32 TIMES • AUGUST 20, 2015 FOR BREAKING NEWS VISIT www.timesnewsweekly.com old timer If you have any memories and photos that you’d like to share about “Our Neighborhood: e Way it Was,” write to e Old Timer, c/o Ridgewood Times, 62-70 Fresh Pond Rd., Ridgewood, NY 11385, or send an email to [email protected]. All mailed pictures will be carefully returned upon request. For the majority of current residents in our neighborhood, it’s hard to imagine what life must have been like around here a century ago. Unfortunately, no one has yet to perfect a time machine, so the closest thing to time travel that we have are things like old pictures and fi lms of the past and, of course, newspaper clippings. So what was the Ridgewood Times reporting on back in 1915? Here are some highlights: • Prohibition was still a few years away, but the temperance movement in Queens was in full swing. Queens Borough President Maurice Connolly publicly announced his support for a crackdown on “dollar” picnics, where guests could pay just a buck for all the beer they could drink, saying that such events led to rowdyism. He called upon with city’s Board of Aldermen — a forerunner to the City Council — for a special ordinance barring organizations from having dollar picnics at local picnic parks, such as those that surrounded the Ridgewood area. • Rowdiness in the parks was addressed in July 1915 at the Glendale Park Civic Association meeting. Members announced they had sent a letter to Queens County Parks Commissioner John E. Weier thanking the department for helping to clear disruptive individuals out of Forest Park on weekends during the summer months. Reportedly, the rowdy individuals had become inebriated at nearby picnic parks and wound up meandering into Forest Park, acting disorderly and “violating park ordinances.” Several of the rowdies were arrested. • Much like today, residents of the Greater Ridgewood area were demanding additional public transportation options. In May 1915, the Allied Civic Associations of Greater Ridgewood called upon the Brooklyn Rapid Transit (BRT) company to extend its electric trolley line on Metropolitan Avenue — which then ended at Dry Harbor Road (present day 80th Street) in Middle Village — all the way to Jamaica Avenue in Richmond Hill. But the BRT reportedly indicated that it lacked “a franchise” to make such a change. • Ridgewood also had a voice in the main civil rights issue of that time: granting women the right to vote. During its May 13, 1915, meeting, the Germania Heights Taxpayers Association welcomed its guest speaker, Charlotte Smith of the Women’s Suffrage Party, whose speech was so convincing that the association resolved to support what would ultimately become the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, ratifi ed in 1920, which fi nally granted women across America the right to cast ballots. • Naturally, readers in 1915 turned to the Ridgewood Times’ classifi ed section to fi nd a new home. Charles Schreiber’s real estate offi ce, for example, advertised a two-family brick home at 2021 Menahan St. near Fairview Avenue. The house, which boasted “11 rooms with modern improvements, on a 20 foot by 100 foot lot on a paved street,” was listed at $5,000, the equivalent of just over $118,000 in today’s dollars — but a fi gure still far below the price tag that a two-family home in Ridgewood would command these days. • Regarding crime, the Times reported about a May 24 scare at P.S. 88 at the corner of Catalpa Avenue and Fresh Pond Road. Reportedly, a young man walked into the building and approached a young girl, who avoided him. He was then seen entering two empty classrooms. Afterward, school offi cials reported property — including a teacher’s key set, jewelry and small change — were missing from a desk. Police suspected the unknown trespasser, who escaped before an alarm was sounded, might have been a drug user. • Gaslights still lined many Ridgewood streets, but in July, a deputy commissioner from the city’s Department of Water Supply, Gas and Electricity told a local civic group that new electric street lights would soon replace the gaslights along Summerfi eld Street. Later that month, the city installed new electric street lights on Norman and Decatur streets between Wyckoff and Myrtle avenues. • In health care, German Hospital — now known as Wyckoff Heights Medical Center — announced that it treated 1,436 patients and responded to 1,005 ambulance calls during the fi rst six months of 1915. The hospital received a $25,000 donation that year from Joseph Huber, president of the Otto Huber Brewing Company and the First National Bank. • Finally, the Mothers Club at P.S. 68 in Ridgewood announced in August that it chartered a special trolley car for trips to and from Coney Island. The trolleys seated about 40 passengers and the charter charges ranged from $10 for a short run on a weekday afternoon to as much as $40 for a busy Saturday night. lent T urning back the pages by 100 years in Ridgewood RIDGEWOOD TIMES/File photos A trolley car similar to those that traveled through the Greater Ridgewood area in the early 20th century. Children at one of the many picnic parks in the Ridgewood area during the early 1900s. A 1914-15 picture of what was Mangold’s Cafe, located at the corner of Myrtle Aveue and Centre Street in Ridgewood.
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