Things to do in Queens- Especially along the #7 train-

Things to do in Queens-

Especially along the #7 train- all blue print should be clickable links for more information

I admit it.  I have a love hate relationship with the #7 train.  I have been stuck between stations- standing squished in crowded car with a heavy bag listening to the same We'll be moving in shortly, announcement over and over.  But I also have had a bird's eye (okay a low flying bird) of the changing landscape of Queens. Here is a list of things you can see from the train, and interesting stops along the way. I am not including the Manhattan Stops, 34th Hudson(the
Highline), 42 St Times Square, 5 Avenue (Bryant Park), Grand Central- all interesting but not Queens.

Things to see from the train

• The Manhattan skyline - multiple views from multiple spots
• The train itself - right after it comes above ground it makes a sharp curve and you can see the tail of the train chasing itself.
• The Courthouse - from the Court Street Station- the green colored roof covers one of the oldest continuously operating courts in the country
• The Hell Gate Bridge -on the northside- two bridges come into view.   The Hell Gate Railroad  Bridge built between 1912-1916, designed by Gustav Lindenthal, any resemblance in appearance to the Sydney Harbor Bridge is not coincidental. Next to it is the RFK Bridge (used to be called the Triboro) it connects three boroughs, Manhattan, Queens and the Bronx and is used for motor vehicles.
• The smoke stacks of the Ravenswood Power Station-
• The stained glass windows between Courts Street and Woodside Stations
• The new towers being built around Long Island City at Queensboro Plaza
• Pass the Jackson Heights stations and LaGuardia comes into view-the blue control tower
• In the far distance over the relatively flat low rise section of Queens you can see the Bronx and in the bridges that connect Queens to the mainland
• After 103 Street on the Southside -the sites of Flushing Meadow Park, 2 rocket ships in front of the science museum, the round towers of NYS Pavilion, the T shaped Terrace of the Park,and of course the various tennis stadiums and the Unisphere.
• On the northside- Citifield home of the New York Mets

Subway Station:  Vernon Jackson- First stop in Queens

• Gantry State Park- best view of the skyline
• Corner of Vernon and 50th Avenue -traditional Police Station, 9/11 memorial on a light post 
• Changing Long Island City Neighbor- the mixed old frame wooden homes that once housed the blue collared factory and dock workers are now scattered among the high rise luxury towers
• New Long Island City Library- not open yet, but see what  the city builds when the luxury towers bring in the city's highest income earners.

Subway Stop:  Court Square

• Court Square Diner-right beneath the subway station- a real traditional looking American Diner
• Historic District- 21 Street and 45 Avenue.  - Brownstone Townhouses from the 1800's.  The guide books will tell you they filmed Carries's house from Sex In The City n Greenwich Village, but that was only the first season.  They used several locations and this was the most common
• PS 1- What has more recent- modern art than MOMA?- PS 1

Subway Stop: 61 and Woodside

• The Irish Bars-  Donovan's,  Saints and Sinners
• The Doughboy World War I Memorial - not a major- not miss attraction, but an interesting memorial-honoring the wounded rather than the victorious hero- and a destination for  anyone wandering around the neighborhood off the the main roads.

Stops: 74 and Roosevelt to 82 and Roosevelt

           Jackson Heights  enough to see here for its own page, but some highlights

• Historic District- apartment buildings built when the subway arrived - 
• Multi-Culture at its best- restaurants and stores from the Indian/Pakistani Community, the Nepal/Tibetan Community and the all parts of the Latin Community
• The Post Office - Federal Style Architecture with WPA murals inside
• The Public School- a 5 story example of NYC school architecture

Stop:  111 Street 

           Corona

Louis Armstrong House-  When Louis was among the highest paid musicians in the World he chose to buy a house in one of the most humble neighborhoods in Queens.  The house is preserved as a museum and open to the public.  Listen to the song Its a Wonderful World , and hear Louis himself describe the neighborhood.

Subway Stop:  Mets Willets Point

Flushing Meadows Corona Park

The Unisphere

At the Mets Game- Citifield

• The Queens Museum- especially for the Panorama- a scale model of the whole city!
• The Tennis Center
• Citi Field- its not Yankee Stadium- it is the other MLB home in NYC-
• The Hall of Science (even if you don't go in check out the real Rockets)
• The Queens Night Market- On a summer Saturday night -the equivalent of the Brooklyn Smorgasboard
• New York State Pavilion- where the aliens landed according to Men In Black

Subway Stop:  Main Street

Flushing

• Chinatown-maybe the largest Chinatown in the country(Sunset Park and Lower Manhattan would dispute it) Click the link for some interesting eating places
• Historic Flushing(all addresses are in the clickable link for Flushing)
• John Bowne House
• Quaker Meeting Hall
• St. George Episcopal Church
• Post Office- WPA Murals
• Free Synagogue of Flushing
• Lots more in link

Hungry?
The first link is from Vogue Magazine- I do not look like I read Vogue.  I would look a lot less like a Vogue person if I tried all the eateries (or even a tiny fraction of them) along the way.  But here are various suggestions:

from Vogue
from NYCGO
from Tripsavvy

Latin New York

36 hours in Latin New York\



The article covers Jackson Heights.  



day in Jackson Heights

Thursday I walked home down 37th Avenue.  My goal was to check out the La Nueva Cafe.  I read the article in the Sunday Times travel section and was determined to  check it out while attempting to put together the day's 10,000 steps.  As I walked down 37th Avenue the sky ahead was clear blue, the sky behind me was sunny but towards Northern Boulevard menacing clouds gathered.  I entered La Nueva Cafe with my jacket rolled into its nifty pouch and the umbrella buried in the bookbag. 

Inside La Nueva Cafe did not disappoint.  I ordered 4 alfajores - a short bread sandwich cookie, layered with Dulce De Leche. A week in Argentina was enough to acquire an addiction to alfajores.  And while I was there I might as well get the cheese bread and some scones.  All for a grand total of $15.  But wait- they didn't take credit cards.

Out in search of an ATM (they have one in the store- but unwilling to pay the addition surcharge- I went to look for a cheaper option) I stopped in the supermarket for some dinner ingredients hoping they would have a cash back policy- they didn't)  With shopping bags and still no cash I proceeded onward. And then the skies opened up.

Long story short- I found the Capitol One bank four blocks away, Thought about abandoning the baked goods for another day- but the subway station at 84th Street was not running trains to Flushing.  Went back to the bakery, explained in two languages that my bags had been put aside.

I bought the items, Stuffed down a scone- the alfajores are too good not to savor, and headed down to  Northern Boulevard for the bus.  The sun had returned, and the scone staved off hunger.

Were the alfijores worth it?  Definitely!

The Botanical Gardens and Vicinity

Flushing has a horticultural history.  The post about Flushing has a quite bit of information about this history.  But here is a short visit around some interesting gardens and  a few other things as well.


1. The Queens Library Flushing Branch.
41-17 Main St, Flushing, NY 11355
The original library, long since replaced , was the first lending library in Queens.  The current building, with the curious mitosis carving on the Kissena Boulevard side, is the latest in a series of three libraries located on this spot. It is one of the busiest branches in one of the busiest library systems in the world.
more information from the architects

2, The U.S. Post Office
41-65 Main Street 11365
Gone are the days when I eagerly awaited the igloo that would appear on the lawn selling holiday postage stamps.  But the post office remains an impressive structure
From Forgotten New York
As post office architecture goes, Colonial Revival is a popular style — Flushing’s majestic post office building, Main Street and Sanford Avenue, with its pediment and six Ionic columns, is similar to post offices in Hunters Point and also in St. George, Staten Island. It was constructed from 1932-1934 and designed by Dwight James Baum and partner William W. Knowles; most of Baum’s other NYC buildings are in Riverdale, Bronx, including the neighborhood’s iconic bell tower at Riverdale Avenue and Henry Hudson Parkway.
Go inside, and the busy patrons never look up, but if you do you are rewarded with the sight of WPA era murals depicting different scenes from the history ( or perceived history, some representations are not exactly accurate) of the 12 towns that make up Flushing. The immigrant artist Vincent Aderente painted them.  Much more information about each mural on the Forgotten New York website.

3. The Queens Botanical Garden
43-50 Main Street
From the Garden's website
Located at the northeast corner of Flushing Meadows-Corona Park in Flushing, QBG evolved from the five-acre “Gardens on Parade” exhibit showcased at the 1939-1940 New York World’s Fair. Officially opening as “The Queens Botanical Garden Society” in 1946 after local residents saved and expanded the original exhibit, the Garden remained at the original World’s Fair site until 1961, when it was moved to its current location on Main Street in Flushing. Among the original plantings taken from the 1939 site are two blue atlas cedars that frame the iconic tree gate sculpture at the Garden’s Main Street entrance today. QBG has become a 39-acre oasis in one of New York City’s most bustling and diverse neighborhoods.

4. Evergreen Community Gardens in the Kissena Park Corridor
Colden Street starting around Juniper Avenue
In the 1980s a group of Korean Immigrants began cleaning away the trash and creating a community garden.  Today over 300 plots over 5 acres are lovingly tended.

5.) New York Chens Buddha Associates

46- 38 Kissena Boulevard

This pagoda structure sits on the corner of Kalmia Avenue and Kissena Boulevard.  Sometimes I See people who are dressed in what I consider traditional Buddhist Monk clothing,  coming out, sometimes I see people dressed in three piece suits coming out.  I could find no information about it on the Internet.

6) Hindu Center of North America

     The Ganesh Temple

      45-57 Bowne Street

The Temple Canteen is often listed in guidebooks as an attraction.  The canteen, originally developed in the 1980s to provide food for ritual use,  is a bustling restaurant that serves good, reasonably priced vegetarian food.  The Temple and Community Center cover several blocks and are ornately decorated.  The community is welcoming and friendly to visitors from all faiths.

7) The Olde Town of Flushing Burial Ground

Entrance on 46th Avenue between  164th and 165th Street

When my children were in grade school this park is where we went for picnics and field days and hanging out.  But then it was renovated and in the process of doing the renovation, it was determined that the area was, in fact, a burial ground. The story is filled with history and deception and of course Robert Moses, and the determination of one man,Mandingo Tshaka, to preserve its rightful place.  
From the Website: https://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/the-olde-towne-of-flushing-burial-ground/history
The ‘re-discovery’ of burial grounds within our municipality is an experience shared by many cities world-wide. The City of New York has buildings and parks that stand on former burial grounds. In the 1990’s, when Parks began a renovation of the site, local activist Mandingo Tshaka drew attention to its previous history. In response, Parks commissioned a $50,000 archaeological study in 1996. Archeologist Linda Stone concluded that the site served as the final resting-place for between 500 to 1,000 individuals. Death records for the town of Flushing exist for the period 1881 until 1898, and show that during this period, 62 percent of the buried were African American or Native American, 34 percent were unidentified, and more than half were children under the age of five.

Ridgewood

Ridgewood Queens

Get off the Wyckoff station in Bushwick Brooklyn and walk one block to your east and you are in Ridgewood.   Pieter Claesen  Wyckoff did something like that in 1637. Although he was from Holland he was German speaking  And so began the settlement of the area by German speaking Europeans  Today Ridgewood remains both an area with a strong history and relationship with the German heritage community as well as an area where immigrants from around the world make their first American home.

Much of the information in this entry comes from;
The Illustrated History of Greater Ridgewood
 a book By GEORGE SCHUBEL Editor of the Ridgewood Times Published by Ridgewood Times Printing and Publishing Company,1913

(any thing in the gray book is a direct cut and paste.

Like the wonderful Topsy in “Uncle 
Tom’s Cabin,” Greater Ridgewood 
seems “just to have grown up” in a nor- 
mal and steady way for many years, 
without any authoritative record of the 
origin of its name.

The walk begins at
1) Venditti Square- The restaurant Caribe Star stands in the middle.  The square is named for a detective who was shot in the square in 1986 while on a stake out. The restaurant and the store La Botanica Abete Oshun, are both indicative of the changing demographics of the community.

2) The Liberty Department Store across the street at 54-00 Myrtle Ave was once the RKO, an old Vaudeville theater.  http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/4621

3) Clemens Triangle.  - The World War I  War Memorial https://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/myrtle-avenue-clemens-triangle/monuments/1340  Take a good long  look at the different representatives of the three branches of the military.  There are always more things to notice.

4) The Rite-Aid Across from Clemens Square. 55-60 Myrtle Ave. It is an old bank repurposed as a drugstore,  Go inside, its worth a look around.

Inside the bank turned Rite Aid

Turn right on Seneca after leaving the bank.  

There is IS  77

19) Intermediate School 77

Private instruction could, of course, also be had at 

home by long-haired, spectacled dominies, who traveled about throughout the 

neighborhood in those early days and volunteered to meet the demands of 

education for a shilling or so a day and board.

Trade and the Evergreen Board of Trade, worked tirelessly in the matter 
for almost two years, calling mass meetings, agitating through the civic boards 
and newspapers, and bringing to the attention of the city authorities in other 
ways, the absolute need of the school, with the result that an appropriation 
was granted and Public School No. 77 on Covert Avenue, between Center and 
George Streets, was built. It is to be hoped that the children who now enjoy 
the advantages of this magnificent building will never forget the labors of those 
who made Public School No. 77 possible. 
 
The school is considered one of the finest in the city. It is a four-st 
brick, stone and terra cotta building of 
the collegiate gothic style of architecture, and stands about where the dancing 
platform of Deckelmann’s Ridge- 
wood Park was located. 

5) Ridgewood Bank- the decoration on the door, from the bank.  The bank is filled with interesting decoration on the facade, on the door and everywhere you look.

“From a broad civic point of view,” the 
article continued, “a local National Bank 
founded on a sound and trustworthy basis, will 
lend credit to the community; it will put the 
section on a higher footing: it will increase land 
values in the vicinity, add to population, in- 
crease business and, above all, promote home 
rule. 

6) Norma's Cafe- 59-02 Catalpa Avenue- 

Coffee shop with community roots.

https://www.normascornershoppe.com/

7) Morscher Pork Store  58-44 Catalpa Avenue
 Hand painted sign with illustration from Grimm's Fairy Tale  It translates into something like Table Spread thyself

8) St. Matthias 58-15 Catalpa Ave.
The ornate church with its  "wedding cake" style architecture has long been a center of the Polish community.  There is a statue of Pope John Paul the second  out in front.
-http://www.saintmatthiaschurch.net/saintmatthiaschurch/CALENDAR.html

After passing the church turn right on Onderdonk and you are now right in the middle of the historic district.

Historic Ridgewood 
The Matthew Model Flats.
http://www.brownstoner.com/history/queenswalk-the-plan-for-ridgewood-part-2/

The story of the steady growth and development of what is now known as 
Greater Ridgewood is like the story of a modern fairy tale. Within the 
incredible short space of half a score of years, hundreds upon hundreds of 
houses have been built, making the development and progress of our 
section at once the wonder and admiration of the Greater City. 

The upbuilding has all been done in such a normal and quiet way that no one 
outside the immediate zone of development was aware of the transformation that 
was taking place. From an insignificant hamlet of worked-out farms and scattered 
homes on the Queens side, the section became transformed into a wide-awake, 
energetic community and, like modern Aladdins, the people of our section, by 
their industry, thrift and civic pride, have caused it to become, to all apparent 
purposes, a city within a city. 

With this remarkable change has come about a change, of course, in the life 
and activities of the section; old farms and old landmarks are disappearing, and 
in their stead blocks upon blocks of residential houses are appearing, as if by magic, 
from the ground, and newcomers are swarming into them as fast as they are ready 
for occupancy. 

9) Ridgewood Library 20-12 Madison Street 
Queens http://www.queenslibrary.org/ridgewood
 It was the first library constructed in Queens by the city and not industrialist-turned-philanthropist Andrew Carnegie.

This Branch, known as the Ridgewood 
Branch, was opened on March 18th, 
1911. The only place available was a 
store on the corner of Greene and Covert 
Avenues, too small to accommodate the 
people who wished to use the library. 
In consequence, it was at first largely 
used by the children, who crowded in, 
excluding the grown people. There was 
a registration of 972 persons from March 
18th to 31st, including children. More 
than 2,000 volumes were circulated in 
the same time, of which 72 per cent, 
were children’s books. Of the persons 
using the reading room, 94 per cent, were 
children. 

 11)  Romanian Orthodox Church
The building was once the fanciest Mansion in town

12)  66-45 Forest Ave- wood frame house 1884
This house predates the building of the Matthews Model Flats


13) IS 93  note the gargoyles on the facades


14)Gottscheer Hall 657 Fairview Avenue

http://gottscheerhall.com/about-us

Once beer halls, were community centers where folk who lived in small apartments gathered to pass the evenings, plan social functions and support the communities in Europe they left behind.  This is one of the few examples left.  Gottscheer is a region that located in Slovenia, but was once part of the Austrian Empire.  If you click on the history on the menu from the website linked above you will learn a whole lot about Gotschee, if not a whole about the hall in Ridgewood.  And you could book your next affair there if you care to.

15) Linden Street
There is a lot of variation in the decorations of the facades if the rows and rows of Matthew Flats.
Only this block has faces carved in the stone above the windows.

note the face in the carvings above the flats on Linden Street

16) St.Aloysius Roman Catholic Church 382 Onderdonk Ave

http://www.saloysius.org/
The convent located halfway down the side street dates back 125 years.







17) Stockholm Street
http://forgotten-ny.com/2008/04/stockholm-syndrome-ridgewoods-landmarked-block/

There are 32 houses built on this street between 1907 and 1910.  The street has landmark status.  And it is literally paved with yellow brick stone.

1

18) Linden Hill Cemetery

Ferenc Molnar, the writer, whose short story, Roger and Hammerstein based the musical Carousel  is buried in this cemetery.  Walking around the paths  affords a beautiful view of the distant Manhattan skyline

Ridgewood

See map at end of the post

Caribe Star- Venditti Square   T

54-00 Myrtle Ave

Clemens Triangle

Rite Aid

Ridgewood Savings Bank

Norma's Corner Shoppe

Morscher Pork Store

St Matthias Roman Catholic Church

Queens Library at Ridgewood

Madison St & Onderdonk Ave

Putnam Ave & Fairview Ave

66-45 Forest Ave

IS 93 Ridgewood

Gottscheer Hall

Linden Street facades

St Aloysius Roman Catholic Church

Stockholm Street

Linden Hill Cemetery

Woodhaven

Sunday, February 19, was a an unseasonably warm winter day.  We took a walk through Woodhaven

Neir's Tavern 87-48 78th Street 

Neir's Tavern, founded in 1829 is one of the oldest continuously open establishments in the country.  Mae West is reported to have been one of its most famous patron and the bar has a display of memorabilia related to her time there.  The movies Goodfella  and Tower Heist were filmed there.

88-30 88th Road

8719 88th Ave,Saint Thomas the Apostle Church

A set of buildings including the church itself, a school and the convent give evidence to the influence of the Roman Catholic Church in  the community.

88th Street

87 Street

Two  blocks of interesting homes built to house the factory workers in the last century.

Murals on Atlantic Avenue between the London Planetree Playground and the  Clocktower.

The Clocktower

On Atlantic Avenue at 90th Street is a shopping center with a brick clock tower. It is the remains of the Lalance and Grosjean Factory which manufactured enamel kitchenware from the 1863 to the 1950s.

Right off Woodhaven Boulevard on 95 Street is one of the few remaining mansions that lined Woodhaven Boulevard in the past.