Woodhaven - Queens
NYC’s Oldest Bar, The Case of the Missing Plaque, and The Secret of the Queen's Maze
The Queens neighborhood of Woodhaven sits just across the county line from Cypress Hills and, in many ways, feels like a continuation of its Brooklyn neighbor. Jamaica Avenue connects them, its crooked path canopied by the elevated J and Z trains that cast flickering shadows on barbers, bodegas, and bakeries below.
Rows of attached brick and wooden houses dominate the streetscape, yielding to larger stand-alone homes near Forest Park and more modest structures toward Atlantic Avenue. Today, the working class neighborhood is a blend of Latin American and Guyanese immigrants alongside descendants of earlier European arrivals.
Woodhaven’s roots stretch back to 1835, when Connecticut merchant John Pitkin bought two square miles of farmland with dreams of creating a rival city to New York. He called it East New York, but the Panic of 1837 ended those ambitions.
Pitkin sold most of his holdings and focused on developing a smaller section along the edge of what would become Forest Park, which he renamed Woodville. But even before Pitkin’s purchase, one development had already put this patch of Queens firmly on the map.
UNION COURSE
In 1802, New York passed a law to “prevent Horse-Racing” on the grounds that it was both elitist and encouraged immoral behavior. But the appetite for racing never disappeared, and in 1821 the ban was eased, with one stipulation: races could only be held in Queens. That same year, just across the Brooklyn border, the Union Course opened. It was the first dirt track in the nation, and it quickly became a sensation, drawing massive crowds and spawning a boom in hotels and saloons.
The most famous of its races, the Match of the Century, took place in 1823, when Northern favorite Eclipse squared off against Southern challenger Sir Henry in what was billed as a grudge match between the North and South. A $40,000 purse was at stake (over a million dollars today) and the hype was unprecedented.
In the days leading up to the race all the streets between the city and the racetrack were jammed with carriages and pedestrians. “White hats and sallow faces from the south; rosy cheeks and cunning phizzes from the east, Johnny raws from the north; and a few of the knowing ones from the west,” were among the 60,000 fans who made the pilgrimage to Queens.
The stock exchange and Congress were shut down for the day. Andrew Jackson, then governor of Florida, Vice-President Daniel Tompkins (who really got around), and Aaron Burr were all in attendance.
The number of strangers pouring into the city from all quarters, for these three days past, exceeds any thing within our recollection. Hacks and porters, all in requisition, pelisses, blue and white handkerchiefs, with a change of linen, Portmanteaus, trunks, sulkies, and saddle-bags without numbers, and to mend the matter, at each hotel and boarding house is a waiter posted, with uplifted hands and hoarsest voice exclaiming,—”we are all full sir.” Some with dirty shoes and baggage in hands, are parading the streets, knocking at every door with the sign of Boarding upon it. Some have found snug quarters on board our North & East river sloops, and upon a moderate calculation, the population of the city, including a circumference of 16 miles, will not be short of 250,000.
At the time, horse races were divided into punishing four-mile heats with half-hour breaks in between. The first to win two heats was declared the winner. Sir Henry won the first heat. Then, in a dramatic last-minute change, 50-year-old Samuel Purdy was pulled from the crowd to replace Eclipse’s jockey. Purdy managed to lead the horse to a victory in the second heat. In the third and final round, Eclipse and Purdy won by three lengths and the horse retired with an undefeated record.
Years later, what was once a symbolic battleground between North and South was repurposed during the Civil War as a Union Army encampment.
Fire, Factories, and a Tornado
The outbreak of the Civil War coincided with the arrival of stamped-tin impresarios Florian Grosjean and Charles LaLance. In 1863, they relocated to a former chisel factory on Atlantic Avenue where they manufactured their signature porcelain enamel-covered iron cookware, which, among its many attributes, was poison free.
The L&G Manufacturing Company employed thousands and built houses, churches, and parks for the community, which by then had been renamed Woodhaven to avoid confusion with the upstate town of “Woodville.”
Disaster struck in 1876 when the wooden factory, with its massive furnaces and beef fat lubricated machinery caught fire and burned to the ground. Workers accepted reduced pay to help rebuild it in brick, including a towering clock tower that still stands today. I briefly covered the complex in Ozone Park, which, at the time, was still considered part of Woodhaven.
Less than twenty years later, the region was struck by another disaster. Though 13 separate tornadoes have been recorded in the city since modern record-keeping began in 1950, they are relatively rare occurrences. When a twister touched down in Woodhaven in July of 1895, it was big news. So big, in fact, that the crowds who came to gawk at the wreckage dwarfed the crowds that had once come to see the Match of the Century.
Ruin porn tourists descending from the elevated train platforms were met with cries of “This way to the cyclone! All the sights for 10 cents! “ Those sights included buildings with no roofs, buildings with multiple roofs, plots with no buildings, chickens whose feathers had been plucked clean off, and cows that had been deposited in backyards blocks away from their homes.
The storm claimed two lives: five year-old John Kolb and seventeen year-old Louise Petroquien, who was hit by a flying beam as she was on her way to warn her mother about the wind.
A New York Times article reported that when the day was over, the massive crowds “carried with them several tons of débris as mementos, and all the visible supply of beer in Queens County.”
DON’T KILL THE UMPIRE
By the early 20th century, the site of the old Union Course found new life as a ballpark, home to the semi-pro Brooklyn Bushwicks. Confusingly, the team was neither from Bushwick nor even Brooklyn. They started as the Ridgewoods (which is at least adjacent to Bushwick) but after a 1917 fire destroyed their home stadium, owner Max Rosner relocated them to Woodhaven. Rosner built Dexter Park on the site of the former racetrack Woodruff’s Hotel, built to cater to spectators who once flocked to the Union Course racetrack. The park was said to be named after one of the Union Course’s most famous racers who was rumored to be buried under right field.1 A billboard for a local optometrist on the outfield wall read, “Don’t kill the umpire -- Maybe it’s your eyes.”
Ballparks in Queens had the advantage of being far enough from the city center that blue laws banning Sunday baseball weren’t enforced. The Bushwicks drew crowds by hosting exhibition games against Negro League stars, barnstorming teams, and legends like Babe Ruth, Jackie Robinson, Satchel Paige, and Lou Gehrig.
The park also made history as the first stadium in the nation to host night baseball, thanks to Rosner’s son Herman, an electrical engineer who rigged lights above the grandstand. But as Major League Baseball integrated and television grew, the crowds thinned. Dexter Park’s last season was in 1951. Today, a C-Town supermarket stands on the site, marked only by a small plaque.
FRED
That plaque isn’t the only historical marker in the neighborhood. In fact, there is another plaque a couple of blocks east, also in a supermarket parking lot, dedicated to Woodhaven’s history. Well, there was.
That second plaque presiding over a cage of shopping carts in the corner of the Compare Food Market disappeared in June 2020 after a late-night raid by four black-clad individuals armed with a blowtorch and paint.
The former plaque:
FRED CHRIST TRUMP BORN IN WOODHAVEN OCT. 11, 1905 BEGAN BUILDING AT AGE 15, BUILT THIS STORE FOUNDED E. TRUMP & SON NOW TRUMP ORGANIZATION FATHER OF “THE DONALD”
Maybe the vandals were upset that the plaque erroneously claimed the Bronx-born Trump was born in Woodhaven. An easy mistake to make, given that the scion of the Trump family frequently stated that he was born in New Jersey, and his son has often claimed his father was born in Germany. Maybe it was the plaque’s inscrutable enjambment that drove them mad. Most likely, though, the vigilantes’ motivation was political. The only perpetrator to be caught was Justine Medina, a former chair of the Queens Democratic Socialists of America and who would later be one of the organizers behind the first unionized Amazon warehouse in U.S, located in Bloomfield, Staten Island.
The plaque has not been replaced.
NEIR’S
If there is any Woodhaven site that does deserve a plaque, it’s Neir’s Tavern on 87-48 78th Street.
From the outside it doesn’t look like much, a two story brown clapboard building with a corner door and a patch of astrotrurf. A sign with the silhouette of a jockey mid gallop behind the name Neir’s spelled out in large white letters is the only thing that differentiates the building from its residential neighbors. But Neir’s may be the oldest bar in New York City (besting McSorleys by 25 years) and is one of the oldest in the country. It predates John Pitkin’s purchase and transformation of surrounding farmland into a factory town. Over its 195 years, the watering hole has been patronized by horse bettors, tornado gawkers, Bushwicks boosters and people in search of a good burger. Mae West, who lived around the corner, got her start performing here, Fred Trump, who may have worked up a serious thirst participating in a Klan march, would often pop in for a drink and several scenes from Goodfellas were shot in the bar.
The bar was opened as the Blue Pump Room by Cadwallader R. Colden in 1829. Not to be confused with his cousin Cadwallader D. Colden, the 54th Mayor of New York City, Cadwallader R. was big into horses and opened the bar across the street from the Union Course racetrack where he was a manager.
In 1835, the tavern was sold and renamed The Old Abbey, catering to “crowds of black legs, thieves, and housebreakers. ” The building was resold again in 1898 to a German immigrant named Louis Neir who added a ballroom and a bowling alley, and rechristened it Neir’s Social Hall.
The building has changed hands several times since then and was on the verge of closing in 2009 when Loycent Gordon, a Jamaican immigrant and FDNY lieutenant, bought the bar with some friends and worked to restore it to its former glory. Today, he is Neir’s sole owner.
Last night, I visited the bar with friend, bon vivant, and long-time newsletter reader Mike D (not that one) and can confirm that it is a great spot with cold Guinness (thanks to its restored ice coil beer tap system), a mellow crowd and, what I’m told, is a great cheeseburger. Neir’s Tavern’s 196th Anniversary Block Party is happening this Saturday, October 4th from 12–6PM and, if the history and Guinness isn’t enough of a draw, there will also be a NYPD Robot Dog demonstration.
IT ALL MAKES SENSE NOW
While I could delve into another half a dozen plaques (the Woodhaven Cultural and Historical Society really love their plaques), there is one more that I think is really worth exploring. The plaque is in front of the first house in the borough to be assigned to the unique Queens numbering system, which those who don’t live in the borough (and many who do) find so confounding.
When Queens was incorporated into New York City in 1898, it consisted of nearly 60 self-contained villages, each with its own streets and numbering conventions. There were 40 Washington Streets alone. In 1911, engineer Charles U. Powell was hired to impose order. Working with what he had, he created a makeshift grid, though unlike Manhattan, the avenues ran west–east, while streets ran north–south.
Powell’s naming system assigned consecutive numbers to avenues and streets, but when parallel avenues existed in between, they inherited the same number with different suffixes, like road and drive. That (partially) explains this map from Hamilton Beach, one of many examples in the borough.
Streets followed the same pattern using place and lane for existing roads. There are lots of exceptions to these rules, with curved streets and dead ends frequently throwing the whole thing out of whack. The house-numbering system is actually pretty straightforward, with the number before the hyphen indicating the cross street, and the number after the hyphen, the position on the block.
So the first numbered house under the new system, 85-04 Park Lane, would be on Park Lane between 85th and 86th Street, with its low number indicating it was probably on the corner.
In case you have trouble figuring it out, just remember this helpful rhyme:
In Queens, to find locations best Avenues, roads and drives run west; But ways to north or south ‘tis plain Are street or place or even lane.
You will never get lost in Queens again.
SIGHTS AND SOUNDS
Early last Sunday morning in Woodhaven, I walked past the parking lot of a grocery store where people were feeding cans into the redemption machines. Several were broken, and the tones they gave off formed a kind of polyphonic call-and-response, like a Terry Riley piece inspired by recycling. This week’s recording begins there, then drifts to a high school football warmup on the Franklin K. Lane campus field. Layered over it all are the overhead trains and the relentless drone of helicopters, which I later learned were ferrying spectators to the Ryders Cup on Long Island, presumably to heckle and antagonize golfers from other countries.
FEATURED PHOTOGRAPHER
Search for famous residents of the neighborhood and invariably native son Adrien Brody’s name will pop up. While sharing the same neighborhood of the man responsible for the longest speech (and gum toss) in Oscar history is cause for bragging rights, it’s his mother, Sylvia Plachy, who I would be more excited to run into under the tracks of the elevated.
Sylvia Plachy was born in Budapest in 1943 and left Hungary with her parents after the 1956 revolution. She studied at the Pratt Institute, where she met photographer André Kertész, who became her mentor. For thirty years (1974-2004) Plachy was staff photographer at The Village Voice, where she had a weekly column, “Unguided Tour,” which is also the title of her first book published in 1990 which you can see here. Other books include Self Portrait with Cows Going Home (2005) and Signs and Relics (1999). Plachy, who also spent years photographing for The New Yorker, has won both a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Lucie Award.
Of all of Plachy’s incredible work, I was only able to find one photo I could trace to Woodhaven. This image of her son, husband, and dog Poco was taken outside of their home in 1974.
ODDS AND END
Another plaque in the neighborhood is outside 34 Forest Parkway where Betty Smith wrote “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” while living in Queens
You can buy your very own Brooklyn Bushwicks cap here
Schmidts Candy Store is second only to Neir’s in neighborhood lore. The Jamaica Ave candy store has been pumping out Caramel Turtles, marzipan bites and chocolate hearts for 100 years. Margie Schmidt, who took over from her father in 1986, closes for the summer because it’s too hot to make chocolate. Unfortunately, since summer lasts 10 months these days, the shop hadn’t reopened when I stopped by this week
EATER: After Almost 100 Years, This Queens Candy Shop Keeps It Classic
Until recently Woodhaven was home to one of the premier extreme metal recording studios in the world. Menegroth “The Thousand Caves” was a destination for bands with amazing names like Altar of Plagues, Baring Teeth and Liturgy. Surprisingly, I think that the studio was located in the same building as Neir’s Tavern, in a space that had previously housed yet another recording studio where bands like Kiss, Anthrax, and Salt-N-Pepa all cut records in the 1980s and 90s.
89th Street - 1908 
https://sabr.org/journal/article/dexter-park-brooklyns-other-ballpark/
Another excellent and poison-free installment!
Once again, so close to my neighborhood! I'm really glad to see your documentation of neighboring areas, since you cover all of the bases and nuances so well. I first got acquainted to Woodhaven through my running route, alongside Forest Park. The Woodhaven section is actually my favorite part of the park. After so many years being in the vicinity, my wife and I stopped at Neir's for lunch a few weeks ago. I think that I might have had the best burger I've ever tasted in NYC there.