Hidden Astoria

In this ridiculously icy and slushy week let’s return to thoughts of the summertime, when there is no better time to wander the streets of Astoria and ponder the remnants of an earlier Astoria, when the streets carried names instead of numbers… and encounter other relics dredged up from the depths of western Queens history and hidden in plain sight for necromancers such as myself to notice them…

This massive Tudor-ish pile — a magnificent building — stands at 30th Drive and 28th Street, and no doubt 99-100% of the tenants have no idea why the place is called Elm Towers. But I know.

Years ago I paid a visit (one of many, actually) to the Map Room at the New York Public Library at 5th and 42nd. It’s the only place I know about that carries Hagstrom Maps editions going back almost the the original 1916 version. I asked for copies of their 1922 Queens atlas, which I knew was made while most of Queens’ streets carried names, not numbers… but I was rebuffed, as many of those maps are in a precarious state and would be further damaged by a drum scanner. I was, though, given permission to shoot them with my camera, and while I didn’t get as much as I wanted, I made an invaluable addition to my collection.

This 1922 Hagstrom edition would be used, with many, many revisions, until the end of the 1990s, when a new computerized edition was produced and while it gets the job done, can’t hold a candle to the craftsmanship on the hand-drawn editions. Now, Hagstrom did something a little different in Queens: while most of the streets were hand-lettered they did use a font for some of the Queens streets. This was true in Astoria.

At the top of this 1922 edition — the street outlines were used until the late 1990s — you can see Elm Street, which later became 30th Drive. Quite a few apartment buildings in Astoria carry the names of the streets they were built on, before the numbering took hold. You can’t see it here but a different numbering system was used for a couple of decades before the present one was mandated. For example, 31st Street, where the elevated train is, was called 2nd Avenue.

Across 29th Street from Elm Towers is another apartment building called the Lady Hamilton. It has nothing to do with any relative of Alexander Hamilton, the first Treasury Secretary. Rather, it recalls Emma, Lady Hamilton, a 18th-Century model and entertainer who was depicted by portrait painter George Romney  (an antecedent of US politicians George Romney and son Mitt Romney) and became the mistress of military hero Lord Nelson.

In 1941, Emma and Lord Nelson’s relationship was depicted in That Hamilton Woman with Vivien Leigh and her husband, Sir Laurence Olivier.

On 30th Avenue and 29th Street is the Henry David Thoreau School, named for a 19th-Century Massachusetts thinker, writer and provocateur (1817-1862). His most famous book, Walden, was a treatise on simple living in natural surroundings; Civil Disobedience was a work urging against blindly following governmental dictates, especially morally repugnant ones.

Located just east of the Thoreau School (PS 17) at 30th Avenue and 30th Street, Athens Square is an approximately 1-acre tribute to the modern capital of Greece and its cultural center in the classic age. It has been a park since 1963 with subsequent renovations in 1990 and again in 1993.

Anthony Frudakis‘ bronze of the philosopher Socrates (of whom, it was written, was not as good-looking as he is depicted in art) was unveiled in 1993, while three adjacent granite Doric columns arrived in 1996.

In 1998, Athens mayor Demetris Avramopoulos presented the city with a replica of the Piraeus Athena (originally sculpted about 350 BC). It depicts the ancient Greek goddess of wisdom and patroness of the arts.

The Aristotle bust was sculpted by George V. Tsaras of Greece and is a gift from the people of Halkidiki, a peninsula in the Greek region of Macedonia; it was unveiled in April 2008.

Though the casual walker thinks of Astoria as primarily a Greek enclave, the neighborhood’s Greek population has decreased in recent years — not in a mass exodus, but it has been lessening. To repeat a cliché, Astoria is one of the city’s truest ‘melting pots’ with Greeks, other Eastern European nationalities such as Albanians, Bulgarians, and Bosnians,  Jews, Brazilians, Maltese, Spanish and Bangladeshis all sharing the stage with run of the mill Irish, like your writer.

Back to 30th Avenue where once of the pubs is named Dominie’s. I associate this word more strongly with Hunters Point, since that area, when first settled by Dutch immigrants in the 1640s, was called Dominie’s Hook for Everard Bogardus, its first European landowner. A minister, he was called ‘dominie’, ultimately from the Latin domine (vocative case of Dominus ‘Lord, Master’). English and Scottish presbyters were also called by this name, with various amounts of affection.

Grand Court, NE corner of 30th Avenue and Steinway Street. Note that earlier I said that old street names are often preserved in apartment building names, and here’s another such example. Grand Court is rendered over the door with a great deal of panache, and was built when 30th Avenue in Astoria was called Grand Avenue. (There’s also a substantial Grand Avenue in Maspeth and Elmhurst that is an extension of Williamsburg, Brooklyn’s Grand Street.)