A Walk in St. Albans

The neighborhood in southern Queens named St. Albans was mostly farmland (note the name of one of its prominent streets, Farmers Boulevard) until the 1890s, when a small community began to take shape around Farmers and Linden Boulevards. The town was named by its first 100 residents for Britain’s first Christian martyr. The area was home to the St. Albans Golf Course from 1915 to the Depression; sports luminaries such as Babe Ruth honed their strokes there. The old golf course is now St. Albans Veterans Administration Extended Care Center and Roy Wilkins Park.

Roy Wilkins Park sits on property that formerly was occupied by the St. Albans Naval Hospital. After the hospital closed in 1974 the U.S. Government allocated the 100-acre site to the Veterans Administration, which built a veterans’ extended care center on the east end of the property and ceded the western half to the city of New York in 1977 for use as a park. It remained mostly undeveloped until 1982, when $3.3 million was allocated for its redevelopment. One of the hospital buildings was renovated and reopened as the Roy Wilkins Family Center in 1986, which includes an Olympic-size pool equipped to accommodate the disabled, comfort stations, a tot play area, picnic tables, tennis, basketball, and handball courts, baseball fields, and a jogging path. The facility also hosts a summer day camp for 300 children, after-school programs, a counseling center, and a variety of community events.

Roy Wilkins (1901-1981) was a Missouri-born, Minnesota raised journalist and civil rights advocate. After a stint with the Kansas City Call, he joined the NAACP in 1831 and served as the organization’s president from 1955 to 1977, promoting voter registration, fair housing laws and wage equity.

The Black Spectrum Theatre in Roy Wilkins Park was founded in 1970 by playwright, director and filmmaker Carl Clay. Black Spectrum produces film, theatre and video works examining issues of concern to African American and Caribbean American audiences. The 425-seat theatre was built in  a former officers’ club. The theatre holds an annual gala; past honorees have been the late husband and wife actors Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee and filmmaker Melvin Van Peebles.

In addition, Roy Wilkins Park features a huge vegetable garden tended by area residents, and an African American Hall of Fame honoring luminaries such as the USA undersecretary to the United Nations and Nobel Peace Prize winner, Ralph Bunche, and the first black woman elected to the House of Representatives, Shirley Chisholm.

Southern Queens’ ascendance as a mecca for jazz musicians began in 1923 when Clarence Williams, a successful musician and entrepreneur from Plaquemine, Louisiana, purchased a home and eight lots at 171-37 108th Avenue. Anticipating the increasing popularity of jazz in the north, Williams moved first to Chicago in 1920 and then to New York with his wife, singer Eva Taylor, in 1923. Desiring open spaces reminiscent of his upbringing in the Louisiana delta, Williams made his home in Queens. He would be the first in a lengthy line of jazz musicians to come to southern Queens. The area, named Addisleigh Park, was formally developed beginning in 1926 with several blocks of Tudor-style homes; Jackie Robinson and Colin Powell have also lived in the quiet, pleasant neighborhood.

On the north side of Linden Boulevard at the Long Island Rail Road overpass is a mural sponsored  by the St. Albans Civic Improvement Association honoring St. Albans’ jazz, pop and athletic greats,  created in 2004 to replace and older one that had suffered from wear and tear. Rendered are boxer Tommy Jackson, Brooklyn Dodgers Roy Campanella and Jackie Robinson, Count Basie, Billie Holiday, Illinois Jacquet, Ella Fitzgerald, Lena Horne, Brook Benton, Joe Hinton, John Coltrane, Fats Waller and James Brown.

An older mural (1982) on the south side shows St. Albans scenes from early in the century, including the St. Albans station when it ran at grade from 1897 to 1935, when the grade crossing was eliminated and the railroad placed on an overpass.

The Maria Rose International Doll Museum and Cultural Center, 187-11 Linden Boulevard, 718-276-3454, was opened in October 2007 by Naida Nelson-Njoku, R.N., who acquired over 500 dolls from around the world and began an exhibit here, grouping them by location: African, Caribbean, the Americas, Europe and Asia. Exhibits are open from Wednesdays to Sunday from 12:30 to 4:30 for a small fee.