Day 1326

Queen’s House

August 17th, 2015



This regal structure, located at the headwaters of Queens Boulevard, announces in stone and tile its given name: Queen's House. Searching newspaper archives (particularly Tom Tryniski's "weird, wonderful website") for the building's address — 138-21 Jamaica Avenue — led to three discoveries:

1) According to a series of help-wanted ads from the early and mid-1940s, the building was once home to Goosen's Confectionery, a candy and ice cream shop with a luncheonette and soda fountain.

2) Frederick H. Goosen, the proprietor of Goosen's, was arrested and convicted on gaming charges in 1933 for running a "candy lottery" at the store.

3) Thanks to an OCR error, I was led to a page from 1939 that contains no mention of the building's address. What I did find on that page is a brief item about the return of a pet cat who had been missing for almost three years. The cat's name? Lucifer Thomas Katz. "Mrs. Duckworth heard a loud clamor on the back porch and opened the door to find Lucifer."


One Comment

  1. Sandi says:

    You do wind up in some strange places, don’t you? So happy Lucifer made it home…..

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