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 AUGUST 2017 I LIC COURIER I www.qns.com
Legends
A CITY
OF
FLORAL
BEAUTY
BY GREATER ASTORIA
HISTORICAL SOCIETY
Wikipedia states that “Flow-ers
have long been admired
and used by humans to
bring beauty to their environment, and
also as objects of romance, ritual, reli-gion,
medicine and as a source of food.”
What is unstated is that the flower
industry got its start in Astoria, Queens.
Grant Thorburn arrived from Scot-land
in the closing years of the eigh-teenth–
century with 3 cents to his
name, a nail hammer, and feet so
frostbitten he could not put on his
shoes. His education was gleaned
from reading the Bible. He had taught
himself to write his name.
No one wrote a better profile of
our city from that era – everything he
saw and heard he carefully recorded.
He loitered with old men who told
him stories from the earliest times of
settlement. He saw the marching of
veterans from the Revolution, heard
tales of the Prison Ships in Wallabout
Bay, and witnessed Alexander Hamilton
nearly lynched by a mob. His accounts
of tending to the dead and sick, at
great personal risk, during New York’s
recurring mosquito-borne yellow fever
epidemics (a must read for anyone
who desires to bring wetlands back
to our city) are as vivid and poignant
as any account of Gotham in crisis.
He left a stark portrait of living in a
series of sweltering communal garrets
(of both people and bedbugs) – and
moving each year as landlords gradu-ally
deserted Wall Street for the Canal
Street suburbs – are stories of a city
gripped by a housing crisis that leaves
a familiar ring to many today.
Grant’s trade, learned from his fa-ther,
was as a nail maker; in a typical
day (6 AM to 9 PM) he could make
more than 3,000 nails. It was his good
fortune to arrive in a city in the midst
of a frenzied building boom and he had
more work than he could handle. It was
equally his misfortune to be thrown
out of work a year later when, with
the invention of a nail machine, his
profession became obsolete overnight.
Thorburn, almost in desperation,
took his life savings and got credit
to both lease space and purchase
stock for a novelty and houseware
store. Grant constantly rearranged
merchandise to make it more attrac-tive.
He hit upon the idea of dabbing
flower pots with some spare green
paint. They sold. He took things a
step forward. Although (as he later
confessed), “not knowing a geranium
from a cabbage head,” he purchased
seeding plants, and put them into the
pots. They sold as fast as he could
make them. No one had ever done
something like that.
He never looked back - through
business disasters of fire and bank-ruptcy
- and personal trials of losing
his wife. By 1823 he published his
first catalogue (with illustrations by
his daughter) under the name “Grant
Thorburn & Son. “ He had the largest
seed business in United States and
traded with England, Scotland, France
and Holland in “seeds from all parts
of the world - vegetable, cereal, floral
and medicinal.” About 1834 he moved
his business to Astoria. He stated, “I
found New York a city of marigolds,
sunflowers and peonies and left it
hyacinths, roses, and all sorts of floral
beauty.”
