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
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This image adapted from an invitation to the
Long Island City Athletics 33rd Annual Masque Ball, 1909.
34 SEPTEMBER 2018 I LIC COURIER I www.qns.com
Legends
THE FOUNDATION
A builder of great buildings once
said to me that half the cost,
half the effort, to erect a soaring
“skyscraper” is spent in the foundation.
And so it will be with this column. Before
we talk of our railroads and smokestacks
of yesterday, and our gleaming towers of
the 21st century, we must pause first in
our basement – this one page devoted
to fully half our history.
The following are quotes from the
recollections of John Bragaw, born
1790 in Sunnyside. Published in 1882,
it is among the earliest first-hand ac-counts
of our community. It was written
by someone who was among the last
alive who witnessed the land before
modern development.
He likened our neighborhood to an
“Arcadia” – a place from ancient Greece
that symbolized a mythical and legendary
poetic ideal where everything is good
and right and peaceful.
Bragaw painted a locale whose land
was rich and fertile with a long growing
season. Taxes were light – perhaps 10
to 20 cents a day. The farmers were
an independent lot who owned land on
100 acre real estate strips. Their barns
were filled with “bounty” and their cel-lars
to “repletion.” A laborer could clear
a dollar a day.
Their grist mill, which served the needs
of a much larger region, was at their door-step
in Dutch Kills – today Queens Plaza.
It was located near a local schoolhouse
on Skillman Avenue with 50 students and
a schoolmaster paid $200 a year. Other
needs, as a church or blacksmith, were
but a few hours away by a sauntering
carriage ride to the Village of Newtown,
near today’s intersection of Broadway
and Queens Boulevard. Newspapers
came once a week from Brooklyn via
the Penny Bridge which spanned mid-
Newtown Creek.
At night they would load their skiffs
for farmers’ markets which opened at
daybreak in Manhattan. In the evenings
they would accept boats filled with “night
soil,” the sweepings of Manhattan streets
and the manure from privies, which they
would return to the fields to feed their
crops. The system was an ecological
perfection unlike our modern society
where both foodstuffs, doctored by
chemicals, as well as waste, were both
carted hundreds if not thousands of miles
from source to destination.
Crime was hardly known – mostly
chicken thieves. Justice was meted out
by the local constable who “was judge,
jury and executioner with no appeal from
decisions of the court.” Whipping was
on the bare back “with nothing more
formidable than at twig.” The constable
was paid a dollar a day.
Their society was multiracial. Although
we may question if Bragaw’s account was
too favorable towards slavery, from his
perspective, all lived harmoniously under
the same roof. Each farm had two to four
slaves who were “practically members
of the family, reared with the master’s
children with plenty to eat and wear, were
well taken care of, and were required to
do a reasonable amount of work. They
had Sunday preaching by their own and
gathered in large numbers. If a slave was
dissatisfied with his master, they were
given a ‘pass’ and a certain number of
days to find a perspective place. If found,
the old and new master would settle the
affair between them and the ownership
of the Negro changed.”
With Emancipation in 1825, the local
black community all but disappeared. The
nature of work had changed. Although
the Erie Canal brought new opportunities,
it was the steam engine that ushered in
a modern era – the age we live in.
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