QUEENS CHRONICLE, Thursday, November 11, 2021 Page 6
C M ANN page 6 Y K 43rd Anniversary Edition
Bayside, once a place of leisure
Corner of Queens was filled with estates and golf courses by Katherine Donlevy Associate Editor
Bayside has a rich history dating back thousands of years. It was the home to the Matinecock tribe first and foremost. The Native Americans can date their history on the land back to 2000 B.C., but they were largely massacred and displaced by settlers in the 17th century, spurring the beginning of what we know today as Bayside. The area was transformed into farmland, and remained that way through the next two centuries and multiple transfers of power: from Dutch to English to American. History swept through the acreage — Fort Totten played a major role in the Revolutionary War, Bayside as a part of Flushing was included as one of the first five towns of Queens — but it remained farmland. The 19th century marked a turning point for Bayside. Portions of the neighborhood remained fertile growing land, but it slowly became a rural resort for the wealthy. Bayside became a place of leisure. “The people in Bayside during the late 19th and early 20th century, these are people of means,” said Kara Schlichting, an assistant professor of history at Queens College. “The people who are in Bayside have more in common with the estate communities of Sands Point than the immigrant working class that’s starting to buy very modest homes in Flushing or Rego Park or Kew Gardens.” To picture this time, Schlichting said, think of “The Great Gatsby.” The Buchanans, Nick Carraway and Gatsby himself were fictionalized versions of the real-life elite who had the luxury of money and time during the Industrial Revolution, Gilded Age and following decades. Excess wealth and time allowed them to travel out to destinations away from the working-class people of the inner city. Even today, Bayside is comparable to the communities of Nassau County, Schlichting continued, because Great Neck, Manhasset and the rest were all part of Queens until 1898 when they opted to become their own county. Despite being geographically, demographically and economically similar to Bayside, Little Neck and Douglaston, the Nassau towns wanted to remain suburban. Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, estates began cropping up alongside the farms, as well as yacht clubs, country clubs and golf courses, all membership-based organizations associated with the wealthy. “Bayside used to be a retreat,” said Schlichting. “They’re there for the coast, looking across Little Neck Bay.” The Great Depression put a stark end to the luxurious century of Bayside, but remnants of the era remained in the following
The development of Bayside Hills coincided with Bayside’s major personality change of the 1930s that was brought on by the Great Crash of 1929, as Schlichting points out. “The Great Depression wipes out the inherited wealth you need to maintain these estates,” she said, adding that the establishment of the federal income tax in 1913 greatly affected society’s elites’ grasp on their wealth. “It starts to make it more expensive to maintain these estates. This is where we see the subdivision of these lands.” Development swept across Bayside during those years, and brought in a new class of individuals who could afford to live in the once elite-only neighborhood. “The major beginning of growth was postWorld War I,” said DiBenedetto, who lives in a house that was built in the 1920s. “Most development in Bayside happened between 1920 and, let’s say, to the ’60s. The ’20s to the ’60s were the major part where big pieces of land were bought, golf courses were A painting in the front room of the Bayside Historical Society captured the Bayside Yacht Club as bought; they changed it into housing.” PHOTO BY KATHERINE DONLEVY it was in 1967, the year before it was destroyed in a fire. Accessible transportation soon surrounded decades, though many of those eventually to Bayside Hills, and was converted into a Bayside: The Cross Island Parkway opened became obsolete as well. in 1939, the Throgs Neck Bridge in 1961 and golf clubhouse. The Crocheron Hotel once stood at the “The hills of Belleclaire are why we’re the Clearview Expressway in 1963. bottom of 35th Avenue where it dead ends, called Bayside Hills,” said Michael Feiner, Growth continued through the ’70s to the Paul DiBenedetto, president of the Bayside the president of the Bayside Hills Civic Asso- 21st century, he continued, but it was more Historical Society, said. It was once a farm- ciation. “We are Bayside Hills because of that about “filling in the gaps.” Essentially, homehouse before it was converted into a resort. owners would sell a plot of land with a sizgolf course.” Before the Cross Island Parkway was wedged The neighborhood continues to honor that able yard as two parcels, and a new home onto the coast in the 1930s, it served as a per- legacy by maintaining its 33 malls and green would be built where the yard once was. fect waterfront retreat for celebrities and poliAdditionally, apartment buildings and condospaces, which had once been mowed through ticians from 1850 to 1908, when it was tragi- the use of hired goats, according to Feiner. miniums began cropping up. Bayside became cally destroyed in a fire. Bayside Hills was once considered part of more congested and affordable. The property became city DiBenedetto said the growth has continBayside — and often is still by the Post parkland 20 years later. ued to today, but it looks different. Modern Office and Google Maps, an error Feiner “It was the place to go continues to correct today — but it became growth comes as old buildings are knocked and hang out, party, have its own neighborhood when the property was down for new ones, often those that fit multiQ fun and do boating, be in the water,” said sold to developers in 1936. ple families. DiBenedetto. “People would come from the city and hang out there.” The Bayside Yacht Club was founded in 1902 at the bottom of 29th Avenue, where the Marina and its footbridge still lie. The yacht club had originally been a barn, but was remodeled after a fire and expanded to include a clubhouse, dining area, kitchen, bathhouses and more. The original fire was a premonition, and the club suffered a checkered past of hurricanes and murder before it suffered the same fate as the Crocheron Hotel and was destroyed in a 1968 blaze. There is one institution that shared similar beginnings to the Crocheron Hotel and Bayside Yacht Club, but escaped a tragic ending. What is now the neighborhood of Bayside Hills had once been a golf course. The Belleclaire Country Club was founded after Manhattanites purchased the 117 acres from the Caine family, who had farmed the land from 1852 to 1917. The farmhouse had stood at the southern end of Bell Avenue near the south side of Rocky Hill Road, or what is The Caine family farmhouse once stood on what is now known as 48th Avenue in Bayside Hills now 48th Avenue, near the present entrance before it was transformed into a golf course and clubhouse. PHOTO COURTESY BHCA
For the latest news visit qchron.com 43RD ANNIVERSARY EDITION • 2021
BAYSIDE
