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 JUNE 2017 I LIC COURIER I www.qns.com Legends “Roads Strewn with Flowers” BY GREATER ASTORIA HISTORICAL SOCIETY The technology of cyberspace and social media has unleashed a flood of information between us that is so pervasive – and casual – that its nearly incomprehensible to those not of a certain age to understand not too long ago, even with the telephone, television, newspaper, book and postal correspondence, information was often scant, expensive, and incomplete. The record gets spotty the further back in time. For example, there is almost no firsthand account of our community’s earliest years. Sure, there are records of holders of office, the price of beans in the local shop, but what was life like? How did it feel? The account of a local nurseryman, Grant Thorburn - of a Sunday afternoon ride from Manhattan to the rural suburb of Astoria captures a valuable nugget of time. Let’s follow an imaginary narrative of a young couple out on an afternoon date in the 1840s with rented carriage and a spirited trotter, things that would have set the young man back about one dollar (nearly $120 dollars in today’s wages). It would be his disposable income for a week. In that era, most Manhattanites lived between Canal and 14th Streets. Armed with a packed picnic basket, and after picking her up at her home, they would cross the East River on the Peck Slip Ferry for conveyance to the Grand Street Ferry Terminal in Williamsburg. Turning the horse to the northeast, and keeping the river to their left, they would have continued on the newly opened “smooth, quiet, and beautiful” Ravenswood, Hallett’s Cove and Williamsburg Turnpike (today’s Manhattan Avenue in Brooklyn and Vernon Boulevard in Queens.) They would reach Astoria within 40 minutes. Around them “thriving” farms cultivated by German families seemed frozen in time. After crossing the Newtown Creek Bridge, the next quarter mile was a treat with a row of waterfront homes - the whimsical and exuberant mansions of the Ravenswood nouveau riche. Crossing over the tide mill bridge that dammed Sunswick Creek (the curve in Vernon Boulevard at the north edge of Socrates Park) they came upon Thorburn’s Gardens (31st Drive) where, as Thorburn said of his employees, “among plants domestic and exotic everyone has a clean shirt and is sober. After that purchase - and perhaps after a lunch beside the green-houses of “dahlias, and sensitive plants” - our party continued north bringing them “straight through the main street of Astoria; from thence lays before you,” Thorburn wrote, “a new, level, straight, and beautiful road to Flushing toll-gate” (Astoria Boulevard.) His account cautions not to enter for it they “will cost you four or five shillings” but suggests that our guests “tack about just this side of the toll-gate, keep a southwest course - it’s a fine road (Hazen Street) - and an hour’s easy drive (Woodside Avenue and then Broadway) will bring you up at the Dutch Church in Newtown (Elmhurst). Then on to good road (Grand Avenue) back to Williamsburg (and the ferry to Manhattan).” In the writer’s mind, there was no comparison between an afternoon’s ride in Queens and that in Manhattan: “the roads which I have described in Queens are now literally strewed with flowers from the cherry, peach, and apple-trees with which they are lined. How much more sociable, comfortable and reasonable is a drive on these roads, than going up the Third Avenue to Harlem, where you encounter meat-carts, dirt-carts, brickcarts, and hog-carts, with wild horses driven by savage men. You may drive seven miles without even meeting a sober-sided Old Dutch wagon.”
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