U.S. Furniture To Be Torn Down?
Rumors afloat say that the U.S. Furniture store on Steinway Street and 34th Avenue really did lose their lease, as the signage in the store windows claims. The building will soon be torn down. From its ashes will rise a 5 or 6 story hotel. A similar fate could await American Eagle Furniture, cater corner from U.S. Furniture.
There are no hotels on Steinway Street or anywhere else in this immediate area (unless you include the Paper Factory Hotel on 37th Avenue and 36th Street). The Steinway Street nightlife scene leaves a lot to be desired for tourists and locals alike, but the intersection’s proximity to a subway station would seem to make it a sorta-kinda reasonable enough choice for a hotel.
I don’t have an opinion on this particular real estate development, but look forward to the possibility that a restaurant as acclaimed as Mundo, (located at the aforementioned Paper Factory) will open at this new hotel.
For what it’s worth: My only memory of U.S. Furniture was of entering the place and being promptly escorted out. The salesman asked what I was looking for. I said I just wanted to look around. He opened the door and, smiling, gestured for me to leave, saying “Have a nice day.”
This new hotel, should it arise, will find itself at a curious intersection, one which intrigues me any time I pass it. A street is missing from the grid and I cannot see any good reason why.
There is no 40th Street in Astoria. Maps and simple mathematics make it clear that Steinway Street falls where 39th Street would be. Streets approaching Steinway increase one by one: 36th, 37th, 38th, then Steinway. But Steinway is followed by 41st Street. What happened to 40th Street?
Curiosor is the fact that businesses with addresses on all avenues between Steinway Street and 41st Street start with 40-, supporting my theory that some urban planner from long ago thought Steinway Street landed where 40th should have been.
Entenmann’s Bakery, for instance, between Steinway and 41st, is at 40-11 34th Avenue:
40-11 Steinway Street, Between Steinway and 41st.
For those unfamiliar with Queens’ convoluted system of street addresses I’ll offer this succinct summary of its most basic premise: The 1st number before the hyphen is that of the lower-numbered cross street. The second number is the building number on that block. The Museum of the Moving Image, for example, is at 36-01 35th Avenue. The 36 tells the intrepid traveler that the museum is located near the intersection of 36th Street and 35th Avenue, between 36th Street and 37th Street. The 01 tells us that this is building #1 on that block.
The vagaries of this street address system are a subject for lengthy conversation, as virtually anyone who has navigated Queens’ streets will grouse, but at its most basic level that is the logic behind how street addresses work in Astoria and throughout Queens.
Looking again at that Entenmann’s Bakery address it would seem to say that it is building #11 between 40th Street (or what would be 40th Street) and 41st Street. But (as I think I will prove beyond reasonable doubt) Steinway Street would be 39th, not 40th.
The fact that Steinway is a named street is something of an exception but as such it should complement, not interrupt the sequence of incremental street numberings.
For purposes of comparison there is no 32nd Avenue in Astoria. In its place is Broadway. Therefore street addresses between Broadway and 34th Avenue begin with 32-, correctly indicating that Broadway lies where 32nd Avenue would be. This gets a little mucked up, however, by the curious case of 33rd Avenue, an Astoria street that many life-long Astorians would assume does not even exist. But let’s leave that for another discussion.
My theory that someone made a boo-boo in excising 40th Street from Astoria is further supported by the fact that Steinway Street actually becomes 39th Street when you follow it past Northern Boulevard over Sunnyside Yards to Skillman Avenue.
There is a 40th Street in Sunnyside, as there should be, but it does not continue into Astoria.
This amusing bit of minutæ is nothing to lose sleep over but every time I notice it I can’t help wonder how mistakes like this are allowed to happen. And that assumes that this really is a mistake and not some obscure urban planning flourish.
Another vagary of Queens street addresses that puzzles me is how a small number of buildings are assigned the number zero, or double-zero “00” to be exact. The Center Building, at the corner of Northern Boulevard and the Honeywell Street bridge, has the address 33-00:
I have seen a handful of residential buildings which are numbered double-zero. I don’t know how common a convention that is in other cities but giving a building the address of zero does not make that location sound terribly prestigious. Had 1 Riverside Drive been named 0 Riverside Drive I don’t think it would have quite the same panache.
