Rory & Mark make some sense

Mark Weprin gets points for mentioning parks and schools as main reasons to live in his district instead of food, but he should be made aware that the Queens Farm Museum stopped making wine some time ago.

Meanwhile, Rory pulls off a flawless performance.

Proposal to revitalize the Vanderbilt Motor Parkway

Hi Crapper,

I dont know if you are familiar with the Motor Parkway but decades ago the section from Winchester Blvd to Little Neck Parkway was torn down. (The remaining portion to the east of LNP is now known as 74th Ave).

I have an idea on how to restore (as much as one can) the sections of the Motor Parkway that ran through Creedmoor, the Frank Padavan Campus of the Queens School and the Farm Museum. It would be an opportunity to right a historic wrong and bring back a bit of Queens borough history.

Essentially since all these properties are government owned, the only thing keeping this area from becoming a pedestrian, running and bike path like the rest of the Motor Parkway is government inertia. I've tried several times to get Queens politicians to pay attention to my idea, but I've always gotten the polite brush off. So I recently built a website and online petition to get their attention.

Additionally - the reality is left to their own devices the politicians will continue to sell off Creedmoor piece by piece. However, if people could travel through these lands (rather than see them as an obstacle) then they would develop an affection for them and slowly selling off Creedmoor piece by piece would no longer be possible.

I'd love for any feedback you have on this idea.

www.motorparkwayeast.com

- Joby

Farm Museum to tend to cemetery - if city buys it back

From the Times Ledger:

The Queens County Farm Museum board recently voted unanimously to maintain Brinckerhoff Cemetery, the centuries-old burial ground where several of Queens’ first settlers are interred, but would not be able to carry out the plan unless the property changes owners, Museum President James Trent said.

Trent said upkeep for the small lot on 182nd Street near the intersection of 73rd Avenue would be minimal, including keeping litter out, removing trees, shoveling snow on the sidewalk and cutting the grass between the curb and the fence – activities that would come at just a small cost to the museum.

He said otherwise the shared vision for the cemetery among a community of preservationists is for Brinckerhoff to remain largely as it is today, including missing headstones, except for perhaps the addition of a plaque or sign detailing the burial ground’s history.

But despite the vote to maintain the site, Trent said the future upkeep of the cemetery by the Queens County Farm Museum is not a done deal.

Although the city Landmarks Preservation Commission recently voted unanimously to designate Brinckerhoff Cemetery as a landmark, protecting the burial ground from development, the land is still owned by Linda’s Cai Trading Inc., which before the LPC vote had been arguing it should be free to develop the land.

Trent said that means presently the museum is not allowed on the land.

He said he would like to see the city step up and offer to acquire the property so it could be turned into a public space.

“The city did own it, the city was not supposed to have sold it,” Trent said. “And so really the city needs to take it back.”

The city sold Brinckerhoff at public auction to pay off tax debts in the mid-20th century.

Trent said it was unclear whether the cemetery would change hands in the near future.

“The people who own it, we don’t even know if they want to sell it,” he said.

Well, that is an important caveat.  But I'm sure after 12 years of doing nothing, Jim Gennaro and Toby Stavisky will see to it that funding is applied toward this venture.

Kennon Kay's very different city life

You can now get your meat from the Queens County Farm Museum

From the NY Times:

The event was a fancy corporate dinner in a public garden on the Lower East Side, a celebration of locally grown food. The second course listed on the menu was “grilled Queens farm pork loin,” which sounded as if the dish had been created by someone from Queens.

Then a man pulled up a chair and was introduced as Michael Grady Robertson from the Queens farm, provider of the pork.

Meaning what?

“We raise pigs,” Mr. Robertson said.

In Queens?

He smiled. “We’ve got a 47-acre farm,” Mr. Robertson said. “It used to be part of the Creedmoor psychiatric hospital.”

You’re raising livestock in New York City?

“Come visit,” he said.

A few mornings later, Mr. Robertson turned his pickup truck off Little Neck Parkway and drove down the lane of the Queens County Farm Museum. In the truck bed were two 55-gallon barrels of mashed grain that he had just picked up from the Brooklyn Brewery in Greenpoint.

For brewing purposes, the grain was spent. But for the pigs and a single ancient cow on the Queens farm, the hops and wheat and malt make a lip-smacking addition to their troughs.

Barnstorming on Earth Day

From the NY Times:

In New York, there may be no better place to embrace the spirit of Earth Day than at the Queens County Farm Museum, on Little Neck Parkway in Floral Park, Queens.

Capped with the distinctive symbol of the modern American barn — a gambrel roof — the barn is actually not one of the historic buildings on the property. It is, however, a re-creation of a structure built in the 1930s as part of Creedmoor State Hospital’s facilities, which sat on the museum’s site from 1926 until 1975, and it stands on the same foundation as its predecessor. Two steel ventilator cupolas, which were introduced around the turn of the 20th century, accent the roof line.

Today, the barn is used for offices. Although it is not a “working” barn, it is nevertheless an indispensable icon of the city’s agricultural heritage.

Earth Day is a good day to visit a barn and consider all that it stands for. Happily for New Yorkers, there is at least one right in their backyard.