met.bohack

Metropolitan Avenue was once a farm-to-market road plied by farmers bringing wares to East River barges and then back east through fields and meadows to the town of Jamaica. Now a busy truck route, in some places it is still a clogged two-lane road.

If you use your imagination a bit you can envision it plunging through farms and fields, populated by horses and carts. A stroll along the 13 miles from Williamsburg to Jamaica reveals all sorts of interesting historical remnants. The intersection of Flushing, Metropolitan and Troutman, pictured above, was once the center of the Bohack empire, New York City’s most successful supermarket chain until it went bankrupt in 1974.

The magnificent Frank T. Lang Building, with its rough stone exterior and what looks like two laughing cats perched on its parapets, was constructed by a maker of gravestones and mausoleums. Now it’s a gas station.

Read all about it on Brownstoner Queens.

Photo by Kevin Walsh


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