Fresh Meadows, Queens
Fresh Meadows is a neighborhood in the northeastern section of the New York City borough of Queens. Fresh Meadows used to be part of the broader town of Flushing and is bordered to the north by the Horace Harding Expressway and Auburndale; to the west by Pomonok, St. John's University, Hillcrest, and Utopia; to the east by Cunningham Park and the Clearview Expressway; and to the south by the Grand Central Parkway.
Fresh Meadows is located in Queens Community District 8 and its ZIP Codes are 11365 and 11366. It is patrolled by the New York City Police Department's 107th Precinct. Politically, Fresh Meadows is represented by the New York City Council's 23rd and 24th Districts.
History
Early history
The name "Fresh Meadows" dates back to before the American Revolution. Fresh Meadows was part of the Town of Flushing, which had large areas of sal meadows, such as the original "Flushing Meadows". The wetlands in the hilly ground south and east of the village of Flushing, however, were fed by freshwater springs, and thus were "fresh meadows". Fresh Meadows Road traversed the area, and served as the route from the landing place at Whitestone to the village of Jamaica. In The Evening Post in 1805, farm owner James Smith advertised the sale of his 60-acre farm "on the road to Fresh Meadows and Flushing".During the American Revolution, British troops marched through the area. General Benedict Arnold and his troops stayed at farms along the way. General Arnold drilled his troops in the area, on the current location of M.S. 216. In order to help move military supplies from British ships using the Whitestone Landing, a new road was built to connect the Fresh Meadows Road with Hempstead. This road began at what is now the intersection of Utopia Parkway and 73rd Avenue, near a local landmark along the Fresh Meadows Road: the remnants of a large tree that had burned after being struck by lightning that was known as the "Black Stump". The road took its name from this feature, and was called "Black Stump Road".
During the 19th century, a farming community known as Black Stump developed in the area. The Black Stump School was built before 1871. The school was expanded in 1900 and a second story was added in 1905. The remains of the Black Stump School were demolished in 1941 in order to build present-day Utopia Playground, located at 73rd Avenue and Utopia Parkway.
For several years, the woods of Black Stump were rumored to be haunted because people heard strange sounds coming from the woods. In 1908, the mysterious sounds were discovered to be coming from a recluse who lived in a small hut and sang Irish folk songs at night.
Parsons Nurseries and Kissena Park
In 1868, Samuel Parsons opened Parsons Nurseries, one of the earliest commercial gardens, near what is now Fresh Meadows Lane. With help of a team of collectors, Parsons Nurseries found exotic trees and shrubs to import into the United States, and its advertisements filled gardening magazines with depictions of these exotic plants. During the late 1880s, Parsons Nurseries was importing 10,000 Japanese maples into the United States each year with help from Swiss immigrant John R. Trumpy. Parsons Nurseries also was the first to introduce the California privet in the United States from Japan. Samuel Parsons' children, Samuel Bowne Parsons and Robert Bowne Parsons, later took over running the nursery. In 1886, Samuel Bowne Parsons helped renew the plantations of Central Park while serving as Superintendent of Parks.Samuel Bowne Parsons gave the lake on his property the name "kissena", which he thought was the Chippewa word for "it is cold". Kissena Lake was initially used as a mill pond. Parsons later used the lake for ice cutting, where surface ice from lakes and rivers is collected and stored in ice houses and use or sale as a cooling method before mechanical refrigeration was available. The lake was also a habitat for wood duck through the 1900s. Just east of the lake was a water pumping station.
By 1898, Samuel Bowne Parsons' son, George H. Parsons, had taken over as superintendent of Parsons Nurseries. Later that year, George was found in the lavatory by his father; he had died of heart failure. Parsons Nurseries closed in 1901, and Samuel Bowne Parsons died in 1906. Two real estate developers, John W. Paris and Edward McDougal, bought most of the Parsons land, then built large houses as part of the "Kissena Park" residential development. New York City bought the rest of the Parsons land and a few other land parcels to create Kissena Park. A tract of Parsons' exotic specimens was preserved in the modern-day park and is now the Historic Grove.
Fresh Meadow Country Club
In 1921, Park Slope resident Benjamin C. Ribman and others from the Unity Club of Brooklyn were looking to build a golf course. The group chose the intersection of Fresh Meadow Lane and Nassau Boulevard as the site, because the land was suitable for golf and roads provided accessibility to other parts of the city. The 106 acres of land were purchased in late 1921, and another 26 acres were purchased the next year. A. W. Tillinghast designed the golf course.Originally, the name was to be the Woodland. After the Brooklyn Daily Eagle realized that there was already a golf course name Woodland in Boston, the founders decided to name the course Fresh Meadow Country Club. The name came from an area northeast of Flushing even though the golf course was actually located southeast of Flushing, just south of what is presently the Long Island Expressway near 183rd Street.
Fresh Meadow Country Club opened on May 30, 1922. At the golf course's dedication, the first round of golf was played by former NCAA golf champion Jesse Sweetser and club professional Willie Anderson. Sweetser won by two strokes. People in attendance included New York State Supreme Court Justices Mitchell May, Edward Lazansky, and Harry Lewis, and Borough President Maurice E. Connolly.
The clubhouse opened on September 8, 1923. Nine days later, the clubhouse burned to the ground from an explosion of a boiler. Firefighters from Flushing, Bayside, and Black Stump arrived but they were unable to save the clubhouse, in part because the nearest fire hydrant was a half-mile away, but they were able to stop the fire before it consumed an adjoining locker building and a two-story dormitory building.
The PGA Championship was held at Fresh Meadow Country Club in 1930, and the U.S. Open in 1932. In 1937, the golf course hosted a charity game between John Montague, Babe Ruth, Babe Didrikson, and Sylvania Annenberg, a game that was watched by 10,000 fans, some of whom rushed the golf course and left Babe Ruth's shirt in tatters.
Holliswood Homes
Around 1939, Paul Roth bought of land that had been part of the Klein farm and the Boggs farm. The land was bounded by 73rd Avenue, 185th Street, Union Turnpike, and 188th Street. The 204 homes were designed by architect Arthur E. Allen. Roth named the community Holliswood Homes. Houses were sold for an average of $7,400 each. Roth had previously developed areas elsewhere in Queens, Brooklyn, and Long Island.Fresh Meadows housing and retail development
In February 1946, the golf course's land was sold to New York Life Insurance Company for $1,075,000,, in order to build a housing complex on the land. The Gross-Morton Company had also made an offer to buy the land, but it was not accepted. The New York Life Insurance Company chose Ralph Thomas Walker as the chief designer, and it signed a contract with the George A. Fuller Company, which had built the Flat Iron Building, to construct the apartment buildings. Construction cost the New York Life Insurance Company $35million ).New York Life Insurance Company donated land on 69th Avenue at 195th Street to the city so it could build a school. In 1947, the New York City Board of Education awarded contracts of over $1.8million to construct P.S. 26, an elementary school with a capacity of 1,494 students. On April 21, 1947, ground was broken for the school's construction. The school, P.S. 26, also known as the Rufus King School, opened in February 1949. P.S. 173 opened soon afterwards, in September 1949, at 69th Avenue and Fresh Meadows Lane. P.S. 173 was originally supposed to be built on the site of Utopia Playground one block west, but the school had been relocated due to opposition from Robert Moses, the New York City parks commissioner.
The first twenty families moved into the Fresh Meadows Housing Development on September 2, 1947. As a result of housing segregation, New York Life Insurance Company did not allow black individuals to live in the Fresh Meadows Housing Development. It was also built to house local World War II veterans. The complex and its eponymous shopping center were among the first in the United States designed primarily to accommodate automobile traffic rather than pedestrian traffic. Apartment rents were between $74 and $108 per month, which included gas and electricity. In 1949, architectural critic Lewis Mumford described the Fresh Meadows housing complex as "perhaps the most positive and exhilarating example of large-scale community planning in this country". The construction of the final residential building, a 20-story apartment building at 67th Avenue and 192nd Street, was completed and ready for occupancy in May 1962. At the time the building's construction ended, 11,000 people were living in the Fresh Meadows Housing Development.File:Lookingeast 2.JPG|left|thumb|Remnant of Long Island Motor Parkway at Springfield Boulevard in nearby Oakland Gardens
New York Life Insurance Company built a 12-acre shopping center on 188th Street at Horace Harding Expressway. The shopping center was planned to include a Bloomingdale's, a movie theater, Canterbury Shops clothing store, Mary Lewis, Ormond Hosiery Shop, Woolworth's, Miles Shows, Buster Brown children's shoes, Selby women's shoes, Food Fair, a Horn & Hardart automat, Whelan's Drugs, Fanny Farmer, Union News, Womrath's Book Shop, Barrett Nephews dry cleaners, and Harris Brothers delicatessen, a Bank of Manhattan, a Jamaica Savings Bank, and a post office. Bloomingdale's opened on May 24, 1949. Century Meadows Theatre opened November 1949. In 1973, Bloomingdale's added a three-level extension to the store, on what had been a pedestrian plaza. Five 36-year-old oak trees were uprooted to construct the extension, to the dismay of nearby residents.
The QM1 express bus to Manhattan started operating in 1968 as part of a 90-day trial run proposed by city traffic commissioner Henry A. Barnes, transportation administrator Arthur A. Palmer, and the New York Life Insurance Company. This service was eventually kept, and it was expanded in 1970 with branches running further east into Queens. The combined QM1/QM1A service eventually became among the busiest privately operated express routes in the city by the 2000s.
In 1972, Harry B. Helmsley and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation partnered to buy the Fresh Meadows housing and retail complex for $53million from the New York Life Insurance Company. The MacArthur Foundation acquired the property outright in 1995. In 1997, Witkoff Group and Insignia Financial Group bought the residential property, and Federal Realty Investment Trust bought the commercial property for $215million.
Two months after the Bloomingdale's store was sold in August 1991, Kmart signed a 31-year lease for the space. Kmart's grand opening was on October 22, 1991. Kmart closed the store in 2003, as part of an effort to close underperforming stores. Kmart sold the lease to the Fresh Meadows location and four other locations to Kohl's for $16million in 2003. The Kohl's in Fresh Meadows was the first Kohl's location in New York City.