WWW.QNS.COM RIDGEWOOD TIMES APRIL 16, 2020 15
OUR NEIGHBORHOOD: THE WAY IT WAS
for its guests.
The hotel was also adjacent to the
Methodist Episcopal Church, which
remains in use to this day at the Community
United Methodist Church.
Aft er Way’s death in 1848, his executors
rented the hotel out to Thomas
Gettib, who served as The Brick Tavern’s
proprietor in 1849.
During the Civil War, which broke
out in 1861, Confederate soldiers
captured by the Union army were
imprisoned in improvised cells in the
tavern’s basement. Ironically, Niederstein’s
Restaurant — which was located
further west along the turnpike near
present-day 70th Street — had a basement
used for the same purpose.
Soon aft er the war ended, the civilian
population of Middle Village had
grown to the extent that residents
sought public transportation. The
North Second Street and Middle
Village Railroad was launched, and
steel rails were laid down the avenue
from the Grand Street ferry landing
in Williamsburg to the intersection
of the turnpike and Dry Harbor Road
(present-day 80th Street).
Horses were employed to pull small
cars, each of which weighed about
two tons by themselves, that carried
between 24 and 30 passengers at a
time.
The Brick Tavern remained in operation
through February 1868, when
it was sold to Middle Village resident
John Schneider, who then renamed it
the Middle Village hotel. Schneider
would also go on to become fi rst superintendent
of the nearby St. John
Trolley cars like this one were pulled by a horse along steel rails during the late 1800s. It served as the fi rst form
of public transportation for Middle Village residents. Ridgewood Times archives/Courtesy Greater Ridgewood Historical Society
Cemetery; he would pass the reins of
management of the hotel to his son-inlaw
Andrew Seiz.
In 1885, the Jamaica-Wiliamsburgh
Turnpike — no longer a toll road —
was renamed Metropolitan Avenue in
Queens County. Thirteen years later,
in 1898, Queens was incorporated into
New York City.
The horse-drawn trains carrying
passengers on Metropolitan Avenue
were eventually replaced in 1916, when
the city granted the Brooklyn Rapid
Transit company permission to run
electric trolley cars from the corner of
Fresh Pond Road and Palmetto Street
in Ridgewood, then along Metropolitan
Avenue to Jamaica Avenue.
Advances in transportation made
horse-drawn wagons obsolete, and by
the late 1910s, there were fewer farmers
passing through Middle Village.
Business at the Middle Village Hotel
suff ered, and it led the Seiz family to
convert the hotel into an apartment
house.
By the time the Great Depression hit
New York City — the late 1920s to early
1930s — a new law was in place requiring
heating upgrades in all residences.
The hotel-turned-apartment building
was not in compliance with the new
law.
Seeing that it was too costly to
renovate the building and bring it up
to code, the building was vacated and
torn down in 1941. The thick foundation
is the only reminder of the old hotel’s
existence. Ten years later, in 1951,
the Bohack Company purchased the
site and built a Bohack supermarket
on top of the foundation; aft er Bohack
closed, the supermarket remained as
a C-Town grocery store, which is still
in business today.
Some of the bricks from the former
tavern were used in the construction
of an apartment building behind the
supermarket, along present-day 66th
Drive.
Sources: The Nov. 15, 1984, Ridgewood
Times, the Greater Ridgewood Historical
Society and the Juniper Park Civic
Association.
* * *
If you have any remembrances or old
photographs of “Our Neighborhood:
The Way It Was” that you would like to
share with our readers, please write to
the Old Timer, c/o Ridgewood Times, 38-
15 Bell Blvd., Bayside, NY 11361, or send
an email to editorial@ridgewoodtimes.
com. Any print photographs mailed to
us will be carefully returned to you upon
request.
An electric trolley running along Metropolitan Avenue near Lutheran (All Faiths) Cemetery in Middle Village during
the 1940s. Ridgewood Times archives/Courtesy Greater Ridgewood Historical Society
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