8 JULY 23, 2020 RIDGEWOOD TIMES WWW.QNS.COM
OUR NEIGHBORHOOD: THE WAY IT WAS
Taking a bird’s-eye tour of Ridgewood from long ago
An aerial image of Ridgewood, looking east above the intersection of Flushing and Wyckoff Avenues. Photo via Google Maps
BY THE OLD TIMER
EDITORIAL@RIDGEWOODTIMES.COM
@RIDGEWOODTIMES
Of all the myriad advents of the Internet age, one of the best has to be the
ability to see aerial images of just about anywhere you’d like — including
your own neighborhood. And it’s free, as long as you have a computer or
smartphone.
Decades ago, this was nearly impossible without adequate resources. You had to
commission a pilot to fl y over an area with a camera on board. The Space Age allowed
nations to launch camera-equipped satellites into orbit, providing our planet with an
unprecedented view of itself — but the general public fi nally got access to such images
in June 2001 with the advent of Google Earth.
Today, you can get a bird’s-eye view of your neighborhood taken just a few months
ago. You can see your community as it stands today. But did you ever wonder how
your community appeared eight decades ago?
The image above is a 3D Google Earth snapshot that’s similar to the angle of this
picture, taken in 1940. The NYC Municipal Archives provided it to us.
It’s truly incredible to see how dramatically the area has changed over the course
of eight decades. If you don’t recognize all the points in the 1940 aerial shot, we’ll be
happy to point out some of the more prominent locations to you.
Here’s an image of the same map with 13 points delineated in red, and we’ll follow
that with a guide of the points of interest.
1. FLUSHING AVENUE
Long before factories lined it, much of the Ridgewood section of Flushing Avenue
abutted some of the largest farms in the neighborhood. Farms once owned by the
Onderdonk and Wyckoff families extended over much of the area south of Flushing
Avenue and would rapidly be developed in the 20th century into new businesses
and residences.
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