (dome) also appear. The Trylon and Perisphere were designed by the architectural firm of Harrison & Foulihoux and reflected the emphasis on purity embodied by industrial designers of the day. Ostensibly perfect forms, they were the only structures in the fair permitted to be painted pure white. The 618-foot Trylon and 180-foot were connected by a giant ramp called the Helicline, which led visitors back to the grounds once they’d visited the structures. Fairgoers entered the interior of the Theme Center by riding a portion of the way up the Trylon in what was, at the time, the world’s largest escalator. From the Trylon visitors were directed into the Perisphere to view what architectural expert Stanley Applebaum called “a planned urban and exurban complex of the future,” a diorama which filled the floor of the building, entitled Democracity.
Photo from New York, Empire City 1920-1945, David Stravitz, Harry N. Abrams 2004
There are more Trylons and Perispheres on earth than were dreamt of in my philosophy. Attached brick houses like these, with modest front gardens, are a staple of Queens residential housing in Rego Park, Glendale, and Forest Hills. But the developer of these buildings remembered the World’s Fair. He placed concrete carvings of the Trylon and Perisphere on the pediments above the entrances on at least two of the houses on 62nd Dr. between 102nd St. and Yellowstone Blvd. And those are the only two I saw; there may be more. I found others, elsewhere in Forest Hills, too, which we will see later.
I headed south on 102nd St., where I found Stephen A. Halsey Junior High School (now an “intermediate” school). It was interesting to find a tribute to Halsey here; he’s better known in the history books for his association with Astoria, whose pedigree dates to the mid-1600s, when William Hallett received a grant for the area surrounding what is now Hallett’s Cove by Peter Stuyvesant. However, the oldest structures in the region date to the mid-1800s, after fur merchant Stephen Ailing Halsey incorporated the village in 1839.
Astoria was named for a man who apparently never set foot in it. A bitter battle for naming the village was finally named by supporters and friends of John Jacob Astor (1763-1848. Astor, entrepreneur and real estate tycoon, was the wealthiest man in America by 1840 with a net worth of over $40 million. (As it turns out, Astor did live in “Astoria”—his summer home, built on what is now E. 87th St. near York Ave.—from which he could see the new Long Island Village named for him). After Halsey incorporated a village in 1839, streets radiated east and south from the area, with fanciful dwellings constructed along them. Many have disappeared in the past few decades as developers place larger high-rises in the Village, which was never granted Landmarks protections.
A few years ago, I toured Ramones highlights in the band’s highlights in their native Forest Hills. I passed one of the two Birchwood Towers, on 102nd St. and 66th Rd., true high-rise apartment buildings. As youths, Joey and Johnny Ramone lived in one tower or the other. Joey’s thoughts on his upbringing here can be found in the song “Beat on the Brat” from their self-titled first album, via Scouting NY:
“[Forest Hills] was a middle-class neighborhood with a lot of rich, snooty women, who had horrible spoiled brat kids. There was a playground [at Birchwood, wedged between the buildings] with women sitting around and a kid screaming, a spoiled, horrible kid just running rampant with no discipline whatsoever. The kind of kid you just want to kill. You know, ‘beat on the brat with a baseball bat’ just came out. I just wanted to kill him.”
I crossed Queens Boulevard at 67th Ave. (always a threat to one’s health, if not life) for my next Trylon and Perisphere, on 67th Ave. There’s a row of charming attached brick homes on the north side of Burns between Thornton Pl. and 67th Ave. with brickwork arranged in letters that spell out “HOMES.” There’s also an A on one of them, but I don’t know what it signifies.
It took patience but I found my additional quarry on another group of attached brick homes on Burns St. between 67th Ave. and Yellowstone Blvd., another stone carving of the Trylon and Perisphere, this time on the brick chimney (I wonder if these houses have working fireplaces). These houses, here and on 62nd Dr., must’ve been built in the 1939-1940 area.
Burns St. passes alongside some additional historic structures including Forest Hills Stadium. I continue to be surprised at how sparsely-maintained the concrete stands are. The stadium could use a cleaning and its terra cotta escutcheons could use sprucing up. The Who (twice, nearly 50 years apart), the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Elvis Costello, Don Budge, Rod Laver, Billie Jean King and Jimmy Connors have all held court at Forest Hills Tennis Stadium. The U.S Open was held here for many decades before it decamped to Louis Armstrong Stadium (now demolished) in 1978 and later to Arthur Ashe Stadium in Flushing Meadows/Corona Park in 1997. The West Side Tennis Club was organized in 1892 and moved here in 1913 (the same year Ebbets Field in Brooklyn opened), with the U.S. Open moving in in 1923, when the stadium was constructed. The stadium’s no longer under the threat of demolition and hosts a summer concert series from spring to fall each year, with rock, hip-hop and country for the most part. Concert noise, as you may think, has gotten the goat of some area residents.
The Forest Hills station is my favorite LIRR station in Queens, located at Station Square at Burns St. and Continental (71st) Ave. The station was built in 1906, remodeled in 1911 and again in the 1990s, and features nonstandard lighting and signage, as well as shelters that complement the Grosvenor Atterbury stylings of the surrounding Gardens. Unfortunately, Forest Hills and nearby Kew Gardens see only limited service, with most trains speeding past it.
Theodore Roosevelt spoke at the Forest Hills station on July 4, 1917—the speech was filmed, but since sound couldn’t yet be synched up to motion pictures, the sound wasn’t recorded. Roosevelt urged American participation in the “Great War” in Europe and assailed conscientious objectors. His son, Quentin, was killed in aerial combat in France just over a year after his father gave the speech here. Teddy never really recovered from this loss, and he passed away himself the following year.
When looking out at Forest Hills Gardens from the railroad platform, I’m reminded of the cult 1960s TV show The Prisoner, in which the late British actor Patrick McGoohan (born in Astoria) plays a secret agent who’s spirited off to a mysterious location, known as “The Village,” where village masters attempt to extract information from him by whatever means necessary. The show was filmed in the northern Welsh village of Portmeirion, built as one of the world’s first theme parks by Sir Clough Williams-Ellis in the 1920s.
I’ve always been fascinated with Forest Hills Gardens’ street lighting, which features a few wall brackets, but mostly freestanding posts with lantern-like fixtures that’ve held a variety of bulbs over the years including today’s LEDs. FHG also has unique street signage with raised lettering in the Optima font.
—Kevin Walsh is the webmaster of the award-winning website Forgotten NY, and the author of the books Forgotten New York (HarperCollins, 2006) and also, with the Greater Astoria Historical Society, Forgotten Queens (Arcadia, 2013)