Brady - Glendale

IMAGES
of America

GLENDALE

In memory of the members of the Glendale community who lost their lives in the World Trade Center attacks of September 11, 2001, this monument was erected at the Dry Harbor playground, along Myrtle Avenue near Eightieth Street. (Courtesy of the author.)

ON THE COVER: This 1915 photograph shows one of the many sporting clubs and community organizations that used the meeting rooms of local saloons as their headquarters. The Lafayette Fishing Club met at Julius Moogs saloon, located on Lafayette Street. The street was later renamed Seventy-ninth Avenue when the numbering system for Glendale Streets was begun. (Courtesy of GRHS.)

IMAGES
of America

GLENDALE

Ralph F. Brady

Copyright 2014 by Ralph F. Brady
ISBN 978-1-4671-2230-6
Ebook ISBN 9781439648445

Published by Arcadia Publishing
Charleston, South Carolina

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014932585

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To my parents, Frank R. Brady, volunteer Civil Defense Fireman at Engine Company No. 286, and Agnes Reis Brady, who played her trumpet at the veterans monuments during Memorial Day parades

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book would not have been possible without the tireless efforts of George Miller of the Greater Ridgewood Historical Society. As I said to George during the many hours that we spent together going through the photographs in the societys archives, You are far more qualified to write this book than I am. George has been a vital part of the Glendale community for most of his life, while, even though I was born there, I moved out to Long Island many years ago. Nevertheless, the task fell to me, and this project has given me a unique opportunity to get back to my own roots and rekindle memories of the wonderful years that I spent growing up in Glendale. The majority of the images appearing in this book were graciously provided by George Miller and the Greater Ridgewood Historical Society (GRHS).

George is a dedicated historian and meticulous manager of the historical societys archives. He never ceased to amaze me with the amount of information that he could produce when I posed a question to him about a particular photograph or bit of local history. If this book can measure up to his standards and make him happy that he put as much time into it as he did, then I will have to regard it as a success.

In the course of my research, I was also privileged to work with Richard Hourahan of the Queens Historical Society in Flushing and Ian Lewis of the Queens Borough Central Library. They are both dedicated historians providing a valuable service to the community.

I also wish to thank my editor at Arcadia Publishing, Sharon McAllister, who was always supportive and guided me through the logistical challenges of organizing this work, and my wife, Madeline, and her sister Helen Henneberger, who assisted me throughout the process that made this book a reality.

INTRODUCTION

To the early Native American people in the area, it would not have held any great significance. It was more an area to go through to engage in commerce with neighboring tribes or to hunt the deer and other animals that were plentiful in the woods, drawn there by the nearby freshwater ponds. That was the land that became the village of Glendale, a study in contrasts; a playground for early residents of New York City even though it was surrounded by cemeteries.

There is no record of any Native American settlements on the land that actually became Glendale, while the surrounding towns of Ridgewood and Maspeth have produced evidence of settlements by the Rockaway tribe. The many artifacts discovered from that period indicate that there was a large village in an area that was referred to as the Ridgewood Plateau, where it slopes down into nearby Maspeth. A major requirement of those early people would have been a source of freshwater, and the section later known as Fresh Ponds provided this because of the number of freshwater ponds near the village. Other water sources nearby such as Newtown Creek were brackish, and the name Maspeth actually derives from the Indian word for bad water place. The informal dividing line between Glendale and Ridgewood is Fresh Pond Road, which takes its name from one of the old Indian trails that crisscrossed the area.

With the arrival of the Dutch settlers in the early 1600s, Europeans began their development of the New York area, and the first settlement was built in 1623. By 1642, the Dutch presence was well established, and a 74,000-acre plot that included Glendale was named Newtown and chartered to the Reverend Francis Doughty by the Dutch West India Company. The colony of New Netherland, which Newtown was part of, remained under Dutch control until the signing of the Treaty of Westminster in 1674. That treaty ended years of hostilities between the Dutch and English and effectively turned over Newtown and the rest of the early colony to England.

Under British rule, the area remained mostly unchanged from the days of Dutch control. Many of the Dutch settlers remained on their land, and the entire Newtown area continued to develop as a rural farming community. Even during periods of conflict in New York between early settlers and local Indian tribes, Newtown was hardly touched and remained a sparsely settled town outside of the main part of New York City. In the early days of the Revolutionary War, except for troop movements through the area, farmers in the area saw little of the war until the Battle of Long Island in 1776. Following that defeat of the Colonial forces, the British occupied Newtown and the surrounding communities to solidify their hold on all of New York City. It was not until 1783, when the new nation won its independence, that the British forces left and life for the Newtown farmers returned to normal.

In the years following the war, there was in influx of German farmers to what would become the Glendale/Ridgewood area, and as in many other parts of the new country, the practice of slavery was prevalent. As the early farms began to change hands and be subdivided, communities began to develop their own identities, and the name Newtown fell out of favor, to be replaced by Greater Ridgewood. Making up this one large community were five individual sections: Ridgewood, Middle Village, Maspeth, Liberty Park, and Fresh Ponds. It was this last section that would later come to be known as Glendale.

As part of a business transaction in 1860, a developer named George C. Schott was given a large amount of land in Fresh Ponds, supposedly as payment for a debt. He renamed it Glendale after his hometown in Ohio, and the name seems to have been widely accepted. Nine years later, a real estate agent named John C. Schooley purchased land adjacent to Schotts property and named it Glendale as well. Schooley mapped out the land, laid out streets, divided his property into 469 plots measuring 25 feet by 100 feet, and began offering them for sale at $300 each. Glendale always lagged behind the surrounding towns as far as development went. Even as late as 1908, it was known more as a rural farming community than adjacent areas like Ridgewood and Maspeth, which had begun to build more homes and attract industry to bolster their economy.