Map of today’s walk, courtesy Google Maps.
WHERE: 53 Avenue between 65 Place and 64 Street, and 48 Avenue between 59 Street and 58 Place, Queens
START: Flushing Avenue and 61 Street, by way of B57 bus
FINISH: 61 Street - Woodside; Subway (7) and Long Island Rail Road, fully accessible
DISTANCE: 3.0 miles (4.8 kilometers)
Photographs by Michael Cairl except where noted
Queens is full of cemeteries, from big ones to little churchyards. The permanent population just of Calvary Cemetery exceeds the living population of all of Queens County. Several are part of the green belt that runs almost unbroken from eastern Brooklyn to eastern Queens. The three I walked past today, far from any tourist trail, are not part of that green belt but do sit on the glacial moraine described in my “Woodhaven to Kew Gardens” post.
Profile of today’s walk, courtesy Google Maps.
All these cemeteries have led some to wonder whether they are a good use of valuable urban land. I argue they are. Green spaces and green belts are essential to maintaining a cityscape with a human scale and not an unrelenting, featureless grid. Some older, well-known cemeteries such as Green-Wood in Brooklyn and Woodlawn in the Bronx are repositioning themselves as places of architectural and historical interest as well as large green oases in a big city. Crowded cemeteries such as the ones I walked past on this trip might not look like oases but they are home to a lot of history and break up the city usefully.
To get to the starting point, in the Maspeth neighborhood, I took the B57 local bus along Flushing Avenue to the last stop. Maspeth is atop the moraine and is far from the subway, requiring commuters to take a bus to and from. It is a low-rise neighborhood made up mostly of attached two-story houses. In recent years it has become more ethnically diverse but still has a strong Irish and Polish character, and is politically conservative. I passed by two men who appeared to be in their sixties conversing in Polish.
A few blocks from the starting point is the northern entrance to Mount Olivet Cemetery, which was incorporated in 1850 under the Rural Cemetery Association Act of 1847 (New York State) as a non-governmental supervision, non-sectarian cemetery. The Act enabled the establishment of cemeteries outside Manhattan, then the only part of New York City. From the cemetery’s history at https://www.mountolivetcemeterynyc.com/about, there is a brief discussion of Maspeth’s origins: “It can only be assumed that the highest point of the Cemetery, 165 feet above sea level, was used as a lookout for the Mespatches Indians. Maspeth, which was formally settled by colonists in 1642, was named for these Indians. The village began with 28 English settlers, mostly of the Quaker religion, as a result of the ‘Newtown Patent’ of 1642, which granted over 13,000 acres of land to those wishing to settle and develop what is now western Queens County. The original village developed around Newtown Creek, west of the current town.”
Maspeth is bisected by the eight-lane Long Island Expressway (Interstate 495). I crossed the expressway on the footbridge at 61 Street and made my way to 65 Place and up another hill. I’ve biked past this area north of the expressway many times along Maurice Avenue but never into it, except along Grand Avenue (Maspeth’s commercial spine) and as few of the side streets. 65 Place looked to be a steeper climb than I wanted to do on a bike, but here I was walking along that street.
Left to right: First row. Remains of streetcar tracks in 61 Street at Flushing Avenue (streetcars haven’t run here since the early 1950s); Town of Maspeth sign where Flushing Avenue meets Grand Avenue; northern entrance to Mount Olivet Cemetery with the cemetery office in the background. Second row. Residential strret south of the expressway, with some houses bearing signs reading “Pope John Paul II Way;” in the same block, Holy Cross Church (Roman Catholic and Polish) with a statue of Pope John Paul II; view from the 61 Street footbridge over the Long Island Expressway, looking west toward Manhattan. Third row. Sign with the name of a tiny park bounded by Hamilton Street, Jay Avenue, and Borden Avenue; view toward Cowbird Triangle showing the intersection of Hamilton Street and Jay Avenue (across from even smaller Federalist Triangle, named for the two New Yorkers - Alexander Hamilton and John Jay - who were among the three authors of The Federalist Papers); the start of the climb up 65 Place.
At the summit of 65 Place I turned left to the first stair street, 53 Avenue. This was an easy descent of 60 steps, each flight having no more than five steps, followed by a large landing. From the bottom of the stairs I went downhill to Maurice Avenue. On the west side of Maurice Avenue, a real speedway but a street that has been a main bike route for me, is the large Mount Zion Cemetery, established in 1893. While doing some research for today’s walk I saw the cemetery has a memorial to the 146 women who perished in the Triangle Shirtwaist fire in 1911. One day I’ll go back to see it for myself. For a brief history of Mount Zion Cemetery and some of the notable people interred there, visit http://www.mountzioncemetery.com/page.asp?id=aboutus.
Left to right: First row. The look of northern Maspeth, along 65 Place; memorial to the 1916 Easter Rebellion in Ireland; view from the top of the 53 Avenue steps. Second row. Handsome attached houses on 64 Street; Mount Zion Cemetery beyond the fence; 1952 view of Mount Zion Cemetery by Andreas Feininger, courtesy www.luminous-lint.com.
From Maurice Avenue I walked west to 61 Street, then underneath the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway (Interstate 278) into Woodside and west up fairly steep 48 Avenue to the second stair street, up 3 flights of 15 steps each. Woodside has long been an Irish Catholic neighborhood that is also becoming diverse; in two blocks I saw a shop sign in Chinese and a Mexican taqueria. Then it was on to 58 Street, across from which is the second section of huge Calvary Cemetery. This Roman Catholic cemetery was established on 1848, with its first section south of the Long Island Expressway and the others north, all of them contiguous. Read about Calvary Cemetery and some of the notable people interred there - not counting relatives of mine - at https://calvarycemeteryqueens.com/. From there I walked north on 58 Street past wide Queens Boulevard to an excellent, well-earned hamburger at Donovan’s Pub before ending today’s walk at the elevated subway at 61 Street and Roosevelt Avenue.
Left to right: First row. The approach to the 48 Avenue stairs; a little plaque honoring someone in the neighborhood; view from the top of the 48 Avenue stairs. Second row. Calvary Cemetery beyond the fence with the Empire State Building in the right background; Donovan’s Pub in Woodside; streetscape from Donovan’s Pub.
Stair count: 60 down, 45 up, total 105. With all those hills, and not a few steps, this walk was a good workout through an area that’s interesting if one bothers to look.