30 MARCH 21, 2019 RIDGEWOOD TIMES WWW.QNS.COM
Juniper Valley: From swampland to parkland
One of the ballfi elds at Juniper Valley Park near 78th Street in Middle Village, looking north, in 1940. The Elmhurst Gas Tanks are visible in the
background. Photos courtesy of NYC Municipal Records, reprinted with permission.
BY THE OLD TIMER
OUR NEIGHBORHOOD: THE WAY IT WAS
EDITORIAL@RIDGEWOODTIMES.COM
@RIDGEWOODTIMES
Middle Village residents take a
great deal of pride in Juniper
Valley Park, the 55-acre oasis
where generations of families have
enjoyed beautiful springtime days
roaming the playground, running the
basepaths or simply lounging around
under the trees.
It’s almost hard to believe that, as
recently as 80 years ago, the park
didn’t even exist — and, in fact, that
most of that area was uninhabited
swampland that, for a time,
brief ly became a municipal
dumping ground.
The Juniper Swamp has an
amazing history that was chronicled
in “Our Community: Its History and
People,” a book published in 1976 by
the Greater Ridgewood Historical
Society. The following excerpt shows
that the swamp dated back to the
colonial period of the 17th century,
and in the 1920s became the site of
a con game pulled by one of New
York’s most notorious mobsters:
The Juniper Swamp was much in
evidence in 1694 as well as up to a
few decades ago, when it began to
be developed and filled in, along
certain areas.
The swamp area was roughly
bounded by 69th Street (Juniper
Avenue) on the west, Juniper Valley
Road (Juniper Swamp Road) on the
south, and Caldwell (Johnson) Avenue
and Dry Harbor Road on the north
and east. It was a favorite resort for
berry-pickers in the summer and ice
skaters in the winter.
In the middle 1920s, a section of the
New York Connecting Railroad was
laid through the swamp, with great
excavation difficulties. The balance
had been developed after World War
II in the 1950s and the early 1960s, with
rows of private dwellings as well as a
large park and recreation area called
Juniper Valley Park.
These dwellings are built on wooden
piles because of the swampy ground
conditions existing for a number of
yards below grade. Ondulations can
be observed on the older streets in
the area, such as Penelope Avenue,
which is caused by unstable ground
conditions below grade.
In the mid-1920s, Arnold Rothstein,
a notorious gambler, purchased the
88-acre swamp site, which he tried to
subdivide and sell as a development
for a large profit. He called this area
“Rothstein’s Estates.” He had built a row
Young saplings were planted in Juniper Valley Park in 1940. This is located close to where the tennis courts
are today.
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