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The Borough of Queens, long suffering, is always trying to tell us her hidden history. You just have to learn how to listen to her.

Case in point: 50-67 43rd Street at the border of Sunnyside and Blissville. This house is in a strange spot, just a few building lots away from the elevated Long Island Expressway and Brooklyn Queens Expressway interchange clover leaf, and at the end of the block is a local streets approach way to the Kosciuszko Bridge.

All of these modern roadways date back to the Robert Moses era in the late 1930s. The street itself, 43rd Street, is an ancient passage, and was known in the Colonial era. It was one of several paths through a swampy upland that were paved with crushed oyster shells, and it connected directly with modern day Laurel Hill Boulevard on its way toward Newtown Creek.

Calvary Cemetery and industrial West Maspeth (formerly Berlin) are on the other side of the highways and Bridge. At the start of the 20th century, you would have told people that you were going to visit either Laurel Hill or Celtic Park if this was your destination.

The building is two stories tall, and as you’ll notice in the shot above, sits considerably lower in its lot than a similar building next door. That’s the important part, and if you listen, you can hear Queens talking.

More after the jump.

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Department of Buildings records for western Queens are absolute junk. After the consolidation of the City of Greater New York, a lot of the old municipal records of Queens seem never to have become part of the citywide system. The first certificate of occupancy for this structure at nyc.gov lists it as having been completed in 1960. That’s dumb, and wrong, and other sources rightly suggest that building was finished in 1901. 1901 makes sense given its style, location, materials…

Note: I live in Astoria, along Broadway in the 40s. The C of O for my address tells me that I live in a restaurant parking lot in Rego Park. As I said, not so great, the DOB records for western Queens.

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Notice the step down to the entrance way, which is around three to five feet below sidewalk and street grade.

Back in the 1910s, the Tammany Hall-dominated government of the newly consolidated City of Greater New York was spreading money around the boroughs to make “improvements.” A lot of major and minor bridges got built, the hundreds of town and village fire departments were all brought under one command, and considerable amounts of sewer and water pipes were laid.

Queens received a nice portion of this work, during the borough presidency of Maurice Connolly (who was one of the shapers of modern day Queens). This area, known as Laurel Hill (and/or Berlin), and neighboring Blissville, received sewers and an overall change in street grade to accommodate the improvement. Astoria and other low lying coastal neighborhoods also received the same treatment.

More often than not, home owners would have their building jacked up to meet the new grade, but cheapskates and holdouts abound in any age. Research suggests that the pivotal year for the work might have been 1914 or 15, but it’s been a little difficult to pin down exactly.

Laurel Hill, Astoria, Blissville, Hunters Point — whenever I’m scanning through old newspapers and municipal publications, one thing that jumps out are the stories of water-born pestilence. Malaria, cholera, and outbreaks of dysentery are always mentioned when the subject of western Queens comes up during reports from the 18th and 19th century.

Remember, Sunswick and Newtown creeks and their tributaries rose and fell with the East River tide, leaving behind ponds and flooded meadowlands. The communities along these waterways used them as open sewers as well. 

One other thing that is always mentioned are mosquitos. Mosquitos were encountered in numbers so massive that passengers of the Long Island Railroad, whose tracks run to this day along the Newtown Creek, described “biting insects in numbers so great as to blot out the sun.” Wagon drivers reported that when using the plank road along Borden Avenue, their draft horses would be literally covered in mosquitos.

What modernity refers to as “green infrastructure” or “vital wetlands” is what the past referred to as “miasmic swamp” or as the “waste meadows.” It ain’t pleasant living near a “miasmic swamp.”

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Street grade all over the swampy lowlands and marshlands of Western Queens is anywhere from five to 25 feet above what the British troops of General Howe mapped out during the Revolutionary War. It had only changed by a few feet during the agricultural era that ended in the 1890s. If this home on 43rd street was in fact finished in 1901, which is likely, just look at the change in grade during the 20th century alone.

You’ll find another set of under-grade homes on the east side of 43rd street on the Astoria side of the neighborhood, between Newtown Road and Broadway. If you start looking for them, you’ll begin to see them everywhere.

Next thing you know, you’ll be looking for triangular buildings at the top and bottom of hills, and wondering if this plot might have been part of the trolley system. Best bet is to listen, Queens might have something to say to you about it.

Newtown Creek Alliance Historian Mitch Waxman lives in Astoria and blogs at Newtown Pentacle.

 


What's Your Take? Leave a Comment

  1. can’t tell you how they jacked the houses, and I haven’t looked into the 21st street/astoria grading sat all. I would imagine that it would have been part of the Triborough/Grand Central construction era in the late 30’s, however. Mr. Moses had a lot of irons in the fire back then.

  2. “…The first certificate of occupancy for this structure at nyc.gov lists it as having been completed in 1960. That’s dumb, and wrong…”

    That’s neither dumb nor wrong. Certificates of Occupancy weren’t required for new construction until 1938 and they weren’t required on existing construction so long as the use didn’t change. A lot of multiple dwellings have them because work was performed that either required a new CO, or getting one issued was not a big deal. One and two families, in general, don’t have them, because they didn’t make the same degree of alterations.

    Owners can get a Letter of No Objection from DOB in lieu of a CO, which basically says “we recognize that the house was a 2/3/6 family prior to 1938, has been used the same way ever since, and will continue to be used that way, and we will not object to its use as such”. They’re not particularly common, but among these buildings, CO’s are just as rare.

    Great read though. Two questions:
    — Do you know anything about how the grade changed over near Astoria Park South and 21st St? I think it was all re-pitched, but much later than the article suggests.
    — Do you have any information on how they jacked the houses? Jacking that much masonry would be hard without cracking the hell out of it.