A Trip Down Newtown Road, Astoria

Like a number of streets and roads in NYC, Newtown Road isn’t named for the neighborhood where it is, but for the neighborhood it runs to. And, like a number of NYC streets that run aslant the overall grid, it’s one of the older roads in the area. It is an Indian trail that became the main road to early Astoria settler William Hallett’s farm in the mid-17th century, and to the treacherous Hell Gate, the East River crossing to Manhattan. Its eastern stretch that ended in the heart of Newtown, now Elmhurst, was called Hurlgate, or Hellgate, Ferry Road; later named for the town through which it passed, becoming Woodside Avenue.

At Newtown Road and 46th Street we find some older buildings that have odd angles. This is the last remnant of an old village called Middletown (likely called because it lay between old Astoria and Newtown) instituted in the 17th century. In 1721 one of Queens’ first schools was located here at the confluence of Newtown and Old Ridge Roads. British and Hessian troops marched by the school during the American Revolution. A century later, some schoolboys found a cache of gold coins worth $840 in its walls, likely hidden during the Revolution.

Today, the school is long gone, but Old Ridge Road still exists in the form of a curving driveway seen here in the foreground. Another piece can be found between 37th and 38th Avenues and 29th and 30th Streets, and an old house is still turned to face the now-disappeared road on 33rd Street south of Broadway.

Ancient villages and gold caches aside, Newtown and 46th has some striking architecture. Here’s a castellated corner building with casement windows (a Forgotten NY favorite) with terra cotta trim.

I like this Western Queens Health Associates building on Newtown and 45th, with its glass front and pitched roof, it’s got style to burn and has Swingin’ Sixties written all over it.

OK, the Swingin’ Sixties were 50 years ago.

I was completely stumped when I found a garage, surrounded by a lawn, barbed wire and ragged windblown American flags. It wasn’t till I rounded the corner onto 31st Avenue that I discovered it was part of a private parking lot owned by a Mister Fiore. I then encountered a Guardian, a neighborhood resident dedicated to defending turf against perceived hostile outsiders.

“May I help you?” came a disembodied woman’s voice.

In New York City, “May I help you” means, “stop what you’re doing and go away, a–hole.” (Corollary: in New York City, “Sir!” means “a–hole!”)

“No, you most certainly may not.” I now tend to adopt an air of dismissiveness when dealing with Guardians.

“What are you doing?” she asked redundantly.

“I am taking pictures of your parking lot,” I answered from the public sidewalk in front of the lot.

There were no further provocations, but I’m prepared to be more insistent with Guardians.

“Mathews models” on 44th Street north of 31st Avenue. (Around here all the street numbers can be found under N on a Bingo card.) Points deducted, since they don’t extend all the way down the block, lack the arched windows, and aren’t on both sides of the street. These buildings were built by developer Gustave X. Mathews in the 1910s, using yellow bricks fired in the kilns of Balthazar Kreischer on the southwest shore of Staten Island. Mathews continued to build such buildings until the early 1930s, with the last batch on Grand Avenue in Elmhurst.

Unfortunately, as attached houses, Mathews Models lack garages in the back, the only esthetically-minded solution to where to put an automobile. Today’s “Fedders Specials” are built with garages in the basement, or simple unpaved areas in front where the SUV goes. Neither is an attractive method of vehicle storage.

Another of Long Island City’s great multi-unit buildings, 31st Avenue and 43rd Street. In the 1920s and 30s, the golden age of multi-unit architecture, the transition was being made from Beaux-Arts to Art Deco and Moderne, and some striking houses appeared. Here is some great door detail, as well as falcons on the roof. What developer could pull this off today without complete cheeziness?

Most NYC maps misrepresent Newtown Road, erroneously showing it running into Steinway Street south of 30th Avenue. This is a mistake, since Newtown trends north as it runs toward 30th, seemingly yanked by he magnetic pole, and its angle is steep so it runs into 30th in the short block between Steinway and 41st, ending at 30th with a flourish, as we will see. A few years ago, the Department of Transportation re-labeled the road as “Newton Road,” yanking the signs after residents pointed out the error.

The Flatiron Building at 5th, Broadway and 23rd in Manhattan is often mentioned as the first skyscraper and first great “triangle’ building, but there are so many around town. The best ones seem to thrust into the streetscape like the prow of a ship. This one is a Mathews Model and so appeared after 1915, and complements a group of great Mathews Models on 41st between Newtown and 30th Avenue.

Many of my photographer friends don’t like to shoot during the winter. I enjoy it. The low sun angle means that everything has a shadow and you have more play between dark and light. But your window of opportunity is narrower. You have to finish up by about 3:00, or just about everything near the ground will be too dark. Professional photographers can compensate for this, but as a point and shooter, I realize I have to get out early. And, I’ve never really been a hot-weather person.

I lived in an attached yellow-brick apartment buildings like these (not Matthews Flats though) in Bay Ridge from 1982-1990. By far, it was my favorite living arrangement. It was a railroad flat and had both northern and southern exposure, so I could see both moon/sunrise and moon/sunset. Not to mention the Verrazano Bridge from the “media room” (my turntable, LP collection and receiver) and, if I squinted during the winter, the Williamsburg Bank Building from the bedroom. (It was officially a one bedroom, but the kitchen and living room were combined and I considered them two rooms.) Your webmaster was forced out when the owner used the old gag about his daughter needing the apartment. I was callow then. What they did was reno the place and then ask me back at double the rent. No thanks. I eventually wound up in fab Flushing, and eventually Little Neck.

Newtown Road ends here at Grand Court, at 30th Avenue. That, my friends, is not just a door, it’s an entrance. Like many LIC apartment house names, it holds a clue to the past. 30th Avenue used to be called Grand Avenue (nothing at all to do with Maspeth/Elmhurst’s Grand Avenue; that road was formerly called Grand Street and begins in Williamsburg).

Kevin Walsh is the webmaster of Forgotten NY and the author of Forgotten New York and, with the Greater Astoria Historical Society, Forgotten Queens.