Queens New Deal

There’s something about Queens, so defining yet no one really talks about it—but since learning about it, I can’t unsee it.

Queens is an open-air museum of the New Deal, arguably the most consequential set of federally funded jobs programs in American history.

While researching this era of Queens’ history, I was trying to figure out what it all meant. But mainly I was moved by the borough’s seeming capacity for irony.

Take the Tri-Borough Bridge, the Midtown Tunnel and Queens’ relationship with the New Deal. In the 1920s, Queens filled out with a million residents, who founded countless civic organizations calling for mass investment in infrastructure like paved roads, streets lights, sewers, schools, hospitals.

Part of that was business groups that participated in the tilt towards car culture. They saw new bridges and tunnels as a way to make Queens’ industrial economy, anchored in Long Island City, more competitive with New Jersey. Real estate interests saw the potential for rising property values. 

The Astoria Board of Trade championed the Triborough Bridge, and the Queensboro Chamber of Commerce pushed for the Queens Midtown Tunnel. 

But Borough President Maurice Connolly believed a tri-borough bridge connecting to East Harlem wouldn’t serve Queens well, that it wouldn’t divert traffic from the Queensborough Bridge, and that more important was a Midtown tunnel. 

After Connolly was convicted in a sewer-contract scandal in 1928, Flushing Republican George Harvey took over, and in 1929 he enthusiastically supported the bridge and the tunnel in the Board of Estimate.

That year, on October 25th, a day after the first major market shock on Wall Street, 10,000 people showed up at Astoria Park for the groundbreaking on the Triborough Bridge, to watch Mayor Walker wedge a shovel into the dirt. 

The Depression hit, and in 1932, work ceased on the Triborough Bridge for more than a year. After Franklin Roosevelt took office in 1933, the Regional Plan Association recommended the completion of the Tri-Borough Bridge at the top of its list of priorities, followed by the parkways and expressways in Queens, and the Queens-Midtown Tunnel.  Then came the Public Works Administration, which helped to resurrect the Triboro project.

When Fiorello LaGuardia took power as mayor in 1934, he let Robert Moses take over and overhaul the Triborough Bridge Authority—revising its funding scheme and design but even Moses didn’t change the East Harlem terminus. That year, more than 600 families in Astoria were evicted from 250 buildings west of 31st Street along the approaches. 

And in just a handful of years, the PWA and the Works Progress Administration went to work on the Triborough Bridge, the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge, the Marine Parkway Bridge, the Queens-Midtown Tunnel; LaGuardia Airport; the World’s Fair; parkways and expressways; extending the IND Queens Boulevard subway line; the paving, widening or grading of roads like Queens Boulevard, Northern Boulevard, Roosevelt Avenue, Woodhaven Boulevard; and the Queensbridge Houses, the South Jamaica Houses, the Boulevard Gardens Apartments; Queens Borough Hall, the Queens County Courthouse, Queens College, Queens General Hospital; Riis Park, Juniper Valley Park, Astoria Park Pool; sewers, schools, post offices, and more. 

The Triborough Bridge opened on July 11, 1936 with a ceremony on Randall’s Island, and small parades in Astoria and Harlem,  altogether much smaller than the turnout in 1929.

But Queens turned out on the day Roosevelt came to Long Island City to break ground on the tunnel.

Money had gone towards the tunnel since 1927 but the project stalled in the early Depression years. The Long Island Daily Star credited the Queens civic organizations for keeping the “project alive” through those years. In 1935, plans for the World’s Fair helped drive the project forward. In early 1936, the PWA announced nearly $60 million in loans and grants to build the tunnel. 

On Friday, October 2, 1936, President Roosevelt traveled in an entourage of a dozen cars from the Triborough Bridge down to Long Island City. Flags and bunting were draped along buildings. An estimated 150,000 people lined the streets. 75,000 children were let out of school to attend. A parade marched along the president’s route down 21st Street to Jackson Avenue to 49th Avenue, to Fifth Street to the tunnel site on Borden Avenue, where a platform was flanked by thousands cheering and waving flags. The Sanitation Department band played songs and people watched from windows and rooftops. After Mayor Laguardia spoke, Roosevelt’s voice rang through speakers and over the airwaves of WNYC. He said he remembered when only the Brooklyn Bridge connected both sides of the East River and Queens had just some scattered villages. He said the “epic of queens” “is one of the most amazing tales in all modern history.” 

There was a moment of quiet, while the president pressed a button, sending a steam shovel into the ground. Then, FDR was escorted back into a car with head of the PWA Harold Ickes and Senator Robert Wagner, and they took off up Jackson Avenue through the cheerings crowds, and over the Queensboro Bridge. 

One month later, in the Presidential Election, Roosevelt won all of Queens’ six assembly districts. The next year, when George Harvey ran for reelection, he said, “During the past nine years I have acted as purchasing agent for the citizens of Queens.” He said, “Picture, Queens nine years ago, graft ridden, neglected, with dirt roads, few sewers, no parkways, a single bridge; Picture, Queens today leading the City in modern transportation, highways, bridge, sewers, parks and playground.”

Harvey’s opponent William Brunner criticized him for taking full credit for all the recent improvements. Brunner said Queens is the “original New Deal county of New York State.”

In the 1940 presidential election, Queens and Staten voted against Roosevelt’s third term. The Republican plurality was heaviest in Queens, with 53% for Wilkie and 47% for FDR. 

But FDR won three, western Queens districts, including the first assembly district, composed of Astoria and Long Island City.