Second Floor, Near the Station
Discover where Queens’ lodges, councils, and clubs met—from purpose-built halls to rented rooms and shared addresses. Second Floor, Near the Station explains how to trace historic meeting places through old street names, maps, deeds, building records, and tax photographs.
The Door That Was Closed
Explore Prince Hall Freemasonry and Black fraternal history in Queens, from African Lodge’s origins to documented lodges and an Eastern Star chapter in Jamaica. The Door That Was Closed examines exclusion, institutional independence, and how to trace these organizations through newspapers, certificates, and archives.
Raised in Queens
Explore Freemasonry in Queens through its lodges, meeting halls, rituals, and surviving records. Raised in Queens explains the three Masonic degrees, Prince Hall Freemasonry, the boundaries of membership, and how to trace Masonic connections in family and neighborhood history.
More Than a Meeting Night
Queens history includes more than bridges, railroads, and housing developments. Discover why lodges, fraternities, and service clubs belong in the borough’s story—and how halls, benefit records, funeral notices, and membership papers can reveal their roles in neighborhood life.
The Lodges That Built Queens
Explore the lodges, fraternities, benefit societies, and service clubs that helped shape Queens. This introduction to The Lodges That Built Queens explains their differences, their boundaries of belonging, and how to trace them through buildings, family papers, and local records.
When Far Rockaway Became a Village
Far Rockaway’s incorporation as a village marked a turning point in its development from resort edge to organized community with institutions, streets, and local identity.
Bowery Bay and the Poor Bowery: Queens Before the Airport
Before LaGuardia Airport, Bowery Bay was a landscape of colonial farms, mills, orchards, shoreline estates, and the Dutch poor farm known as the Poor Bowery.
The Ferry and the Forgotten Places
Some transportation histories leave landmarks. Others leave only traces. This article recovers forgotten ferry routes and vanished connections that once shaped how Queens neighborhoods related to one another.
Hunter’s Point to Rockaway
From Hunter’s Point to the Rockaways, ferry service helps reveal where Queens is being redeveloped, revalued, and reconnected. The waterfront is no longer just an edge—it is increasingly treated as a front door.
The Return of the Ferry
The ferry is back in Queens, but not in the same city it once served. This article looks at what modern ferry service reveals about growth, class, commuting, and waterfront redevelopment.
When Bridges Killed Ferries
Ferries once structured daily life along the Queens waterfront. Then bridges, tunnels, and rail transit arrived, changing land values, movement patterns, and the shape of the borough itself.
The Water Was the First Street
Long before bridges and subways reorganized Queens, ferries and shore landings connected its early communities to trade, work, and city life. This article explores how water functioned as the borough’s first transportation network.
Queens in Motion
A six-part Queens history series exploring how ferries, bridges, railroads, subways, and waterfront development shaped the borough from early settlement to the present.
The Rockaways and the Politics of Partial Connection
The Rockaways are often described as isolated, but their history is better understood as a pattern of repeated and incomplete reconnection. Ferries, railroads, bridges, subways, and storm recovery each changed how the peninsula related to the rest of New York.
The Smell of Progress: How Jamaica Bay Became a Dumping Ground
How Jamaica Bay became New York’s dumping ground: a history of waste, marsh filling, noxious industry, and environmental inequality at the city’s edge.
The Rise and Ruin of Jamaica Bay Oysters
Jamaica Bay’s oyster beds once helped define its economy, but pollution, disease, and urban growth turned one of the bay’s richest resources into a public-health hazard.
When Jamaica Bay Was New York’s Waterside Playground
Excerpt: In the late nineteenth century, Jamaica Bay became one of the metropolitan region’s recreational frontiers, drawing anglers, hunters, boaters, hotel guests, and summer visitors to the city’s marshy edge.
Before the Airport: The Many Lives of Jamaica Bay
Excerpt: Long before airports and parkways, Jamaica Bay was a productive estuary shaped by Indigenous use, colonial settlement, fishing, and maritime life. This article introduces the deeper history of one of New York’s most transformed landscapes.
Jamaica Bay: Nature, Industry, and the Lost Edge of New York
A five-part series on the environmental history of Jamaica Bay, tracing its transformation from productive estuary to recreational frontier, oyster economy, dumping ground, and restoration landscape.
Rikers Island Before the Jail
Before incarceration defined Rikers Island, it was a colonial farm and family estate connected to Bowery Bay, the Poor Bowery, and the agricultural history of Queens.