Hanging out in Queens

[samhexum]

 

The remnant of P.S. 59, which was destroyed by the cyclone that hit Woodhaven 131 years ago, on July 13, 1895. Only that this storm struck on a Saturday in July prevented this from being a far more tragic tale.

 

Next week marks the 131st anniversary of the infamous storm that struck Woodhaven, Queens. It was on July 13, 1895, that the storm swept in from the south, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake. Three people would ultimately lose their lives, including one victim more than 100 miles away in Cherry Hill, New Jersey.

The storm cloud, estimated to cover an area of 300 square yards, first struck Woodhaven at Jamaica Avenue and Elderts Lane after sweeping through Cypress Hills Cemetery, where it toppled monuments and ripped out trees and headstones.

Eyewitnesses described the cloud as massive and dark, with some saying it was shaped like a funnel. Others recalled a soft red glow within the cloud. Trees and chimneys were torn from their foundations and hurled through the air as if they weighed no more than feathers. Several people were lifted off their feet and carried through the air before landing a block or two away.

The worst destruction occurred at the newly built two-story brick schoolhouse at University Place (95th Avenue) and Rockaway Road, today Rockaway Boulevard. P.S. 59 had been built in 1890 on land purchased from manufacturer Florian Grosjean, whose legendary factory and clock tower still stand on the border of Woodhaven and Ozone Park.

The roof of the schoolhouse was ripped away and the upper half of the building collapsed. The fact that the storm struck on a Saturday in July prevented this from becoming an even greater tragedy. No one was injured inside the school. Outside, however, it was a different story.

One block east of the school, at 3rd Avenue (84th Street) and Rockaway Boulevard, 16-year-old newlywed Louise Petroquien was sitting at her sewing machine when she heard the commotion outside. Looking out the window, she saw the massive dark cloud overhead and ran outside to warn her mother.

She emerged from a side doorway, but before she could shout a warning, a large beam torn from the roof of P.S. 59 struck her in the head and neck, killing her instantly. It was her mother, returning after the storm had passed, who found her daughter’s body beside the steps leading to their home.

The storm continued south toward Jamaica Bay, leaving an eerie silence amid widespread devastation. Although nearly 150 homes were damaged, accounts differ on how many were destroyed. The true number was probably somewhere between 15 and 30.

In the days that followed, more than 100,000 people traveled to Woodhaven on the Long Island Rail Road along Atlantic Avenue to witness the destruction. While residents cleared away debris, visitors dropped coins and bills into barrels set up to aid the nearly 300 people who had lost everything, or nearly everything, in the storm.

The main attraction for many visitors, however, was the Petroquien home. The family allowed people to enter through the same doorway Louise had rushed through moments before her death. Visitors stepped past the spot where she had fallen before entering the parlor to pay their respects as the young bride lay in a rosewood coffin beneath a mound of flowers.

For more than a century, accounts of the 1895 storm referred to Louise Petroquien as Woodhaven’s only fatality. However, another victim has been largely forgotten: five-year-old Johnny Kolb.

Johnny had been playing near Atlantic Avenue and Rockaway Boulevard when the storm struck. He was later found beneath the rubble with a broken arm and leg and died the following day from his injuries. Both Louise Petroquien and Johnny Kolb were buried in Cypress Hills Cemetery.

Today, the intersection of 83rd Street and Rockaway Boulevard, now part of Ozone Park, gives no indication that it was once the scene of one of the area’s most destructive storms. A new school was built just one year later at the same site where the original building had stood. In the latter part of the twentieth century, the building became well known as a Friendly Frost appliance store.

What happened there 131 years ago serves as a reminder that we remain at the mercy of nature and its ability to humble us without warning.

By Woodhaven Cultural and Historical Society

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Astoria restaurant and wine bar Tootles & French will close its doors for good after almost three years on Ditmars Boulevard.

The restaurant, which was named Best New Restaurant in the United States by USA Today in 2025, delivered a cryptic email stating that it had been an “absolute honor” to serve the local community.

Chad Goldsmith, who opened Tootles at 36-15 in 2023, later confirmed to QNS that the restaurant would be permanently closing.

“Something we have learned is the sacrifices that must be made in personal lives to sustain our concept and what makes it special can become too great,” Tootles said in an email to its subscribers late Sunday night.

Goldsmith did not respond to a request for an interview but said he “can’t do it anymore,” stating that he was three hours late for his brother’s wedding and “just realized it’s not worth it.”

Tootles will offer a limited menu of drinks and snacks in the coming weeks as it prepares to shutter for good and is encouraging Astoria residents to stop by and say farewell. Goldsmith did not provide an exact closing day.

[samhexum]

she has my sympathy but people gotta stop being so stupid 

Police from the 102nd Precinct are looking for two con artists who bamboozled an elderly woman in Woodhaven in a fraudulent lottery ticket scam on the morning of Saturday, Aug. 8. 

Police say the 69-year-old victim was walking past a two-family home at 86-75 78th St. just before 11 a.m. when two strangers drove up alongside her in a gray BMW SUV. The unidentified men exited the vehicle and told the senior that they were in possession of a winning lottery ticket but were unable to cash it due to their immigration status. 

The suspects then coerced the victim under a false promise to exchange jewelry, which she owned, in return for the winning lottery ticket, police said. The con men proceeded to remove her jewelry, valued at around $5,000, from the victim and then proceeded to ask her to purchase pain medication for them from a pharmacy on Jamaica Avenue. 

When the victim entered the drug store to purchase the pain medicine, they fled in an unknown direction, police said.

[samhexum]

Austin Street Open Street begins Sunday in Forest Hills

 

Mamdani, Hochul announce $8.4 million initiative to transform concrete medians into green infrastructure across Queens

Edited August 28 by samhexum
just for the hell of it

[samhexum]

Long before Ozone Park became the neighborhood we know today, the area around what is now 95th Avenue was the heart of a thriving community known as Woodhaven Village. At its center stood a massive factory that employed hundreds, attracted immigrants from across Europe and helped transform a rural Queens hamlet into a growing industrial community.

This October, Woodhaven and Ozone Park will mark the 150th anniversary of the event that nearly destroyed that factory, and the remarkable rebuilding effort that followed. At the center of that story is Florian Grosjean, a Swiss immigrant whose vision and determination helped shape the future of both communities.

Born on Jan. 12, 1824, in the tiny Swiss village of Saule, Grosjean’s journey took him first to France and then, in 1850, to New York City. There, he launched a business importing French goods. Before long, however, he realized that manufacturing those goods locally would be far more profitable.

Grosjean opened a factory in lower Manhattan, but as his business expanded, he needed more space. His search eventually brought him to Woodhaven Village, a small hamlet surrounded by the rolling hills and farmland of Queens.

Located south of Atlantic Avenue and centered along what is now 95th Avenue in present-day Ozone Park, the village offered Grosjean the room he needed. He purchased a failing chisel factory from John Sharp & Co. and transformed it into the LaLance & Grosjean Manufacturing Company.

The factory’s location near the Atlantic Avenue railroad was crucial, providing an efficient way to transport raw materials and finished products. Under Grosjean’s leadership, the company flourished. By the mid-1860s, more than 300 people worked there, a remarkable number for a village of just over 1,000 residents.

The factory became the economic engine of Woodhaven Village, attracting workers and their families and helping the community grow. Then, on Feb. 21, 1876, disaster struck.

A fire broke out at the factory, fueled by vats of molten horse fat used in the tin-plating process. The wooden structure, saturated with grease, quickly became an inferno. Despite having its own volunteer fire department, the blaze consumed the entire complex.

Grosjean’s losses were staggering, estimated at half a million dollars, a fortune at the time. But the destruction meant more than the loss of a business. Hundreds of workers were suddenly unemployed, and many feared for the future of Woodhaven Village.

Grosjean, however, refused to abandon the community. He placed all his workers on half-salary during the rebuilding process, ensuring they would not have to leave the area in search of work. Within just a few months, the factory reopened. Its new centerpiece was a magnificent stone clock tower, visible for miles and serving as a symbol of resilience and hope.

This year marks the 150th anniversary of the fire and rebuilding of the Grosjean factory.

To commemorate the anniversary, the Woodhaven Cultural and Historical Society will lead a free walking tour of the former factory grounds and Old Woodhaven Village, where much of Woodhaven’s population lived and worked in the late 1800s. The 90-minute tour will begin at 10 a.m. on Saturday, Oct. 17, with participants meeting on Atlantic Avenue at the base of the clock tower (the tour will end approximately in the same spot where we started).  in other words, across from Burger King

Today, the area is known as Ozone Park, but in its heyday, it was the center of Woodhaven Village. Much of the village’s activity took place along University Place, now 95th Avenue. The community’s first bank and post office were located there in the old Wyckoff building, which still stands at the corner of 93rd Street.

University Place was once a bustling commercial center lined with businesses, hotels and saloons serving the many French immigrants who lived and worked in the area. Among the hotels were the Hotel de Paris, the Eagle Hotel and Theuret’s Hotel, opened by French immigrant Antoine Theuret in 1865. Theuret’s became a popular stopping place for travelers well into the early 20th century. The original building, now more than 170 years old, still stands and retains many of its architectural details.

It is easy to pass through this section of Ozone Park without realizing how much history surrounds us. The streets that seem so familiar today were once the center of a vibrant village filled with factories, businesses, hotels, saloons and working families.

And towering above it all was the Grosjean factory and its clock tower.

The 150th anniversary of the fire offers an opportunity to remember not only the disaster that destroyed the factory, but also the remarkable rebuilding effort that followed, and the immigrant entrepreneur whose determination helped ensure that Woodhaven survived and continued to grow.

For Woodhaven and Ozone Park residents today, it is a chance to look beyond the modern neighborhood and rediscover the community that came before it.
 

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Police from the 102nd Precinct are looking for a pair of masked-up suspects who allegedly stole tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of popular weight loss drugs from a Kew Gardens drug store on the night of Wednesday, Sept. 16. 

Police say the duo entered the CVS store located at 85-29 126th St. in the Hillside Plaza shopping center at approximately 7:30 p.m. and entered a restricted area where they began to remove two dozen boxes of GLP-1, a weight loss drug which has become increasingly popular on the black market, according to law enforcement sources.

A 52-year-old female CVS employee attempted to intervene when one of the robbers acted like he had a handgun in his waistband while making verbal threats at her. The suspects fled the store on foot on Metropolitan Avenue traveling in an unknown direction. The stolen GLP-1 has an approximate value of $23,400, police said.