Long Island City captures the unique flavor of a former city (1870-1898) nestled between Manhattan and Queens that retains its identity to this day. Created by consolidating Old Astoria Village, Steinway, Ravenswood, Dutch Kills, Blissville, Sunnyside, and the Long Island Rail Road terminal in Hunters Point, it has been an industrial dynamo since the Civil War. It is home to creative people and innovative ideas, the Steinway piano factory, the movie industry, the Information Age, and a growing list of museums and galleries. Minutes from midtown Manhattan, it is again a magnet for new generations seeking the charms of a small town with the advantages of a great city.

Long Island City (Images of America)

Arts & Photography

Jackson, Thomas

Greater Astoria Historical Society

Melnick, Richard

Photography & Video

Arcadia Publishing

The East River captures the history of New York’s premier waterway. The river, a source of life for Native Americans, spawned communities from Brooklyn to Harlem. Its shipyards and docks projected American enterprise around the world. The waterfront, an industrial and commercial dynamo, forged a continent. The dreams of immigrants who arrived and lived on its banks created this nation. The river’s strong currents guarded prisons and hospital quarantines while keeping secret legends of gold on its bottom. The sinews of a great city are knitted by more than a score of its tunnels and bridges. Today, a renaissance draws people to this river, the heart of New York.

The East River (Images of America)

Baard, Erik

Between the 1890s and the 1930s, new bridges and trains made access to Long Island City quicker and easier than ever before. The community grew as people and industry moved into the neighborhood. These changes were captured in postcard images that served as an inexpensive, mass-produced means of communication. Long Island City features hundreds of postcards that provide a unique chronicle of Long Island City and its communities, including Old Astoria Village, Steinway, Ravenswood, Dutch Kills, Hunters Point, and Blissville/Sunnyside. This book offers a rare glimpse into the soul of a once and future city of promise.

Long Island City (Postcard History: New York)

LaRose, Matt

Leone, Stephen

In the early years of the 20th century, Queens County underwent an enormous transformation. The Queensboro Bridge of 1909 forever changed the landscape of this primarily rural area into the urban metropolis it is today. Forgotten Queens shows New York's largest borough between the years 1920 and 1950, when it was adorned with some of the finest model housing and planned communities anywhere in the country. Victorian mansions, cookie-cutter row houses, fishing shacks, and beachside bungalows all coexisted next to workplaces and commercial areas. Beckoning with the torch of the new century and a bright promise for those who dared to pioneer its urban wilderness, Queens flourished as a community. Through vintage photographs being seen by the public for the first time, the five wards of Queens are highlighted for their unique character and history.

Forgotten Queens

History

Walsh AO BA MB BS MSc FBPsS, Kevin

Americas

Arcadia Publishing Library Editions

Historic Tales of Long Island City (American Chronicles)

Legends of LIC Long Island City may be one of New York's fastest growing neighborhoods, but it already has an incredible history within the Big Apple. DeWitt Clinton lived in a mansion off Newtown Creek and is credited with bringing the Inland Empire to the Empire City by spearheading the construction of the Erie canal, connecting America's heartland to New York's economic hub. William Steinway saw Astoria as the perfect blank canvas to build his groundbreaking Steinway Settlement, including a waterfront park, public bathhouse, housing, a family mansion and a new factory to build his world-renowned pianos. The neighborhood has been a center of innovation, with Chester Carlson's lab as the site of the first photocopy. And the Sony company launched dozens of pioneering transistor-based products from Sunnyside's Van Dam street. Join the Greater Astoria Historical Society as they present historic tales from Long Island City.

Biographies & Memoirs

Historical

History PR

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Books by Greater Astoria Historical Society