Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Some in Douglaston want street names changed

From the Daily News:

People in Douglaston take their history seriously.

That's why a group of residents from Douglaston Hills want to change several numbered streets back to the names they had more than 40 years ago.

"Since this is a historic district, we think it would be in keeping with that concept to restore the names to what they were," said Chris Campese, a member of the Douglaston-Little Neck Historical Society who lives in the area.

City Councilman Tony Avella said he is ready to write a bill that would officially make the change. But he is waiting for Community Board 11 to take a vote on the issue.

Last week's board meeting was canceled due to the snowstorm. The next meeting is April 6.

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sounds good. Restoring the historic street names would also undo the redundancy of having a 43rd Avenue, Road, and Drive.

I propose that each number in Queens be reduced to only a street and an avenue, to aid with navigating. Lanes, Roads, Drives, and Crescents can be given back their names.

At the same time, I certainly don't want a return to boring old English names such as Stafford, Smith, or Oxford. Add some diversity with Pasternak, Achebe, and Sartre streets. It would encourage people to learn about other cultures and stir their curiosity.

Finally, if our borough is to have a grid why isn't there a 1st Avenue or a 1st Street? Every grid has a beginning, except the one in Queens.

Anonymous said...

This is what happens when your neighborhood is landmarked, downzoned and fully protected. You start worrying about things like street names while the rest of the borough is being bulldozed.

Anonymous said...

Maybe the NYC Board of Standards and Appeals,(BSA) can pass some wind on this one. For the old rich farts in Douglaston

Anonymous said...

I think the street names they want to change are names of Politicians that CAUSED THE DAMAGE. Some of it going back to the Robert Moses era

Douglaston and Little Neck have BOTH suffered tremendous damage to bulldozers and Asian Barracks.
Especially Little Neck
--Little Neck has lost COUNTLESS pre war Gatsby era wooden houses and green space to Fedders specials.
--Patrick’s Pub.
They literally curse and throw batterys and cup at Bloomberg at the Memorial Day parade there. The police now have to walk the crowd and surround both him and Helen Marshall

Some cobblestone streets that were once lined with trees are gone especially around the LIRR station.

The neighborhood now includes an all night adult toy and video store as well as numbers of private massage 'apartments" courtesy of the Asians.

This garbage extends all the way West to Flushing

-Joe

Anonymous said...

Oh, so now its the Asians and their "Barracks" that are the cause of the problems? Certainly the Jews can rest easy, now that -Joe has decided to go after a new target!

Anonymous said...

No target that’s fact, I know the area well.

Asians love these bland brick "Barracks" with the little or no windows.
The Asian Buk and Mid East Jews with the nuked & fucco-fied Forest Hills specials are further east in Great Neck North
(They are not related to this tiopic)

They pack 20-30 in a house all named "Lee" there no way of knowing whose relatives or not.
The Re.Moon organization has been bankrolling this scam all over Flushing, then Bayside for over 15 years.

There is a HUGE demand for "barracks" due to N Shore Hospital importing this entire 3rd word medical staff that have no problem sleeping 8 to a room.

This is all fact.
Don’t call me a racist because of something you don’t like hearing.

PS I will not attack Queens Crappers. Thats the first thing trouble makers and "block busters" try to get people to do.

-Joe

Anonymous said...

-Joe,

For someone who is not a racist, you sure use a lot of racist language. What is it about overcrowded housing and trashy houses that is the exclusive provenance of this generation of minorities? Our own ancestors who came to New York generations ago were just as guilty of sleeping 8 to a room and building what were then considered to be ugly buildings.

Queens Crapper said...

Yes and then NYC wrote building and zoning codes to eliminate those types of housing and those conditions. How did they manage to come back and why aren't we doing anything about it except making excuses for why it exists?

Anonymous said...

Big difference
The old minorities **immigrated** here to assimilate, obey our laws and become Americans. They also were skilled tradesman and disease free.

This new generation of minorities want to live like they did in there home country’s, piss all over us snooping for benefits.

In places like Los Angeles, Miami and NYC MILLIONS of them are also criminals now raising kids to be impulsive brats, criminals and get-over’s.

These new people are useless sh*t and scumbags living on the lamb. Their own country dont even want them back for murders.

The proof speaks for itself.

Paul DiBenedetto said...

I'm a CB11 board member and I think it's a great idea.

Anonymous said...

"Yes and then NYC wrote building and zoning codes to eliminate those types of housing and those conditions. How did they manage to come back and why aren't we doing anything about it except making excuses for why it exists?"

1.Overcrowding of apartments never left the city! What you are upset about is that Queens is seeing more of it than before. This is partly because thousands of former rooming houses in Manhattan and Brooklyn have been converted into single-family dwellings, and no new rooming houses have been built to replace them.

2. As building codes and zoning have become more restrictive, the quality of new housing stock seems to go down in direct proportion! As an architect working in New York City, I see this happening in ALL categories of construction. All these laws intending to "help" are in fact not helping at all.

3. No excuses are being made here, just observations.

Anonymous said...

"This is partly because thousands of former rooming houses in Manhattan and Brooklyn have been converted into single-family dwellings, and no new rooming houses have been built to replace them."

Queens is predominantly single and two family homes and was before Manhattan and Brooklyn thought it was cool.

Queens Crapper said...

"no new rooming houses have been built to replace them"

Those were called tenements, not rooming houses. And they were generally considered bad. Why the hell is the City allowing them to proliferate in any borough?

Anonymous said...

Rooming houses and tenements are 2 different things. Typically, a rooming house was a 3 to 5 story single-family rowhouse in Manhattan or Brooklyn built in the late 19th century and converted in the early 20th century into anywhere from 3 to 20 small apartments. (Often the front stoop was removed, but otherwise no change was visible from the street.) In contrast, tenements were actually BUILT to house many people.

I personally have worked on plans for the conversion of several of these former rooming houses, with the corresponding loss of 40 or so apartments! While I used to think that this was a good thing to do, time has shown that this simply pushes the overcrowding somewhere else, often Queens.

Anonymous said...

Rooming houses are notoriously filthy, and fire hazards, housing some of the most pathetic transient creatures one could imagine. Oh wait, you must be talking about the rooming houses on Park Avenue....

Seriously, as someone already pointed out, it does not matter that our ancestors came here during the turn of the century and were "subjected" to those conditions. This is 2009, and we don't subject human beings to that sort of hell anymore....

"Buffalo" Bill