Lebanon Terrace, Astoria Village

You won’t find Lebanon Terrace on any street map, and find little evidence of it in Astoria Village, but it’s one of Queens’ most picturesque laneways. Better known by its more prosaic official name, 14th Place, it’s best seen from the crest of a slight rise at 26th Avenue, where a magnificent view of the RFK Triborough Bridge is obtained. A lone conifer is the only street tree. Until most street names in Queens were numbered, this short path was called Lebanon Terrace and it first appears on maps in the mid-1910s. Perhaps some native Lebanese lived here in the early days, or perhaps some cedars of Lebanon were planted here.

Lebanon Terrace was once a dead end, but several decades ago it was cut through to Hoyt Avenue, since renamed Astoria Park South.

A pair of porched homes, built in the early ‘teens, face each other across the narrow lane. One has a double decker porch with windows that foruitously look north toward the bridge. Both were built a couple of decades before the Triborough was opened in 1936.

One hint remains of 14th Place’s former past: a four-story apartment building clad in light brown brick on the corner of 26th Avenue has the chiseled word “Lebanon” above the front door.

There is a short dead-end stub of Lebanon Terrace, er, 14th Place south of 26th Avenue that features a few more porched houses built along the same lines as the ones above the avenue.

Like the rest of Astoria Village, these gems are not landmarked. Large portions of Astoria Village have already been lost as Fedders Specials and other 21st Century excrescences have popped up alongside the quaint Victorian-era houses along 12th and 14th Streets and 27th Avenue, as this is the neighborhood that the Landmarks Preservation Commission forgot.