Greater Astoria
Historial Society
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This image adapted from an invitation to the
Long Island City Athletics 33rd Annual Masque Ball, 1909.
32 SEPTEMBER 2017 I LIC COURIER I www.qns.com
Legends
Water Pipes
BY GREATER ASTORIA
HISTORICAL SOCIETY
In late May we received
a call from an artist who
told us ‘water pipes’ were
recently dug up outside his
studio ‘on 12th Street just
off Broadway’. He had
incorporated them into a
sculpture that was on display at a Manhattan
gallery. He asked if we could stop
by to perhaps give them some provenance.
Intrigued, we agreed. Water
pipes from New York’s late 18th Century
water system were not uncommon – our
historical society has a one foot segment
that was dug up in the 1870s.
The confusing part through was the
reference to the ‘pipes’ buried at 12th
Street. The ancient water system never
made it that far north.
At first glance we knew the items
were not water pipes. They were rather
long pieces of wood – running several
feet long, and were about six inches
wide. Although much decayed, they still
had traces of a curve – perhaps as much
as 60°. Yes, it seemed reasonable that
they could have conveyed water. What
were they?
Upon questioning the artist, we quickly
discovered another bombshell. The ‘12th
Street off Broadway’ location was not
Manhattan, but in Astoria. He and another
artist friend had pulled them out
of a pile of construction debris from a
street opening a few years back.
The artist’s studio sat on a former
small inlet of Sunswick Creek, a marsh
that drained the area between Hallets
Cove and Queens Plaza roughly following
the course of 21st Street. In
the 19th century the area attracted
noxious industries as chemicals, dyeing,
and glue factories. Its landfill was
often comprised of toxic and deleterious
waste. Almost anything could be dug up
and left to rot in the sun by the clueless
excavation crew.
We studied maps and came up with
an intriguing idea: could this wood be
the irrigation system of Grant Thorburn’s
nursery? Those greenhouses and gardens
were but a few dozen feet from the
place where they were found.
It is no accident that Queens was
known as the ‘Birthplace of American
Horticulture.’ Rich soil, long growing
season, semi-tropical micro-climate, and
excellent transportation to a large urban
market made agriculture a profitable
venture until the borough was overwhelmed
by development at the dawn
of the 20th Century.
It was not by chance that famed seed
man Grant Thorburn chose Astoria for
his nursey. Other nurseries, Briel, Marc,
Wilson, came before and after him. Many
of the estates along the river in Ravenswood
had hothouses where gentlemen
farmers pursued hobbies developing
new strains of flowering plants and trees
bearing new varieties of fruits.
Thorburn was in residence from in
1834 (when he was appointed postmaster
of Astoria Village) to about 1854
when his name disappeared from property
records. His loquacious biographical
‘Reminisces’ grow strangely quiet about
this time. A glance at maps tells the story.
Within a few blocks of the once pristine
waters of his irrigation source, Sunswick
Creek, stood a polluting carpet factory,
chemical works, and a slaughter house.
After he sold the property and moved
to Connecticut, the new owners likely
tossed his nursery into a landfill.
Thorburn died in 1863. His family sold
the business. It closed in 1921 a year
shy of its 120th Anniversary.
This discovery points to something
we have long suspected: the East River
waterfront, and Old Astoria Village, is an
enormous archeological site that is being
erased with no sense of loss.
