In the pandemic summer of 2020, the streets were deserted as everyone was inside, by their air conditioners, watching the Stanley Cup finals in July, or baseball games played before stands occupied by cardboard cutouts of fans and piped-in crowd music. I carried on as always. I wandered all over town and found myself unhindered and unmoored. Manhattan was especially deserted. In Flushing, where today’s entry features, there were a few people who, like me, were going about their duties. Writing this in 2024, Covid has so far passed over my unmarked doorstep, but I won’t tempt fate by nattering on it any further.
Above is St. John’s Episcopal Church, Sanford Ave. between 149th Pl. and 150th St. The church was founded in 1894 as a parochial mission of St. George’s Church on Main St., with the construction of the first church on this site completed in 1899. After the first church burned down in November 1924, the handsome ashlar-walled church seen today was completed in 1926 with stones taken from the Church of Heavenly Rest in Manhattan.
A look at St. John’s front entrance, and a memorial dedicated June 6, 1925 to a Lydia Lee Lawrence Eccles, who was likely the wife of, or related to, St. John’s first rector, Rev. George W. Eccles. Lydia was a member of the Lawrences, a prominent colonial-era family prominent in Queens landholding and politics. Two private Lawrence family cemeteries remain, one on 20th Rd. in northern Astoria and another on 216th St. by the railroad tracks in Bayside.
The Eccles family at one time owned the so-called Kabriski Mansion (named for a latter-day owner) on Ash Ave. between 147th and 149th Sts. The mansion, probably built in the late-1840s, dates back to eastern Flushing’s development as a bedroom community as the Long Island Rail Road was extended east. At the time Flushing was dominated by the horticultural industry and the land was owned mostly by the Samuel Parsons family and by Nathan Sanford, the Chancellor of New York State. Sanford Ave. was developed in the 1830s-1870s with grand mansions and estates, some of which were summer-only. Charles Pearl built the Italianate house on a five-acre tract facing today’s Sanford Ave. and 149th St.
Beginning in the 1880s Flushing’s population increased, and by the 1910s the mansion’s then-owner, the Reverend George Eccles, sold off much of the five-acre property and moved the house approximately 150 feet to its present location. The buildings developed on the sold-off property are still there for the most part, giving Ash Ave. an aura rather unlike its surrounding blocks. It’s even missing a sidewalk in spots.
Flushing’s architecture becomes drab once you depart from the historic areas along Northern Blvd. or just south of it. Most of the idiosyncrasies and varied elements were stamped out long ago to make way for boring high-rise apartment buildings and attached two-family houses. But when you walk along Ash (pictured above), Beech and Cherry Aves. between Bowne St. and Parsons Blvd., you’re in another world.
Waldheim is a Flushing enclave that has mostly escaped the clutches of developers who are otherwise turning the rest of the neighborhood into blond-bricked, visible water-meter heaven. Shingle Style, Moorish, Colonial and Classical Revival homes mix with houses that look like early Frank Lloyd Wright. Enormous, 150-year-old trees overhang the blocks, making them cool walks in summer, and the homes are set back a distance from the sidewalks with many homes displaying well-kept gardens. Widely-curved corners on Ash and Beech Aves. where they meet Phlox and Syringa Places allow strollers more of a vista than on normal Queens streets.
In 1903 Franklin R. Wallace sold 10 acres of mostly-wooded Flushing property to real estate developers George Appleton and W.B. Richardson. The developers built luxury housing and cut through streets, named for plants in a likely homage to Flushing’s former plant nurseries. Many of the old woods’ many huge trees were retained as street trees, and the developers named the tract Waldheim, German for “woods home.” A small number of architects under the supervision of Appleton worked on the new neighborhood, which originally attracted Flushing’s wealthier set: at one time, the founder of Buster Brown shoes, the Hellman family of mayonnaise fame, and members of the piano-manufacturing Steinway family lived in Waldheim, as well as Appleton and Richardson. The appellation “Waldheim” fell from favor during World War I.
Waldheim isn’t landmarked, and there’s been a very slow erosion with apartment buildings and other multi-use buildings springing up. Until now this was gradual; but with continued immigration and the demands for housing entailed in that, it’s likely that more of Waldheim will succumb. In recent years, the mansion belonging to Arthur Nash, a designer for Tiffany, was lost, along with several of Tiffany’s stained glass windows, was lost. See Waldheim before more of it falls.
The Nichiren Shoshu Temple, Daihozan Myosetsu-Ji,a Japanese Buddhist temple that the American Institute of Architects (AIA) Guide to New York City describes as “Serenity without dullness: a testament to the expressive possibilities of thoughtful architecture, even when rendered in ribbed concrete block.” It’s a low, graceful building, and certainly an interesting replacement structure.
The Buddhist temple is the exception: a modern building that, by its tranquility and beauty, compliments the surrounding older dwellings. Newer development has accelerated in recent years, and it’s strictly cost-effective, multi-family buildings I like to call “Fedders Specials” with uniform shades of blond brick and exposed water meters.
Speaking of temples, the Ganesh Temple of the Hindu Temple Society of North America on Bowne St. just north of Holly Ave. was opened on July 4, 1977. As the first Hindu temple in North America composed of largely imported materials, and constructed by artisans from India, Sri Maha Vallabha Ganapati Devasthãnam (or the Ganesh Temple) is one of the most impressive and historically important Hindu temples in the West. Flushing was chosen as the location based on three criteria: it was the gateway of the U.S., all Indian immigrants came here and there was a large concentration of Hindus in the tri-state area of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut; it was within walking distance for many, or one bus or subway fare; and the possibility existed to purchase a suitable site. Its strength and influence outside of New York is proven by the fact that the temple has served as a model for many other Hindu communities.
Bowne St. itself is named for a leader in religious freedom. Bowne House, on Bowne St. north of 38th Ave. in Flushing, was built in 1661 by English settler John Bowne. Peter Stuyvesant, continuing his reign of terror against religious dissenters, had Bowne, a Quaker, arrested in 1662. Before the construction of the Friends Meetinghouse on Northern Blvd. (already a colonial-era route in the late-1600s) Bowne’s house was the primary site for Quaker services. Sentenced to pay a large fine, Bowne refused and was jailed; he was subsequently exiled to Holland. While he was there, Stuyvesant’s bosses at the Dutch West India Company reversed Stuyvesant’s non-tolerant policy, claiming that the colony needed many immigrants to ensure economic expansion, no matter what faith they were. Bowne returned home to Flushing in 1664; the British sailed into New Netherland five months later, and Stuyvesant surrendered without a shot being fired.
Flushing Hospital, facing 45th Ave. and Parsons Blvd., is in one of the older hospital buildings in the city that’s still in use. The hospital was established in 1883, and the older building appears to date to the 1910s or 1920s. I was treated for bronchitis in the emergency room in the newer wing seen on the left.
Bereft of bicyclists in 2020, here’s the Kissena Park Velodrome, the only outdoor bicycle track of its kind in New York City. It was built in 1963 for the Olympic trials held that year. By the 1980s the Flushing velodrome was in a deteriorated state, and was mainly used by kite fliers and toy car racers. In 2003, however, the velodrome was rehabilitated, repaved and given a new 400-meter banked asphalt race track and once again is hosting national events. The velodrome can be found by walking or biking a path opposite Parsons Blvd. on Booth Memorial Ave. The track’s named for Siegfried Stern, treasurer for Hartz Mountain pet products and a benefactor for Jewish organizations.
The reason Booth Memorial Ave., formerly called North Hempstead Turnpike, has its present name is the New York-Presbyterian Queens on Main St. This branch was founded in Manhattan by the Salvation Army, as Rescue Home for Women on E. 123rd St. When it expanded its operations to care for injured military personnel and their families, it became Booth Memorial Hospital and moved to 316 E. 15th St. in 1919. William Booth (1829–1912), was an English-born Methodist preacher who, with his wife Catherine, co-founded the Salvation Army in 1865.
In 1957, Booth Memorial moved to this new campus at North Hempstead Turnpike and Main St. When the Salvation Army discontinued its sponsorship of acute care centers in 1992, Booth Memorial Hospital became an affiliate of the New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center, and changed its name to New York Hospital Queens, and after New York Hospital and Presbyterian Hospital merged in 2015, it became New York-Presbyterian Queens. There are no plans to rename the road for the hospital’s new name, at least not yet.
—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)