Forest Hills Gardens Tour by Historian Jeff Gottlieb, June 12th & 19th - Happy 25th Anniversary!

Historian Jeff Gottlieb discusses how the Forest Hills Gardens was planned, how to distinguish its architectural styles, and which Forest Hills notables lived in homes some of us pass every day without a clue. These photos are from the June 15, 2008 tour. 2011 marks the 25th anniversary of his Forest Hills Gardens tours.

Mark your calendar! Summer is in the air, and so are walking tours. Residents of Forest Hills and beyond will have the privilege of embarking upon 2 Forest Hills Gardens tours this June. This walking tour highlights the 25th Anniversary of Jeff Gottlieb's first Forest Hills Gardens tour.

Jeff Gottlieb, a licensed tour guide, is President of the Central Queens Historical Association and Queens Jewish Historical Society. Established in 1909, the Forest Hills Gardens is the earliest planned garden community countrywide, which was inspired by Ebenezer Howard's Garden City Movement. It retains its high degree of Tudor architecture as well as Colonial design, and lush gardens.

Jeff Gottlieb will divide the walking tours into two parts, and each tour will take 2 1/2 hours:

1. Sunday, June 12, 2011, 10:00 AM: Meet at Station Square, and walk to Greenway North and Markwood Place.

2. Sunday, June 19, 2011, 10:00 AM: Meet at Greenway North and Markwood Place, and trek back to Station Square.

In early May 2011, Jeff Gottlieb was the recipient of the HDC Grassroots Preservation Award for his work as a preservationist and historian.

The Forest Hills Gardens tour is free, and no pre-registration is necessary. For further information, please contact Jeff Gottlieb at (917) 376-4496 or Preservationist Michael Perlman at unlockthevault@hotmail.com

Sample of freestanding homes

Rowhouses

One of a few religious sites

One of a few apartment houses

Remsen Cemetery: A Forest Hills/Rego Park Landmark!

Kudos to Historian Ron Marzlock, contributing writer to the Queens Chronicle and the Rego-Forest Preservation Council blog for covering an earliest extant landmark of the Forest Hills/Rego Park vicinity, known as Remsen Cemetery, which extensively predates Forest Hills and Rego Park, and is an undiscovered enclave for some. It is located at Alderton St & Trotting Course Lane, adjoining 69-43 Trotting Course Lane. Remsen Cemetery was officially designated by the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission on May 26, 1981, after perserverance by Historian Jeff Gottlieb and local advocates, and the designation report is as follows: http://www.remsenpark.com/RemsenParkLandmarkReport.pdf  It is one of 2 official local landmarks, considering the other is the Ridgewood Savings Bank, designated on May 30, 2000 (which will be a future blog posting).

This is the Remsen Cemetery photoset by Chair Michael Perlman of Rego-Forest Preservation Council: http://www.flickr.com/photos/8095451@N08/sets/72157622952179919/

Remsen Cemetery and Alderton St, 1950

Now onto Ron Marzlock's historic research, published in his I Have Often Walked column in the Queens Chronicle on Feb 11, 2010.....

With the rapid growth of Queens County in the 1920s, old farms that had been in families for generations were falling one by one. Growing crops was no longer profitable with the sudden rise in real property taxes, and farmers were forced to sell their land.


Many Queens County families had opted to be buried on their own private land. As the years went on public disregard and disinterest allowed many of those cemeteries to be bought up by developers.

But the Queens Borough President’s Office recognized that history was vanishing before our eyes and commissioned the borough’s chief engineer, a Mr. Powell, to study the private cemeteries. He found in 1932 that there were still 22 private family graveyards in Queens. The oldest legible tombstone was dated to 1718. The beep’s office published a book based on the survey.

As Queens entered the second part of the 20th century preservationists discovered that one of the sites spared by developers was Remsen Cemetery, located in a 2.5-acre triangle bounded by Alderton Street, Trotting Course Lane and Metropolitan Avenue. It’s still there today.

In the 1932 survey the propertywas called Hopedale. Due to changes in postal zones it is technically located today in Rego Park, not Forest Hills as it sometimes is referred to.

It’s no secret that during the American Revolution Queens County was “Tory,” backing the British. But the cemetery’s namesake, Colonel Jeromus Remsen, was a true American patriot and hero at the Battle of Long Island, also known as the Battle of Brooklyn.

Thanks to the Remsen Park Coalition, the cemetery was assigned to the Department of Parks and Recreation in 2003. In 2008 the department agreed to buy the abutting land, owned by The American Legion, for $50,000 to help complete the plan to make the Remsen site a park.