24 OCTOBER 14, 2021 RIDGEWOOD TIMES WWW.QNS.COM
Juniper Valley’s journey from swampland to parkland
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, briefl y 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
fi lled 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 berrypickers
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
diffi culties. The balance had been developed
aft er 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
Photo courtesy of NYC Department of Municipal Records
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 profi t.
He called this area “Rothstein’s Estates.”
He had built a row of empty shell houses
which gave the appearance as being a
development. It became a case celebre
when the “Rothstein Phantom Village” was
uncovered as a fraud.
Rothstein was shot to death in 1928, and
his estate sold the property to the city for
approximately the same amount equal to
the back real estate taxes owed. When he
became aware that the swamps contained
valuable peat moss, Robert Moses, who
was in charge of the 1939-40 World’s Fair,
had it removed and used for top soil on the
fairgrounds in Flushing.
Little did Arnold Rothstein know that
the peat moss was worth over a million
dollars.
The cliche “crime doesn’t pay” certainly
fi ts with regard to Rothstein’s episode
of housing fraud in Middle Village. Ironically,
he was called “The Brain” in many
corners because of his business acumen,
which he applied to criminal ventures in
the 1910s and 1920s.
Gambling was one of Rothstein’s
obsessions, and there were rumors that
he was involved in the infamous “Black
Sox Scandal,” in which eight members of
the 1919 Chicago White Sox were paid to
throw the World Series that year against
the Cincinnati Reds.
Rothstein vehemently denied accusations
that he helped bribe White
Sox players, and he was never indicted
in connection of the scheme. Eight
White Sox players were indicted for the
conspiracy and ultimately acquitted at
trial — but banned from the game for
A view of the Juniper Swamp in the 1930s before it was transformed
into part of Juniper Valley Park.
Photo courtesy of NYC Municipal Records, reprinted with permission
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