Englishman William Hallett Sr. received a land brief from the Dutch authorities in New Amsterdam for 161 acres in northwestern Queens. The area became Hallett's Cove and Hallett's Point on the East River at Hell Gate, now Astoria. This site was one of Queens' earliest settlements belonging to Jacques Bentyn, circa 1638, but abandoned and destroyed in the 1640s.
Hallett's Cove had been a place of safety in the age of sail, as navigators often waited there for more favorable tides to get them through Hell Gate to points east and north. The Hallett family remained prominent in the area for over 200 years.
December 27, 1657
Edward Hart, Town Clerk of Flushing, writes Flushing’s “Remonstrance for Religious Freedom.” When Gov. Stuyvesant orders that Quakers are to be banned from New Amsterdam, a small group from Flushing, Newtown, and Jamaica defied his order. Hart and Sheriff Tobias Feake are arrested after the Remonstrance (petition) is presented.
The descendants of the two signers, Edward Hart and Richard Stockton, signed the Declaration of Independence 119 years later.
December 14, 1662
The Council of New Amsterdam decreed “for the welfare of the community, to transport from this province the aforesaid John Bowne, if he continues abstinate and pervicacious, in the first ship to sail, for an example to others.”
Bowne and his wife Hannah had allowed Quakers to worship in their Flushing house, in spite of a ban issued on such worship by Governor Syuyvesant. On January 9, 1663, Bowne was deported to Holland aboard the Gilded Fox, for trial in Holland. He returned eventually, bearing with him the right of religious freedom, granted by the directors of the West India Company.
December 08, 1783
Jamaica was finally free of the last British soldiers. Two weeks after Evacuation Day (Nov. 25), Long Island's seven-year Revolutionary War occupation was over. A large patriotic rally followed the Redcoats’ departure from Jamaica and smaller rallies were held in Dutch Kills and Astoria. The American Revolution was won.
December 22, 1783
The first Town officers of Newtown were elected under independence. They and all political officials in Queens at that time had to deal with the aftermath of the British occupation including dilapidated farm buildings, burned fences and woodlands destroyed by the foraging army.
December 04, 1823
On December 4, 1823, Cord Meyer is born in Germany. He immigrated to America and settles in Masepth. Meyer got his start by making charcoal for the sugar refineries that lined the East River. He later made a fortune after going “upstream” into sugar refining itself.
His son, also named Cord Meyer, founded a real estate business that built thousands of homes for as little as $600. He both transformed rural Newtown Village and was the driving force in changing the community’s name to Elmhurst. His company is still very much a part present day Queens having built, among other major projects, Boulevard Gardens in Woodside and the Bay Terrace Shopping Center.
December 23, 1823
A Visit by St. Nicolas is published in the Troy Sentinel. The anonymous author is later claimed by Clement Clark Moore. Its opening line, “T’was the night before Christmas” is now a holiday classic. Although written at Chelsea, the family estate near West 23rd Street in Manhattan, some believe he was relaying his holiday experiences from childhood when he visited ancestral homesteads in Elmhurst and Jackson Heights.
December 12, 1853
The Myrtle Avenue and Jamaica Plank Road was opened from western Brooklyn to Jamaica Avenue in Richmond Hill. The early 1850s saw the construction of numerous plank roads made of hemlock, oak, and pine planks, eight feet long and up to four inches thick. They were considered an improvement from the dirt turnpike road which were nearly impassable in winter and early spring due to freezing and mud.
There was a tollgate at Cypress Avenue and the plank road cut through Myrtle Avenue Park, now Forest Park. Planks soon rotted planks making the plank road's success short-lived.
December 03, 1861
On December 3, 1861, Jamaica residents lodged a formal protest with the management of the Brooklyn Central and Jamaica RR. Despite the rail company’s charter that called for service to at least 10:00 PM, the company refused to schedule a train after 7 PM.
“ Unless one was ready to rent an expensive carriage,” a newspaper editor complained, “all communication [with Brooklyn] is shut off as if the road was in possession of an enemy.”
December 28, 1892
An explosion in the Steinway Tubes kills five and injures dozens. Several factories were wrecked, the concussion throws people to the sidewalks, and flying glass from hundreds of shattered windows and falling plaster showered down on Hunters Point. The disaster is caused by overheating 87 pounds of thawing dynamite. Years pass before the project is completed. Today it’s the Queens entrance to the No. 7 line tunnel under the East River.
December 1912
A survey on the three year old Queensboro Bridge shows a 25% gain in traffic from the previous year with over 5,000 vehicles crossing in one 24 hour period. The number of horse drawn vehicles are decreasing as nearly two-thirds of the traffic are trucks and automobiles. The following year's daily volume is projected skyrocket to 17,000 per day, or 12 vehicles a minute. The bridge is expected to reach full capacity within a decade.
December 1913
The Queens Chamber of Commerce released some statistics for 1912 from the Industrial Directory of New York. The volume devoted considerable space to Queens, saying, “Queens is of importance from three standpoints: As an industrial community, as a residential section, and as a truck farming section”
The report stated that there were 720 farms, comprising 14,588 acres (out of a total 82,883 acres for the entire borough). Over half of their produce for 1912 was fruits and vegetables. The report also showed that there were 851 factories, employing 31,687 workers. Over 110 different lines of manufacturing were carried on in the borough.
December 09, 1916
On December 9, 1916, some 20 members of the PS 4 Alumni Association in Dutch Kills were on hand for a reunion. Little Miss Ethel Zimmerman, age 8, presented a handsome bouquet of roses to keynote speaker, former graduate, Mrs. Isabel Freund. After the program, Miss Zimmerman entertained with dances in costume. It was her first recorded performance by an artist who later went by the stage name, Ethel Merman.
December 06, 1924
Even though it was 1924 Christmas season, prohibition was in full swing in Queens. On the 6th, four men were arrested in Sunnyside and six stills and 1,000 gallons of alcohol were seized. The men were caught red–handed dipping the alcohol from the stills into one-gallon and five-gallon cans. In Astoria, on 30th Avenue, one woman and two men were arrested for having a jug of whiskey, a jug of wine, a barrel of whiskey and six barrels of beer on the premises. Two men were arrested when two barrels of whiskey and eleven barrels of wine were found on the premises of an establishment on Astoria Boulvead. On December 16, the Star reported that nine deaths from poisonous liquor in only two days brought the December death list from bad booze to twenty-five. Twelve liquor poison victims were close to death in Bellevue Hospital, while twenty others faced permanent blindness. New York medical authorities warned against “taking one’s life in one’s stomach” by drinking holiday rum concoctions. Dr. Frank Monaghan, Commissioner of Health, warned against home brewing, pointing out the dangers of faulty distillation.
December 12, 1928
Lewis Latimer, the African-American inventor and resident
of Flushing died. A former assistant of Thomas Edison, Mr. Latimer was famous
for expanding upon the Edison light bulb. As a patent clerk he helped Alexander
Graham Bell with his telephone patent. Later he created and patented a carbon
filament for the light bulb, which is still in use today. The Edison Electric
Company's first black executive, Mr. Latimer supervised street light installation
in New York City, Philadelphia, Montreal, and London, England. He lived in a
house at 64 Holly Avenue in Flushing from 1908 to 1928. The house still exists
and was moved to Leavitt and 137th Streets.
December 1937
The WPA and the NYC Tunnel Authority offices are besieged with applicants
for sand-hog jobs in the $58 million Queens-Midtown Tunnel. At completion, the
tunnel will change only 25 cents instead of the 50 cents collected on the Holland
Tunnel and the George Washington Bridge. Heavy traffic on the Triborough Bridge
at a quarter and a million cars over the Henry Hudson Parkway at a dime proves
that low tolls are just the thing to encourage the public.
December 1945
In the late nineteen century, Ragged Dick he was one of the most famous literary icons of his age, ranking right up there with Hucklebery Finn and Tom Sawyer. Unlike the latter two, however, he was modeled after a real person – John M. Downie. Dick was the creation of Horatio Alger, the biggest author of the time who published dozens of titles and sold an incredible 200 million books.
Alger, who was trained as a minister, left a comfortable life of teaching and moved to New York in 1866. There he encountered the ‘street urchin’, a familiar figure of the time. They were an army of 60,000 neglected and abandoned kids that were the byproduct of families torn apart by immigration and the Civil War. He decided his life’s work was to ease their plight though publicizing their lives.
In 1877 Alger befriended Downie, then an orphaned newsboy living in the streets, and wrote about the youngster’s adventures in a series of books. Although famous in his time, Downie never got rich on the wildly popular series about his life as he averaged only $100 month in royalties. The young lad grew up, married, fathered children, and was a 30-year veteran of the New York Police Department. He retired and spent his last years at 23-12 121 Street, College Point. Downie died in Flushing, aged 78, in December 1945.
Although almost all of Alger’s books are out of print, and his ‘strive and succeed’ philosophy is considered antique by today’s standards, a ‘Horatio Alger’ has passed into our language as synonymous of someone, usually a young boy, who succeeds in life despite adversity.
Critics regard Alger’s sketches of Downie as ‘Ragged Dick’ as a phenomenally successful experiment in social reform which encouraged generations of poor kids to take advantage of America’s social mobility. Late in life Alger also later inspired the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew mysteries.
December 07, 1948
The ‘Freedom Train’ rolled into Queens and stopped in Flushing for a four-day stay before going on to Jamaica for another two days. It carried priceless documents: the original Declaration of Independence, Constitution, Bill of Rights, Emancipation Proclamation and other important historical papers and artifacts.
The train, officially known as The Spirit of ’76, was gleaming white with red and blue stripes. It had traveled 35,779 miles, the longest train tour in history.
Since its first stop in Philadelphia on Constitution Day, 1947, it had been in every state in the union. Queens was the 318th stop on its journey.
About 22,955 school children and adults visited the train during its stay in Flushing. In its entire journey, over 3,255,000 Americans had visited the train.
December 01, 1955
On December 1, 1955, more than 300 Jackson Heights and Corona car owners awoke to the new world of alternate-side parking regulations.
A squad of 17 policemen swept through the area writing green summonses for a $15 fine. An additional $10 surcharge awaited those whose cars were towed away, as 72 “hopping mad” owners discovered when they reclaimed their cars at the pound at Maspeth. Within a few days, the number of summons had zoomed past 500.
December 1960
In mid–December 1960, a brutal winter storm knocked out Queens. A slashing blizzard dumped more that 18 inches of snow by noon, effectively shutting down the borough for several days. Sweeping through the metro area, it paralyzed transit, closed schools and kept others from work.
Trains derailed, autos crashed, and fishermen staggered into port. It killed at least five people, many snow shovellers who died from heart attacks.
The National Guard towed and pushed abandoned cars that had blocked roadways. The Long Island Railroad gave up and erased the day off its calendar.
Packing a howling 35 mph wind, the killer storm, called the worst of the year, easily stripped the title from the 14 inch blizzard that hit the city during the previous winter on March 4th.
Within 24 hours, the mercury plunged to a deep freeze of seven frigid degrees further slowing the borough from digging out.
Of the 130 fatalities across the country, Long Island tallied 26 dead.
December 15, 1965
On December 15, 1965, 20 faculty members from St. John’s University lost their jobs when they elected to join the United Federation of Teachers. By the following month, the University’s faculty went out on strike and threw up picket lines. The university’s accreditation was threatened the following December when they were put on probation by the Middle States Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools.
December 22, 1965
On December 22, 1965, The Star Journal reported on the first passenger helicopter lifting off of the roof of the Pan Am Building (now Metlife) on Park Avenue and heading out to Queens. “A little wiggle, a little backwards jerk and the copter was aloft…turning west towards Broadway and Times Square, then spinning…east over Central park to the Queensborough Bridge, rotors slapping, engines thudding” was the Star Journal’s depiction of this unique maiden voyage.
After the spectacle of these aircraft coming into the heart of the city, the Star Journal wistfully noted that they came in to land “almost anti-climactically.” Regularly scheduled flights between Midtown and Kennedy Airport were to take place for a fare of seven dollars! A round trip took you back ten dollars.
In a trip that lasted only seven minutes, passengers experienced vistas that took their breaths away, including a close up view of the Chrysler building, looking down into Con Edison’s riverside smokestacks, and sitting motionless above the entrance of the Lincoln tunnel “watching cars like an all-seeing traffic cop.” With the regularity of the subway (the Star Journal reported a quip that it all was like the IRT with flight insurance) passengers were treated to the glimmering sun over New York Harbor and ocean mists in the distance. All this was a novel attempt to solve a persistent problem in commercial aviation: getting people from the city to the airport “in a time reasonably proportionate to the length of [the] total trip.”
(Their novelty notwithstanding, these flights proved to be unprofitable and were cancelled about three years later in 1968. In 1977, the experiment was revived briefly, only to fail with tragic consequences when a landing gear collapsed and an idling helicopter crashed on to the roof killing four people at the pad, and a fifth struck by debris hurled onto a busy Park Avenue.)
December 04, 1967
Bert Lahr, the Cowardly Lion of the 1939 classic film the Wizard of Qz died of pneumonia at the age of 72. He was buried in Union Field Cemetery in Flushing.
Although Lahr’s movie career never really caught on, he remained a life-long icon due to his role as the Cowardly Lion in Oz. Aside from that role, he is probably best remembered for his role in a Lay’s potato chip “Bet you can’t eat just one” commercial ad campaign. His vocal characterization of the Lion was also a strong influence on the voice of the cartoon character Snagglepuss.
December 09, 1977
The Sunnyside Garden boxing arena on Queens Boulevard at 45th Street was demolished. The building was originally built by Jay Gould as a private club. In 1945, it was sold and converted to a boxing arena. In the 1960’s, it also hosted wrestling matches. As the popularity of both sports waned, the Garden found itself host to teen dances, proms and flea markets. In 1977, it was demolished, replaced by a hamburger restaurant.
December 11, 1978
Over $6 million in cash and jewels were stolen from Lufthansa
Airlines in a notorious robbery at JFK Airport. The Jimmy "The Gent"
Burke gang scored America's largest criminal take ever. Henry Hill, a gangster
in the Lucchese crime family, was one of the masterminds. He was portrayed in
"Goodfellas", the 1990 film by Queens native Martin Scorsese. Although
in 1980 Hill turned state's evidence against Burke, the latter was never prosecuted
for the Lufthansa heist but was convicted of other crimes. He died in 1996..
Henry Hill is still in hiding from Mafia hit men but doesn't live in fear or
so he says. To this day none of the cash was recovered.
December 20, 1986
A gang of teenagers attack Michael Griffith, Cedric
Sandiford and Timothy Grimes. The three men stopped in New Park Pizza at 156-71
Cross Bay Blvd. to use a phone after their car broke down. Upon leaving the
pizzeria, they are jumped by a mob. Although Grimes escapes, Sandiford is beaten
and Griffith is killed. The subsequent arrest and trial of the gang leads to
further racial polarization in the city. After conviction, the thugs are given
long prison sentences.
December 30, 1988
On December 30, 1988, famed Japanese-American artist Isamu Noguchi dies in New York. He opened a studio in Ravenswood, in Long Island City in 1961. A man of many artistic disciplines, Noguchi created sculptures and gardens, created stage sets for various Martha Graham productions, and designed mass-produced objects as lamps and furniture. After his death, the Noguchi Foundation and the Isamu Noguchi Museum (maintained in his former workspace) sustains his legacy for posterity.
December 15, 1996
The St. John's University men's soccer team won the NCAA
Division I championship. Led by goals from Jesse Van Saun, Wojtek Krakowiak,
Ben Hickey, and Medufia Kulego, the Red Storm defeated Florida International
University 4 goals to 1. Led by coach Dave Masur, St. John's vanquished Fordham,
George Mason, William & Mary, and Creighton to get to the finals. It was
the university's first NCAA title game since 1952 and their first national title
in any sport.
December 2000
Keyspan announces that two 47-megawatt gas turbines are due on a site
in Ravenswood across from Silvercup Studios. Residents in Western Queens claim
their area is overburdened with similar facilities. Three large power plants,
owned by Orion Power, Keyspan Energy and NYPA, plus an additional one, have
filed applications to build additional large-scale plants in the near future.
