Greater Astoria Historial Society 35-20 Broadway, 4th Floor | L.I.C., NY 11106 718.278.0700 | www.astorialic.org Gallery Hours: Mondays & Wednesdays 2-5 PM Saturdays 12-5 PM Exhibits ~ Lectures ~ Documentaries ~ Books Walking Tours ~ Historical Research Unique & Creative Content For more information visit us on the web at www.astorialic.org This image adapted from an invitation to the Long Island City Athletics 33rd Annual Masque Ball, 1909. 32 MAy 2015 i LIC COURIER i www.queenscourier.com ■LEGENDS Lipton’s Peripatetic Flagpole The 125-foot steel mast that Sir Thomas Lipton bequeathed to the borough of Queens in much pomp and ceremony that blustery day in 1909 vanished almost overnight. The mystery was solved in a brief paragraph of a local paper. It seems that the city was “perplexed” by Mr. Lipton’s largess. Officials spent nearly $80,000 to remove the pole injuring two workers in the process. In 1920, the Pittsburgh Press mentions it was now in Astoria Park. Postcards of the time show a very tall flagpole near the former amphitheater at the park’s south end. Less than twenty years later, the flagpole again disappeared. We now turn to an obscure information source: the autumn 1958 MooreMac News, a publication of the Moore McCormack Lines. A brief sentence captioned a picture of a flagpole attached to the boom of a crane. It stated that Con Ed workmen were removing it from the property of the shipping line founder, Emmet Mc- Cormack at 92nd Street and Shore Road. The picture caption concludes with statement that the flagpole “was once the mast of Sir Thomas Lipton’s racing vessel ‘Shamrock III.’” The flagpole was to be moved to the front of Brooklyn Public Library’s main entrance on Grand Army Plaza. A clipping shows the library dedication ceremony on May 30, 1959. The article confirmed that a new 65-foot flagpole was dedicated in front of the library. But wait – a 65-foot flagpole? What happened to the other half? A friend whose area roots run deep was doing some family research. He stumbled on a reference to “Gleason Angle Park” in Long Island City. Intrigued, he looked closer and found a brief history on the NYC Parks website. The park was formed in 1911, within days after the Queens Parks Department separated from the Brooklyn- Queens Department of Parks. The new Queens Parks Commissioner reported on “four unnamed parks,” this parcel among them. He dubbed it Gleason Angle after Mayor ‘Battle-Axe’ Gleason. It seems the use of public money to honor a politically connected crony has been a fixture in Queens for some time. But the honor was short lived, for on December 17, 1919, the Board of Alderman renamed Gleason Angle the James A. McKenna Triangle “paying tribute to one who made the supreme sacrifice in the World War.” Today a 60-foot steel flagpole stands in the center of the triangle, flying a single American flag. The pole bears a plate that reads, “Presented to the Major James A. McKenna Post by William H. Todd, Todd Shipyard’s Corporation.” The flagpole’s shape is odd, squat and stubby. Todd’s Shipyard, formed by the merger of three companies and opened in 1916, was one of the more successful shipbuilding companies in a notoriously tough business. They built many ships for the Moore-McCormick Lines. Todd had shipyards in Brooklyn and New Jersey. Could the flagpole have been transported by barge from Bay Ridge to one of these locations where it was cut in two? Was one part sent to the Brooklyn Library and the other back to Queens to be set up, ironically, just six blocks from its original location? Their combined lengths and appearance would suggest that this is a distinct possibility. (Thank you to Walter Kehoe for his research!) LEGENDS OF LIC BY GREATER ASTORIA HISTORICAL SOCIETY LEGENDS OF LIC
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