Featured

For those who aren’t familiar with my work on Brownstoner.com, I’m Suzanne Spellen, and I write under the pen name “Montrose Morris.” Mr. Morris was an important late 19^th century architect who worked almost entirely in Brooklyn. He was especially prolific in Central Brooklyn – in Bedford Stuyvesant and Crown Heights, where I lived for close to twenty-five years. I took his name as a log-in name well before I started writing for the blog, and it just stuck. I write about architectural history, neighborhood history, and the people who lived, worked and walked in our streets. I’ll be doing the same here, and I hope to do Queens proud.

I have a Queens connection as well as a Brooklyn connection; I spent the first five years of my life in Queens. Not impressive street cred, but it’s what I’ve got. My family lived in St. Albans until I was six, when we moved to upstate New York. I went to pre-school in a park in St. Albans, and went to kindergarten at St. Catherine of Siena Catholic School, on Riverton Street, near Farmers and Baisley Boulevards. I still have very vivid memories of the school, and the house I lived in, even though it wasn’t for all that long, and was long ago, when dinosaurs still roamed the streets.

I was asked to write about Queens and its history and buildings, so I thought I would start with an area that is not on the radar for hip and happening colonization anytime soon, thankfully. This first post about Queens is going to be personal, and hopefully informational. As many have said, and will continue to say, Queens is a multi-cultural melting pot, with more cultures and ethnicities than any other part of New York City. Queens is so much more than just Long Island City, Forest Hills, Astoria and Ridgewood. Today, the first Queenswalk is going to look at my old hometown of St. Albans.

(more…)