Glenmore Ave. is a narrow, one-way route (running east to west) a block south of Liberty Ave.; it formerly was continuous to auto traffic, but in 1955 the Howard Houses, now part of New York City Housing Authority, was constructed atop its westernmost section, leaving only a dead-end stub at Rockaway Avenue. When laid out in the 1800s, it was known as Baltic Ave. and South Carolina Ave. before its current name, Irish for “long valley” was settled upon. It was eventually extended east across the undefended border of Queens as far as Bayside Cemetery (which was named for its proximity to Jamaica Bay and has nothing to do with Bayside, Queens).
The road was named for the Glenmore Rod and Gun Club of Long Island, which met in a building at the corner of Baltic (now Glenmore) and Vermont Aves. This was an immensely popular shooting association in East New York during the late-19th century, to which nearly every political leader and business owner in the Town of New Lots belonged. The club may have taken its name from Glenmore, a champion race horse of the time.
In 1901, the Scottish philanthropist/industrialist Andrew Carnegie Foundation gave $5.2 million to New York City for its libraries across the five boroughs. This started a remarkable project that would go on to build 1680 Carnegie libraries across the United States and another 800 in Canada, the United Kingdom, and elsewhere in the world. In NYC, Carnegie gave to the boroughs according to population. Since Queens was the least-populated borough at the time, they got the least amount of money. The Queens Library trustees were able to go to Carnegie and present a plan that gave them more money, enabling the library to build seven of the eight libraries planned for the borough. Carnegie paid for the buildings, but the city would have to buy or acquire the land, buy the books, and provide for maintenance and upkeep, in perpetuity. Carnegie helped set up the library commissions and boards.
The Brownsville Carnegie library branch at Glenmore Ave. and Watkins St. opened in 1908 and was so popular that a second Brownsville branch was opened in 1914 on Stone Ave. (now Mother Gaston Blvd.) and Dumont Ave. This photo shows its original context, long before the Howard Houses were built.
I like a good onion dome. They’re relatively rare in NYC; I know about the Russian Orthodox Cathedral of the Transfiguration, on Driggs Ave. and North 12th St. in Greenpoint, and St. Nicholas Russian Orthodox Church on Clintonville St. in Whitestone. At Glenmore and Pennsylvania Ave. (Granville Payne Blvd.) is another great onion-dome, Holy Trinity Russian Orthodox Church. It was built in 1935. East New York was famed for its Jewish complement in the early- to mid-20th century but there were also immigrants from Russia and what’s now Belarus, who founded this congregation in 1909. The architect was Roman Meltzer, famed for his buildings in St. Petersburg. Russian immigrants have returned to East New York in recent years, giving added vitality to this congregation.
The Ionic-columned Agudath Achim B’nai Jacob Synagogue opened at Glenmore and Miller Aves. in 1921, and when the building was transferred to the Second Calvary Baptist Church in 1974, much of its Jewish iconography was retained such as the Stars of David and Torah on the roofline and pediment. A block away on Miller and Liberty Aves., you can find the derelict 75th Precinct, built in 1892 and still standing as a ruin, its future in question.
“New Lots” remembers a town that separated from Flatbush in 1852 and was annexed by the city of Brooklyn in 1886. Today, its boundaries are roughly New Lots Ave., Flatlands Ave., Louisiana and Fountain Aves. In the Dutch colonial days, it was called Ostwout, or “East Woods” and it was here that farmers from Flatbush, which came to be called “Old Lots” in reverse parlance, moved when Flatbush became overcrowded and over-tilled.
This used to be the New Lots Post Office, at #930 Glenmore Ave. between Fountain Ave. and Crystal St., now the offices of Milford Tile. The area post office is now a few blocks away on Sutter Ave.
The Glenmore Avenue Presbyterian Church at #994 at Doscher St. looks very much as when it opened in 1899 and has the same congregation name. Much of East New York was open fields this far east at that time.
I plan on catching up in East New York and Brownsville as the months go on for Forgotten New York. Meanwhile here’s an exploration I undertook way, back in 2005.
Kevin Walsh is the webmaster of the award-winning website Forgotten NY, and the author of the books Forgotten New York (HarperCollins, 2006) and also, with the Greater Astoria Historical Society, Forgotten Queens (Arcadia, 2013)