Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Sad abandoned house on 53rd Street


This house at 53-02 Flushing Avenue (aka 60-11 53rd Street) was found to be carved up into SROs in October 2005.

Then the owners were cited multiple times for failing to vacate and repair the property.

By July 2006, the property was vacant. It has stayed that way since, with the occasional squatter having taken up temporary residence now and then.

You can levy fines until kingdom come, but forcing someone to fix up their property is a different story. The sad thing is at one time this was probably a nice-looking house. It may have even had an open porch. It's listed as a legal 2-family.

18 comments:

Joe said...

It would be nice to buy and restore did they list who holds title now ?.

Looking at it location that may have been an old trolly dispatch or switch house.
Also that inner layer of asphalt colored pebble siding is from the 1920s.

Anonymous said...

Damn....surprised no Asians bought it up and made an ugly Mc mansion out of it yet.

Joe Moretti said...

That looked like it was nice place back in the day. Too bad people just let things go to shit.

Even in this condition, it still looks better than those cheap third world apartments with rusted balconies uses as storage space and Fedders that litter Queens.

Snake Plissskin said...

Again, like Joe's pictures of Jamaica, this shows a borough of broken civic culture with a complete inability to see the broader picture or grasp the simplest of concepts in what makes a good community - and even sadder, do much of anything except impotently bitch about it.

There is no reason that this building should not be a gem, a place that everyone in the community would envy.

Instead the typical Queens property holder reminds me of someone who is money grabbing in a night soil pit.

They throw all kinds of crap into it, then when its ruined, sell their property for the value of the dirt.

Anonymous said...

I hate to say this but I think it is beyond saving.

Anonymous said...

The mystery is what the owner thinking? They have to pay taxes anyway or lose the title. Why not get someone to sell it if you can't? It's Queens and the land by itself has value.

Anonymous said...

From what I can read searching the responder to all the violations is a slumlord real estate company that also owns the other lots and "gas station use" adjacent to it.
My guess is they want a "big buyer" for all 4 lots once the adjacent leases are up to plow everything and put up a big box.
Fines mean nothing, till then these assholes are just playing games.

Anonymous said...

There is no reason why this house can't be SAVE AND RESTORED. People especially in Queens can't visualize the potential, don't want to take the time and research to take on such a project and are not well educated in history or architecture. That is just a few reasons why a lot of these gorgeous houses and buildings get knocked down and usually replaced by crap.
Take a look at this house in Old Astoria Village. 26-28 12st Astoria. http://apartable.com/buildings/26-28-12-street-queens
It is set for demolition any day now. This house is built around 1890. The owners let it go to shit no one can visualize the potential. Look at its sister house next to it, it is a gorgeous gem. There was no reason why the same couldn't be done to this one! Not only that, this part of Astoria should of been landmarked along time ago. It is not protected not even by zoning laws! So now some brainless developer will design a shitbox. Nothing in Queens has value to anyone and this is extremely sad.

Anonymous said...

Definitely a job with Nicole Curtis' name on it!
http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/homegarden/240868091.html

Anonymous said...

I might be mistaken but I think that this place was an inn/bar back in the early 1900's.

The porch was open and that is where women could sit because at the time they were not allowed in the barroom.

This neighborhood consisted of truck farms until the late 1800.s and then it went to builders of two, three and four family houses
When Bohack located there some of the larger homes were turned into bars which served the local workers.

The front porch was probably turned into living space when prohibition became law.

I used to go to a couple of saloons in the neighborhood one of which was The Eagles Nest located on the corner of Woodward and Stanhope. Great Burgers and Beer.

Queens Crapper said...

I think this may be a shot of the rest of the property from back in the 1920s.

Anonymous said...

Crapper:
Could be. Too bad the photo doesn't afford a deeper look into the property. The abandoned house has a flat roof and the ones you posted do not. They are probably older.
The Nurge family owned much of the property around this spot in the 1800's and early 1900's. I believe that they sold and moved up further up Metropolitan Ave. into Middle Village to farm. A couple of streets in the area still bear their name; Nurge Ave. and Arnold Ave. I believe several more streets bore Nurge family Christian names before the numbered system took over.

Queens Crapper said...

The link shows the CC Lyons house and the old post office, which was built in 1860, according to the caption. This was indeed on Nurge's property.

Joe said...

I know restore electronics and old lights and toasters for Nichole Curtis. She's well educated in law and gets many of her buildings from her city for 1$.
In NYC she would be shut out because here it's a dirty underhanded buddy system especially Queens because Manhattan is maxed out.
Look at that dirty underhanded bullshit and back stab with Crowley and the Maspeth Woods property

Anonymous said...

This was a great house. I grew up in it with my family. We played in the baseball in the yard. So much fun just very sad it looks this way.

Anonymous said...

The landlord didn't/doesn't give a crap about this property. It's been condemned and no water or electricity for many years. It was a nice house at one time.

Anonymous said...

I used to think the original street names were taken
from the Nurge family until I came across this:

Martin ZEIDLER and Helene Hermoine Hildegaard HIRSEMANN raised a family of eight children in Maspeth, Queens in the late 1800's. Martin ZEIDLER developed land in Maspeth and named several streets after his daughters Emma, Elfrieda (or Ellie), Martha and Helen. His sons names were William, Martin, Chester, and Edwin. By the time of the depression the streets were re-named as "number" streets as they are today.

Anonymous said...

This was a great house back in day. A big family rented the house and lived there for 30+ years. When owners changed hands, the new owners allowed the property to fall apart, refused to make repairs and ultimately refused to pay the property taxes. The family chose to move and the property fell vacant. It sat vacant for a number of years. More recently, it has been repaired and renovated although the interior layout has been changed. The exterior was also updated by removing the shingles and adding stucco. Unfortunately, the rest of the property's lot remains a junk yard. There was a parking lot, used by workers from a factory on the other side of Flushing Avenue, and 8 rented garages. The garages were torn down after the house was vacated.