QUEENSLINE
OPENING OF TRIBOROUGH BRIDGE USHERS
IN NEW HOMEBUILDING ERA IN QUEENS
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TIMESLEDGER | QNS.COM | OCT. 23-OCT. 29, 2020 23
In conjunction with the Greater
Astoria Historical Society,
TimesLedger Newspapers presents
noteworthy events in the borough’s
history.
Welcome to October 1934!
On Oct. 24, Bruno Richard Hauptmann,
a Bronx carpenter, pled not
guilty at his arraignment in Flemington,
New Jersey, on charges of murdering
the 20-month-old infant son of
Charles A. Lindbergh, the first man to
fly solo across the Atlantic.
The child was kidnapped from Lindbergh’s
home in Hopewell, New Jersey
on March 1, 1932.
Lindbergh paid a $50,000 ransom,
which was a fortune in 1932. The
child’s body was found in woods near
the Hopewell-Princeton Road on May
12, 1932. $14,000 of the ransom cash was
found in Hauptmann’s garage when he
was arrested.
The trial was set to begin January 2,
1935, and it ended on Feb. 13, 1935, when
a jury of eight men and four women
took 11 hours to reach a unanimous
verdict: guilty, despite Hauptmann’s
ongoing claim of innocence. There
were appeals, and stays of execution
but in the end, Hauptmann, still refusing
to confess, went to the electric
chair at Trenton State Prison on April
2, 1936.
On April 6, 1936, Hauptmann’s remains
were cremated at the Fresh
Pond Crematory in Maspeth, Queens.
By the time of the memorial service,
a crowd of about 2,000, mostly women
and children, had gathered.
They were kept off the crematory
grounds by 28 policemen and six detectives.
Secrecy attended the services
because New Jersey law did not permit
a public funeral for an executed felon,
and Mrs. Hauptmann had agreed not to
hold a public funeral, in order to get her
husband’s body out of state. She hoped
to return his ashes to Germany.
In a speech, Public Works Commissioner
John J. Halleran pointed out that
the opening of the Triborough Bridge
would open a new homebuilding era
in Queens. At current speed limits,
one could easily drive from a job in
the Bronx home for lunch and return,
if your home were in central Queens.
When the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge
was completed with the required connecting
highways, all parts of Queens
would be within an hour’s drive of
Manhattan.
Statistics on subway ridership from
Jan. 1 through Sept. 1 were released.
The number of riders in Queens was
85,068,091. The Astoria line collected
13,796,442 fares. The most heavily trafficked
station was Main Street in Flushing
with 6,496,003 fares, an increase of
525,105 versus the same period in 1933.
Walter Johnson of the real estate
firm of Quinlan, Terry and Johnson in
Flushing proposed that owners of some
mansions convert part of their partially
empty houses into apartments.
He was aware of “as many as 200 such
houses within walking distance of the
subway.”
According to Johnson, many owners
had come to his office hoping to
sell their property for apartment house
sites. But the lack of mortgage money
made such a sale unlikely. In fact, no
new apartment buildings had been
built in Flushing in the last year
That’s the way it was in October
1934.
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