Famous Places

1. Worst Queens Disaster – Nov. 22, 1950. A 6:09 p.m. Babylon-bound, Main Line Long Island train ran a red signal and at 6:30 p.m., Thanksgiving night, plowed into a stalled Long Island Rail Road train just south of Hillside Avenue and 127th Street, Richmond Hill. Seventy-seven died and 333 people were injured in the fifth worst railroad disaster, up to that time, in American history. The bankrupt Long Island Rail Road was blamed for its third accident in nine months.

2. First King Kullen Store – 171-06 Jamaica Ave., Hollis. First modern self-service grocery store. It featured a large selection of goods, big, bold signs and cheap pricing. Founded by Richard Cullen (1884-1936) whose ideas were turned down by A&P. His young son misspelled the family name in a cute fashion and the store name was born. The pioneer market opened in August 1930. Cullen is buried in St. Mary’s Cemetery, Flushing.

3. Richmond Hill’s Last Hitching Post – in front of 120-11 Jamaica Ave., Richmond Hill. A reminder of the small town roots of a number of our local communities.

4. Pia Zadora – 35 Middlemay Circle, Forest Hills Gardens. This Queens of Martyrs school graduate and one-time film star may be making a comeback, but where?

5. Ray Felix – 105-24 Ditmars Blvd., East Elmhurst. The six-foot, 11-inch Knickerbocker center, in the 1950s and 1960s, loved his jazz, but could not dunk the ball.

6. Rev. Al Sharpton – 100-50 199th St., Hollis. In the news again. He lived with his parents from ages three to 10 at the corner of 199th Street and Hollis Avenue.

7. The Norman Lear-produced "All in the Family" (1971-1979) – brought Queens to the television world and four Emmys to the program. The opening credits had a brief scene of a row of attached homes, one of which was presumably lived in by Archie Bunker and family. An associate producer, who sent out a camera crew to find a working class neighborhood for a good shot, thought it was Cooper Avenue. Best bet is 89-86 to 89-66 Cooper Ave., Glendale, between Woodhaven Boulevard and Metropolitan Avenue.

8. William "Bill" Klenosky (1924-1989) – 80-32 Lefferts Blvd., Kew Gardens. A good person who colorfully played the political game. Achieving happiness in 1979, at age 55, by marrying Miriam Klenosky, he remained active, always helping others. Billy was taken away by Lou Gehrig’s Disease in 1989.

9. W.E.B. Du Bois (1868-1963). Truly, a legend in his own time; author of Souls of Black Folk and Black Reconstruction, he was a political and social reformer, candidate for US Senate in 1950 (American Labor Party) and a founder of the NAACP. He married Shirley Graham, a noted author of her own who received Rosenwald and Guggenheim Fellowships and the National Institute of Arts and Letters Award (1950).

10. Betty Smith (1986-1972). Growing up in Brooklyn and earning her college degree late in life, Smith worked on and finished her 1943 novel A Tree Grows in Brooklyn in the basement of a house belonging to relatives at 85-34 Forest Pkwy., Woodhaven.

11. Jack Cassidy (1927-1976. The son of William and Charlotte Cassidy of 130-02 95th Ave., Richmond Hill, went to St. Benedict Joseph Labre School and Richmond Hill High School before heading for the stage. Married to actress Shirley Jones from 1956 to 1975 and father of four children, three by Jones (singer/actor David was by a previous wife), he won a Tony Award (1963) for the musical She Loves Me.

12. Marty Ingels (1936-). Marty Ingerman of 88-04 63rd Dr., Rego Park, was a graduate of Forest Hills High School (Class of 1954), who went on to star in the TV series "I’m Dickens, He’s Fenster" with John Astin and in some minor film comedies. Besides marrying the widow Jones whose entertainment credits included the films "Oklahoma" (1953), "Carousel" (1956), and "Elmer Gantry" (1960) for which she won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar. Ingels’ other claim to fame was his mother’s sister marrying rising politician, later mayor, Abraham Beame.

13. Jamaica High School and 168th Street, Jamaica Hills. Used as a baseball field from 1947 on by the legendary coach Joe Austin (1904-1998) who had previously worked his non-sectarian, race-fair work at 165th Street and South Road. He taught future lawyer and governor Mario Cuomo to play baseball at both locations. Later, law school student Cuomo would study all night and play a double header the next day at this celebrated location.

14. 108th Street and Shorefront Parkway Basketball Courts, Rockaway Park. Now Rocky’s Roller Rink, this basketball turf was the sports home of Al and Dick McGuire, great players and coaches. The boys lived in Seaside at the west end of "Irish Town" and attended Far Rockaway High School.

15. Ehrenreich Park – 76th Road and Austin Street, Forest Hills. Basketball home to New York City Comptroller Alan George Hevesi, who lived at 73-20 Austin St., and New York Knickerbocker General Manager Ernest Grunfeld of 111-15 75th Ave., Forest Hills. Both were graduates of Forest Hills High School and stars in college (Hevesi at Queens College and Grunfeld at the University of Tennessee).

16. Maurice Connolly (1881-1935) – 20 Greenway South, Forest Hills Gardens. Youngest (30 years old in 1911) and longest serving (1911-1928) Queens Borough President who fell from power due to a major sewer scandal. Faith in the Democratic Party was shaken as Republican George Upton Harvey went on to three terms of office. Connolly served his one year prison sentence at home. Not a bad deal. He was buried out of Queens of Martyrs Church.

17. Seymour Thaler – 41 Deepdene Rd., Forest Hills Gardens. Born in 1919, Thaler became a fine state senator and a founder of the New Frontier Regular Democratic Club. He was arrested while on the Supreme Court bench for illegal possession of stolen treasury bills. He served his time at a federal facility in Danbury, Conn., and came out broken in health and spirit.

18. Donald R. Manes (1934-1986) – 80-65 Chevy Chase St., Jamaica Estates. Flamboyant, hard-working Queens Borough President whose verve and creative ideas didn’t help him survive the Parking Violations Bureau scandal of the mid-1980s. Manes took his own life, in his house, in 1986.

19. Snyder-Gray Murder Case – At the southeast corner of 222nd Street and 93rd Road (93-27 222nd St.), Queens Village Al Snyder was murdered by his wife Ruth Snyder and her lover Henry Judd Gray, for insurance money, on March 20, 1927. The fake robbery alibi was destroyed by police from the Jamaica precinct and the couple were put on trial in Long Island City Supreme Court. Queens District Attorney Richard Saville Newcombe personally prosecuted the case bringing forth 58 witnesses in four days. The trial drew nationwide attention as reporters from 132 newspapers used the 50 extra phones installed in the court house to send news to their editors.

20. The 38 Witnesses – Catherine "Kitty" Genovese of 82-70 Austin St., Kew Gardens was attacked three times and stabbed to death by Winston Mosely, a 29-year-old South Ozone Park resident, in the early morning hours of March 13, 1964. She died in the vestibule at 82-62 Austin St., facing the Long Island Rail Road station. Thirty-eight residents of the Kew Mowray (82-67 Austin St.) heard her screams but did little until after her death. Someone then phoned the police. This passive public response to a homicide in progress became the nationally known scandal of the "38 witnesses."

21. The Crimmins Affair – Alice and Edmund Crimmins of 150-22 72nd Dr., #1D, Kew Gardens Hills were maritally separated on July 14, 1965, when their two children, Alice ("Missy") and Eddie, Jr. were reported missing from their Regal Park Gardens apartment by their mother. The murdered Missy was found the same day at a vacant lot at 71st Avenue and 162nd Street (now located in back of the new 107th Precinct) while Eddie, Jr. was found dead on Monday, July 19, 1965, at 68th Drive, on a grassy strip, at the entrance to the northbound Van Wyck Expressway.

22. Our Lady Queen of Peace Church – 141-36 77th Ave., Kew Gardens Hills. The Kew Gardens Hills Parish was established by Bishop Thomas Edmund Molloy in 1939 with the first Mass being celebrated in the new building on Christmas Eve 1940. Father Eugene Nolan was the first pastor and a good friend, for many years, of Rabbi I. Usher Kirshlum of the powerful Jewish Center of Kew Gardens Hills. There was religious peace in the neighborhood.

23. Congregation Kneseth Israel ("The White Shul") – 728 Empire Ave., Far Rockaway. Housed at Nameoke and Dinsmore in Far Rockaway, the Reform Temple Israel had a building that with its neo-classical features and completely white façade resembled a New England Congregational Church.

24. Immaculata (1903-1995) and Andrea (1902-1982) Cuomo. Think of the genetic greatness that enabled their son Mario to travel from 94-50 150th St., South Jamaica to Sutton Place, Manhattan. Almost a US President and almost a US Supreme Court Justice. St. Mary’s Cemetery, Flushing.

25. Reverend Adam Clayton Powell, Sr.(1865-1953). The elder Powell moved the 115-year-old Abyssinian Baptist Church in 1923 to West 138th Street. It had, under his direction, 10,000 active members. Powell became a member of the Board of the Urban League and a NAACP vice president and an advocate of better housing and jobs for Blacks.

26. Judge Alert Jacob Cardozo (1828-1885). A prominent New York State Supreme Court Judge and a member of New York’s Sephardic elite, he was noted for naturalizing thousands of immigrants a day, transforming them into instant voters for Tammany Hall and its boss, Cardozo friend William Marcy Tweed. Investigated by the state Bar Association in 1873, for his latest appointment of a Tweed henchman to a lucrative receivership, Albert Cardozo resigned from the bench before he was indicted.

David Berkowitz (1977)

His obsession left a trail of blood and an atmosphere of fear in our country.

David Berkowitz was taken out of action when he was arrested on Aug. 10, 1977. He was convicted on May 8, 1978 and sentenced on June 12, 1978. The Son of Sam is in Attica Prison.

28. Paul Simon (1942-) – 136-57 72nd Ave., Kew Gardens Hills. A great creative talent who went from PS 164 (where his mother Belle taught) to JHS 168 (Parsons Junior High School) to Forest Hills High School to Queens College (Alph Epsilon Pi Fraternity) to Brooklyn Law School, where he stayed six months, to Europe to Copenhagen, where he heard of the success of "Sounds of Silence" in 1965 and called Arthur Garfunkel (1941-), who lived at 1365-58 72nd Ave., to join up again and to continue their careers.

Singer/songwriter Paul Simon lived at 136-57 72nd Avenue in Kew Garden Hills.

29. Dizzy Gillespie (1917-1993). Eugene Birks Gillespie lived at 158-05 76t Rd. (1951-1952), Flushing-Suburban, and 105-19 37th Ave., Corona (1952-1966). The great jazz trumpeter and arranger lived within a block of the immortal Louis Armstrong (1901-1971) of 34-56 107th St., Corona, and played in the same bands which featured singer Ella Fitzgerald (1918-1996) of 179-07 Murdock Ave., Addisleigh Park, whose "A-Tisket, A-Tasket" propelled her to fame in 1938.