Queens Plaza

On March 30th, 1909, the Queensboro Bridge opened to traffic. Long Island City, and the rest of Queens, would never be the same. For the first time, vehicle traffic from eastern Long Island and Manhattan could move easily across the East River on Gustav Lindenthal’s new cantilever bridge, and the formerly independent Cities, Towns, and…

A few years ago, local controversy in LIC and Astoria was centered around a pair of Dutch era artifacts known colloquially as “The Queens Plaza Mill Stones.” The mill stones date back to the 1640s and were originally part of Burger Jorrisen’s homestead. For most of the 20th century, the artifacts were embedded in a…

The front page of the October 1, 1928 edition of the Queens Daily Star announced that Queens Plaza was well on its way to becoming the Times Square of the borough. At least that’s what A. J. Swensen, president of the Long Island City chapter of the Long Island Real Estate Board thought. He was…

“Slow down, you’re moving too fast. Got to make the morning last…” I was in high school when Queens’ own Simon and Garfunkel sang those lines. I lived upstate, and didn’t even know where the 59th Street Bridge was, except that it was in New York City. I loved Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel, and…