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Korean War Cease-Fire Signed In November 1951
Welcome to November 1951! On November 23, the United Nations and the Communists agreed to a treaty ending the Korean shooting by Christmas. This set the stage for a 30- day race against time to settle a four-month dispute over the cease-fire line. The meeting had been going on for 20 minutes when Major General Henry Hodes of the UN team strode out of the conference tent and said "We've got an agreement!" If the armistice was not completed within 30 days, the cease-fire line was to be adjusted to the battle line that existed on the date the treaty was signed.
A transit advocacy group placed an interesting ad for the bond issue on the 1951 ballot. More than 500,000 residents of Central Queens were offered a chance to vote on funding for a proposed new subway line along Horace Harding Boulevard. A citywide $500,000 bond issue for improved transit proposed two new subway lines, one along Flushing Meadows-Corona Park between Kew Gardens/Queens Boulevard and Willets Point (on the Flushing line) and the other from Flushing Meadows running along Horace Harding Boulevard to Francis Lewis Boulevard. Huge timbers propping the rear wall of an apartment house at 153-04 75th Ave., Kew Gardens Hills stopped it from sinking into a onetime peat bog. Around March, tenants said, cracks began to appear in the wall. City engineers and the builders of the complex rushed to do emergency repairs. Residents in another part of Queens complained that they were stuck in the mire of a local development project. As Clearview Garden Apartments, a private project of 1,800 cooperative families went up around them, residents noted that the old streets were obliterated to make way for newly mapped roads. Neighbors in the vicinity of 17th Avenue and 201st Street, Bayside, denied earlier reports by the builder that makeshift repairs were adequate. "If I bring my truck home nights I never know if I'll be able to get it out in the morning," said one resident. "If it rains I can't get through the mud. Fuel trucks refuse to make deliveries for fear of getting stuck." The homeowner sent numerous pleas to Borough Hall pointing out that fire engines or ambulances would be marooned in an emergency, but said they got no concrete response. "Who runs the city, the builders?" a local resident asked. On November 7, tempers simmered as protesting homeowners demanded action in the wake of torrential downpours that had battered Queens the day before. The $11 million Kissena Corridor storm sewer was cited as not doing its job when a two-inch rain flooded hundreds of homes. Some basements in the vicinity of Francis Lewis Boulevard and 58th Avenue were flooded from floor to ceiling. The downpour, which hit during the morning commute, brought one of the worst traffic tie-ups in the history of the Belt Parkway as traffic sat immobilized from Flushing to Jamaica. Police blamed the unprecedented jam on swirling sheets of rain that doused ignitions and stalled cars on the Whitestone Parkway. A Bayside Hills Civic Association member wrote to Borough President Joseph F. Mafera to request elimination of periodic flooding which routinely paralyzed traffic at Horace Harding Boulevard and 212th Street. "Every time it rains, the intersection resembles a swimming pool," declared James Hoey, treasurer of the Bayside Hills Civic Association. "Rush-hour traffic has been particularly tied up the last six months." He noted that a similar appeal to Borough Hall several weeks before brought no response. The Star Journal editorialized on police protection for the borough. The paper lamented that Queens was accustomed to seeing its meager police force drained away periodically to serve at parades, bolster strike guards, or to help with crowds for visiting dignitaries in other boroughs, usually Manhattan. When that happened, police protection in Queens, inadequate under normal conditions, became dangerously slim. The situation was more galling when the shoe was on the other foot, and Queens faced an emergency that called for extra policemen. The other boroughs were not as quick to help. Fine Italian What prompted the outrage was Election Day 1951, when, after a close race, voting machines were ordered kept under police guard until an official recount could be made. This meant hundreds of polling places needed an officer on duty until the Board of Elections could send a truck (each manned with yet additional police officers) to pick up the ballots. Some station houses were stripped of every available man, with only a policeman on the switchboard and a desk officer left on duty. Normal police patrols in many parts of the borough were all but suspended for a full 24 hours after the election. Although, fortunately, the criminal element was unaware of this crisis, the editorial page pondered what would happen if there were a string of emergencies- a serious fire or a major crime. The housing plight of a Flushing truck driver and his wife, living in two rooms with their eight children in a tumbledown shack in Prince Street, came to light. Sympathizing neighbors, unable to be of help because of their own pinched circumstances, alerted the public to the troubles of 39- year-old Thomas Christy and his hardy brood. The 10 Christys lived, if it could be called that, in two rooms within a battered two-story frame skeleton of a home at 37-10 Prince St. The family was forced into two rooms after a fire made a hole in the roof and the rest of the house, with missing windowpanes, no gas or electric, was uninhabitable. They cooked and kept warm with an oldfashioned coal stove. It was ironic that the Christy home was virtually around the corner from the state-subsidized $6 million Bland Houses, the new low-cost housing project due to be opened for 400 low-income tenants in December. "I applied to the city housing authority several times for admission to various projects, but the same thing always happens," the father said. "They file the application and that's the end of it." Christy, who was unemployed, was told on one occasion that the city did not have anything large enough for a family of his size. Regulations stated that 10 people were too many for the largest apartment in the city system, which had only six rooms. Social workers advised the Christy couple to break up their family and put some of the youngsters in institutions until housing could be found. "I wouldn't be separated from any of the children," the tiny mother wept. A ninth child was due in the spring. That's the way it was on November, 1951! The Greater Astoria Historical Society is open to the public on Saturdays from noon to 4 p.m. at Quinn's Gallery, 4th Floor, 35-20 Broadway, Long Island City. A new exhibit, "Hunters Point through the eyes of a native son: The photographs of Frank Carrado", opened on Saturday, September 29 at 1 p.m. The Society's next meeting, December 10 at Quinn's Gallery, will include a book signing of the latest publication from the Greater Astoria Historical Society library of local histories, the first edition of Postcard History Series: Long Island City, featuring hundreds of postcards depicting the communities of old Long Island City, Astoria, Ravenswood, Dutch Kills, Hunters Point, Blissville and Sunnyside. Meet the authors and buy the book. It's the perfect holiday gift! This program is supported in part by funds from the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs and Citiy Councilmember Peter Vallone Jr. For more information, call the Greater Astoria Historical Society at 718-278-0700 or visit www.astorialic.org. |
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