DOC Takes Over Queens County Jail In June 1912

Get into a conversation with a longtime Queens resident

Long Island City Courthouse. and you're

likely to discover a subscriber of the Long Island Star-Journal, a daily paper that informed the community about local and world news until it folded in 1968. A banner across the Star-Journal masthead reminded readers that the newspaper's name came from the merger of the Long Island Daily Star (1876) and the North Shore Daily Journal--The Flushing Journal (1841).

Welcome to June 1912!

Queens County Sheriff Thomas M. Quinn and Patrick Whitney, the Commissioner of Corrections, were the principal actors in a little drama in the warden's office in the old Long Island City Courthouse at midnight, June 1. Quinn had before him ponderous volumes of prisoner records, rolls of keepers, the accounts of vendors who supplied the jail, and several large bunches of keys.

The commissioner spoke: "I have come to take over this institution and shall act in accordance with the interpretation of the laws given by Corporation Council. I am ready to receive the keys, the records, all property belonging to this institution, and henceforth to assume control."

The Hell Gate Bridge opened in 1917. With that little ceremony, the Queens County Jail passed out of the jurisdiction of the Sheriff of Queens County and into the hands of the Department of Corrections of the City of New York. Thus passed one of the last links to the old county regime in Queens; a 229-year-old institution had passed into history.

That month, the paper gave an overview of one of the largest infrastructure projects ever taken on by the city: a gigantic system of sewer mains which were to service an area of 50,000 acres and take care of a population projected to be 1.5 million in 20 years. The work was estimated to cost $20,000,000.

The paper noted something odd. In some of the most congested neighborhoods, such as Richmond Hill and Woodhaven, local residents often failed to show an interest in promptly connecting to the system. These areas often suffered from chronic flooding, with standing pools covering large areas. For example, Jamaica Avenue was occasionally submerged in as much as a foot of water for long distances.

Three years after the Queensboro Bridge opened, two elevators in the Vernon Avenue tower were finally ready for the public. They were fast: a car could carry passengers to the roadway and return in 30 seconds. They could hold 10 people at a time and were expected to carry up to 1,000 people each day.

The newspaper remarked at how the borough had changed since the bridge opened- although it sarcastically recalled the less than impressive fireworks on Opening Day and speculated that the epidemic of graft on the board of aldermen (as the City Council was called at that time) had something to do with it.

The paper interviewed an unnamed Manhattan real estate broker who crowed about the great opportunities for growth over the next decade, once the proposed new subway routes to Astoria and Corona were open. "Look what the elevated trains and subway lines did for The Bronx. Can you beat it?" he rhetorically asked. "And yet there are people in Astoria on Second Avenue (today 31st Street, the route of the elevated line) who think they were unwise to give consent for the trains. Property will double in value in the next five years. You are 'in soft' and don't realize it."

Dock Commissioner Calvin Tomkins, speaking to members of the Queens Chamber of Commerce, stated that the Hell Gate Bridge would rival the Queensboro Bridge as a benefit to Long Island City. "Industries on Long Island have been handicapped for years by being isolated from the mainland," he stated. "They had to use cumbersome and costly car floats and barges to get rail freight off the island. This bridge, and the proposed passenger and freight tunnel under the Narrows to Staten Island, means that Queens and Brooklyn are to have direct all-rail connection with the country."

The Hell Gate Bridge opened five years later, in 1917. The tunnel to Staten Island was never built.

A few days after the city takeover of the old jail, the paper revisited the topic. After his first tour of the facility, Commissioner of Corrections Patrick Whitney called it the "most unsanitary, unsatisfactory jail I have every seen" and suggested the considerable sum of $150,000 to get things up to speed.

He immediately banned bathtubs, which spread disease, and insisted that they be replaced with more sanitary showers. He instituted procedures to address the chronic lice problem in the jail.

Security seemed almost an afterthought. The commissioner and his assistants wondered how anybody was confined there. Virtually every lock on the jailhouse doors had to be replaced. Commissioner Whitney called the 20-foot brick wall around the jail "a complete joke" and promised to add at least six feet to its height, along with some pointed spikes.

When he was informed by Warden Henry Schleth that the general run of prisoners considered it a hardship to be separated from their comfortable jail cots, his expression (not noted by the paper) must have been that of pure disgust. The reporter went on to snidely note that there was more danger from those trying to break into the jail than out of it.

Said Commissioner Whitney, "Prisoners will learn to savor freedom."

The paper told the story of Kate McGrath who had made the Queens County Jail her home for the past 30 years. When the prisoners were transferred out and sent to the city prison at Blackwell's (today Roosevelt) Island, she refused to clean out her cell. McGrath insisted that she meet with the commissioner to demand to his face that she stay in the old jail.

Amazingly, a week after she was transferred, she was back in her old home, but the commissioner admonished her that she now lived in a changed world. Seeing that she seemed fit he gave her a job as laundress for the facility.

That's the way it was in June 1912!

The Greater Astoria Historical Society, located in the Quinn Gallery, 4th Floor, 35- 20 Broadway, Long Island City, is open to the public on Saturdays from noon to 4 p.m. and on Wednesdays from 6 to 8 p.m. Upcoming events: Beer Tasting, July 15 (must be 21), fee: $15 ($8 members), Waterfront Walking Tour, July 30, fee: $10 ($8 members). For more information, call the Greater Astoria Historical Society at 718-278-0700 or visit www.astorialic.org. Visit the Society's online gift shop, too.

For more information, contact the Greater Astoria Historical Society at 718- 278-0700 or visit www.astorialic.org.