44 welcome to bayside s THE QUEENS COURIER • WELCOME TO • JANUARY 9, 2014 FOR BREAKING NEWS VISIT www.queenscourier.com The Officers’ Club BAYSIDE: LAND OF LANDMARKS Bayside residents do not need to go far for a piece of their neighborhood’s past, as some backyards are historic homes to three landmarked sites. The Lawrence Cemetery, located in a wooded area at the corner of 216th Street and 42nd Avenue in Bayside, was designated an official city landmark in 1967. According to the Bayside Historical Society (BHS), the tiny cemetery is home to a variety of headstones, marking the final resting place of 40 members of the prominent Lawrence family, including John Lawrence, an original patentee, who was mayor of New York City twice in 1673 and 1691. The Officers’ Club, also known as “The Castle,” is another city benchmark, placed on the State and National Registers of Historic Places in 1986. BHS officials say the Bayside building is one of the finest surviving examples in the city of the Gothic Revival castellated style, an architectural style that was popular in America in the mid-1800s. The 35-34 Bell Boulevard cobblestone building, located on a commercial street in Bayside, gained historical status in 2004 for being a “rare example of a house built from cobblestones in New York City,” according to the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC). Construction on the twoand a-half story structure was completed in 1906. The Lawrence Cemetery 35-34 Bell Boulevard cobblestone building Photos courtesy of the Bayside Historical Society and NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission HISTORY of the ‘hood Photo courtesy Bayside Historical Society also made problems for Bayside; and by the late 1920s the stretch through the heart of town was dug in below grade. During the early part of the 20th century, improvement of the Flushing-North Hempstead Turnpike – now known as Northern Boulevard – made for more commerce and the town expanded southward, to the then-end of Bell Boulevard, at 48th Avenue. Just east of Bell, what is now 48th Avenue passes a triangle at 216th Street. Years ago this was Rocky Hill Road, an old route leading to Jamaica. This is Dermody Square, where stands one of the oldest war memorials in New York City, a rough-hewn stone inscribed “For a Better Union 1861-1865.” It honors abolitionist William Dermody, a Captain in the Union Army who was killed at the battle of Spotsylvania in 1864. Photo courtesy of the Bayside Historical Society Like so many Queens neighborhoods, the development of what became Bayside started out as a farm. In 1824 an Irish immigrant named Abraham Bell bought 245 acres of farmland from fellow Quaker Timothy Matlock. Bell divided the land into what he called the “upper” and “lower” farms, which were managed by two succeeding generations. The dirt road that connected the two farms became known as Bell Avenue — later Bell Boulevard. During the late 1800s, residential development was racing outward along Long Island’s North Shore thanks in large part to the Flushing and North Side Railroad — now the Port Washington Line of the Long Island Rail Road. Prime land such as the Bells’ lost its agricultural tax break and by 1890, most of the family’s two farms had been sold off to developers. The train line that made development possible The Bayside Theater, formerly located on Bell Boulevard, is now another page in the neighborhood’s past.
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