Historic Markers Around Town

I’ve seen historic plaques mounted on poles as I travel in Nassau and Suffolk Counties, and a very occasional one in the five boroughs. They’re part of an initiative devised by New York State Education Department in 1928 to mark places of historical significance, and for nearly 40 years, almost 2800 such markers were placed all over the state.

The signs are marvels of design. Most of them feature dark blue backgrounds with gold raised block lettering and trim, though there are variations in color and lettering, and occasionally, shape. The state discontinued the series in 1966 after high speed travel on expressways became the norm. Of the 92 NYS historical signs placed around town beginning in 1928, only a handful are still there. Over the decades, the local youth have removed or vandalized them, some have been claimed by new construction or car crashes. Of those remaining, some are in poor shape, while others have been restored to better-than-ever construction. At the outset, I’ll also note some markers placed by the local Newtown and Woodhaven Historical Societies, which resemble the NYS markers in general design.

Maspeth isn’t a location many associate with DeWitt Clinton (1769-1828), a founding father who served as NY State Assemblyman, NYS Senator, NYS Governor, US Senator and NYC Mayor during a career capped by his indefatigable support for the Erie Canal. Several streets around town were named for him, and when Green-Wood Cemetery opened in 1838 his remains were exhumed from the original burial plot in Albany, NY and moved to Brooklyn.

DeWitt Clinton lived in Maspeth for several decades in this house that had stood near Newtown Creek, on what is now 56th Terrace just west of 58th St., in what is today a mostly industrial area with a few private residences. The house was built in the mid-1700s, and Clinton moved in about 1780; it’s said original plans for the Erie Canal were drawn up here. During the Revolutionary War the building was occupied by General William Howe, who planned an invasion of NYC via Newtown Creek.

The house didn’t fare well in its later years, as the area surrounding it became increasingly industrial, and it was divided into tenements in the 1920s and burned down in 1933. Earlier photographs show it with a double decker porch.

In the 1930s, New York State placed a historical marker for the building at the intersection where 58th St. meets 56th Terrace at Maspeth Ave. The sign read: “DeWitt Clinton House 1790-1828. Stood several hundred feet north of here. Gov. Dewitt Clinton worked on plans for Erie Canal here.” That original sign disappeared several years later.

In 2018 the Newtown Historical Society initiated a plan to place a new historic sign in the same location. I assisted in the effort by locating some property and census documents at Hofstra University that showed that Clinton owned property in the area. A new sign, in blue and gold colors matching older NYS Department of Education signs (some of which are still found around town) was installed at the traffic island.

Another structure recollecting Clinton’s presence in the area was the Clinton Diner, across the street from the marker. The diner was featured in the Martin Scorsese mob classic Goodfellas and was later renamed Goodfellas Diner. It was severely damaged in a 2018 and 2025 fires and is now a deteriorating hulk.

The Woodhaven Cultural and Historical Society has also installed its own set of historic markers. One of these is located at 85-34 Forest Parkway. While her tree grew in Brooklyn, Betty Smith, neé Elisabeth Wehner (1896-1972), largely wrote the novel, which takes place in nearby Cypress Hills, Brooklyn, in this beautiful house on Forest Parkway near Jamaica Ave. She lived in Williamsburg and attended Girls’ High School, where her childhood experiences influenced her book.

Speaking of Woodhaven, at nearby 85-04 Park Lane South, a rare well-preserved NYS historic sign, standing on private property. The sign marks the first address in Queens to be renumbered under the “Philadelphia plan” which renumbered most of Queens’ streets, with lower numbers at the East River and proceeding east and south.

Many years ago, when Queens was a collection of small towns divided by acres of farms and fields, every town and city had its own street naming and numbering system. This was all right when Queens (then also comprising what is now Nassau County) was a separate and self-governing county. Once Queens consolidated with New York City and became slowly urbanized, this was a situation that couldn’t be allowed to stand as a plethora of Washington Streets, Main Streets, and 1st and 2nd Streets found themselves in the same street directory in the city ledgers.

And so, the Queens Topographical Bureau, under the guidance of C. U. Powell, was set the task of unifying Queens’ street system in the 1910s. To do this just about every street in Queens was assigned a number, except those in historic areas such as Flushing; some existing major roads kept their names, but were assigned the honorific Boulevard or Parkway to replace what was a mere Avenue or Road; the Jackson Avenue-Broadway combination was renamed Northern Boulevard, for example, while Little Neck Road became Little Neck Parkway. Numbered Avenues, Roads, Drives and Courts run east-west, while Streets, Places, Lanes and Terraces run north-south. Streets run from 1 to 271, and Avenues from 2 to 165: why Queens doesn’t have a 1st Avenue is a mystery.

Jamaica’s Prospect Cemetery was founded in 1668. After years of neglect, the cemetery has finally had the upkeep its historic pedigree deserves, revealing centuries-old gravestones including those of some familiar historical names. I first visited the Cemetery in 1998, when the cemetery Chapel was a pigeon-infested wreck and most of the cemetery was overgrown with weeds and brush.

Prospect Cemetery turned around because of the fundraising and rebuilding efforts by the Prospect Cemetery Association and its President, Cate Ludlam, who’s been involved with Prospect for over 30 years. The Cemetery chapel was completely rebuilt as a community center and concert space, while most of the cemetery is now mostly clear and its gravesites, some of them 290 years old, can be appreciated by all. A famed internee is Egbert Benson (1746-1833) a lawyer, jurist, politician from Upper Red Hook, New York, and a Founding Father of the United States who represented New York in the Continental Congress, Annapolis Convention, and the United States House of Representatives, and who served as a member of the New York State constitutional convention in 1788 which ratified the United States Constitution.

The cemetery’s restoration also extended to its NYS historic marker sign, installed in 1936, which had given way to rust and deterioration.

I’ve been to some of the Staten Island NYS historic-marked sites. The Billiou-Stillwell-Perine House is found at Richmond Rd. and Cromwell Ave. in Dongan Hills, and until recently, boasted a sign, though I heard it’s gone now. These photos are from my visit in the mid-2000s.

This house on 1476 Richmond Rd. predates colonial-era Thomas Dongan’s gubernatorial tenure. In a borough that preserves more 17th-century dwellings than any other, this is its oldest: it’s the third oldest building in New York State. Like many colonial homes, it features a very small central section added to in subsequent years. Pierre Billiou (1625-1708), a French Huguenot judicial officer and delegate to the New York general assembly, built a simple stone structure here in 1662 when the region was known as Oude Dorp (“Old Town”). Billiou’s daughter married a Thomas Stillwell, and the Stillwells occupied the dwelling till 1764, gradually adding to the structure; members of the Perine family lived here until 1919. It’s currently maintained by the Staten Island Historical Society. The oldest section of the building, the center fieldstone part, is seen by strolling around to the back.

This still-extant NYC historical sign can be found in the churchyard of Staten Island Reformed Church at Port Richmond Ave. just off Richmond Terrace. It was constructed in 1844 and replaced three earlier churches on this site—the first one was chartered as early as 1696. According to historians, there was first a burial ground here, and later a church, with the graveyard first used in the late-1600s and the first church constructed in 1715. In a borough filled with old, out of the way cemeteries, this is likely the oldest one that’s still used.

—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)