Forgotten Queens

Images of America: New York

by Kevin Walsh, Greater Astoria Historical Society

In the early years of the 20th century, Queens County underwent an enormous transformation. The Queensboro Bridge of 1909 forever changed the landscape of this primarily rural area into the urban metropolis it is today. Forgotten Queens shows New York s largest borough between the years 1920 and 1950, when it was adorned with some of the finest model housing and planned communities anywhere in the country. Victorian mansions, cookie-cutter row houses, fishing shacks, and beachside bungalows all coexisted next to workplaces and commercial areas. Beckoning with the torch of the new century and a bright promise for those who dared to pioneer its urban wilderness, Queens flourished as a community. Through vintage photographs being seen by the public for the first time, the five wards of Queens are highlighted for their unique character and history."

Genres: New York, Photography

128 pages, Paperback

First published December 9, 2013

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Reviews

[Viridian5 · Rating 4 out of 5]

A much-appreciated literal look at Queens as it once was, a far more rural place, that shows photos of many buildings and institutions that have since disappeared completely. Plus, so many trolley lines!

I'm a longtime fan and follower of Kevin Walsh's Forgotten New York website, with its photos and bits of history, though I've never personally gone on one of his walking tours, so of course I had to check this book out. The destruction of historical places and traces of the past has only accelerated in Queens in the years since this book's publishing. (New York's government is pushing for much higher density and more taller, massive apartment buildings in the name of creating very much needed affordable housing, though it's funny how few of the masses of these buildings going up actually contain many/any truly affordable apartments to live in. Yeah, "funny.")

Given Kevin Walsh's sensibilities and aesthetic, I'm surprised Robert Moses is mentioned so rarely, since he's personally responsible for destroying so many places and communities in the name of what he considered renewal and "progress."

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

I moved to New York from Buffalo in 1976 and stayed there for 11 years, almost all of that time in Queens, mostly in this book's Ward 4, in the Queens Village/Bellerose area. Queens was a wonderful place to live and in my time there I became fascinated with the city's layout and history. This book is a brief but wonderful look at the borough’s history. The changes decade by decade are just amazing and Kevin Walsh is performing an enormous service, through his books and website, in making sure that the history isn't completely forgotten. It is sad to see all that has been tossed aside in service of the automobile. At the same time, it is inspiring to see how man's ingenuity converted farmland to a home for millions from all around the world. This is a great but all too brief look at the Queens of the past. Very enjoyable.

[Helen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading this book and studying the photos of sections of Queens as they once were. I thought the introductory essay, the captions, the chapter introductory essays, were well-written albeit somewhat wistful.

The incredible thing is how quickly Queens developed once the Queensboro Bridge was completed - what we take for granted today, wall-to-wall development, wasn't the case not too long ago. Queens was once an idyllic landscape, which included farms, desolate areas, beaches and exclusive shorefront communities where there are now sewage treatment or electrical generating plants. It was once a beautiful land, with leafy trees and quiet streets, many times dirt roads, that looked unchanged from the time of the Civil War up until the early decades of the 20th Century. Then everything changed as row housing and later apartments went up, as well as tract housing. Then street cars went in, although their heyday didn't last too long as they were swamped by the onslaught of the automobile. The never-ending story of the rise and fall of businesses, transportation modes, farmland given over to housing or schools, golf courses turned into college campuses, and on and on, is delineated here with a few deft words in the captions - that seem to capture what you need to know about the myriad Queens neighborhoods, how they developed originally, and how 20th Century development changed them forever.

This is a fabulous book for anyone interested in how this huge section of NYC developed over the course of a few short decades of the 20th Century - stretching from Astoria to the Rockaways, Douglaston to Long Island City. This is a fascinating look at the intersection of money and land as it played out in Queens, once the Queensboro Bridge was built, and infrastructure such as roads, highways, subways, electrical lines, were put in. I recommend it to anyone interested in how and why Queens became the way it is, as well as those interested in seeing how Queens once was - a quiet, graceful, leafy borough, which once held many truck farms, and open space.