The Alley

 site - to be removed, historical layer / disappeared object

www.dlnhs.org/TheAlley/index.cfm
The site is named for The Alley, an 18th century commercial and manufacturing center formerly located here. The origin of that center’s name is the subject of some debate. One theory is that “alley” refers to the shape of the glacier-made valley. Another holds that colonial travelers, who passed through the valley to Brooklyn, en route to the Manhattan ferries, named it “the alley.” The well-traveled passage is believed to have been the route George Washington (1732-1799) took while touring Long Island in 1790. The native Mattinecock once inhabited the area around Alley Pond Park, attracted by the shellfish in Little Neck Bay. In 1673, King Charles I of England gave a 600-acre land grant to Thomas Foster, who built a stone cottage close to modern-day Northern Boulevard. Two other Englishmen, Thomas Hicks and James Hedges, built mills that harnessed water flowing into Alley Creek. Although the area supported light industry, it stayed essentially rural throughout the 19th century and attracted residents with its natural beauty. William Vanderbilt’s (1849–1920) privately run Long Island Motor Parkway was built through the area in 1908, a harbinger of the age of automobile travel that would continue to shape the park through the 20th century. As the borough of Queens expanded rapidly, its population doubling in the 1920s, the City moved to protect open spaces. The City of New York acquired this site for park purposes on June 24, 1929, pursuant to resolution adopted by the Board of Estimate (a now defunct municipal body) on July 28, 1927. Parks acquired 330 acres of land surrounding the alley later that year, the most significant acquisition in the creation of the park, and cleared several older structures from the property. “This is an attractive offer and parks must be anticipated for the good of the increasing populations,” Mayor James J. Walker (1881–1946) said after the Board of Estimate approved the $1.3 million acquisition. “There is no better site in Queens.” At the same time, the City obtained an option on 500 acres for a parkway connecting other parks in Queens, one of the first steps in a move to connect the City’s parks via “greenways.” In its zeal to convert the area for recreational uses and through the construction of the Long Island Expressway and Cross Island Parkway in the 1930s, Parks filled in much of the marshland. This land now is now recognized as a vital link in nature’s ecosystem. In 1974, Parks created the Wetlands Reclamation Project and began rehabilitating the natural wetlands of the park. The Alley Pond Environmental Center opened in 1976 to provide the public with an understanding of the park’s history and ecology.