Day 787
141-36 222nd Street
February 24th, 2014
From the NY Times:
The property has been left alone, and is still owned by the surviving son.
"He's in there," Mrs. Barfield said. "We all know this."
In — there? That seems very unlikely. The gate was padlocked, the windows boarded up, and there was no apparent heat or electricity. . . .
Mrs. Barfield offered one hypothesis circulating among neighbors: the bunker. Years ago, she said, when the roundabout at 225th Street and 141st Avenue was being dug, the father and sons were seen at night hauling stones back to their house to build what the neighbors thought — though they had no evidence to support it — was an underground chamber.
That piggybacked on other baseless rumors that were fueled by the fact that the father was German and that in 1964 an otherwise ordinary German housewife in Maspeth, Queens, was unmasked as a former guard at a Nazi death camp.
Nevertheless, rumors, a reality in every neighborhood, persisted.
In looking at the current google street view and satellite view, this has to be one of the most intriguing finds you have revealed. Thanks again, Mr. Matt … we are in your debt.
I know this house. My cousin still owns it. As a boy, I visited this home many times. It was beautiful inside and outside.
All the rumors are false. There is no bunker! It was a normal home with a normal family.
My mom grew up a few houses down from here in the 1960s. As elementary school aged kids, she, her sisters and their friends were afraid of the house and called it the “Spooky House”. She told me there used to be a big (from a little kid’s perspective) mound of dirt and “a bunch of dirt” in the yard. One time a friend of hers threw something into their yard (a hat or a ball or something) and got yelled at by the owner. She would point out the house to me every time we’d take the train past it. I’ve been fascinated by it ever since she first showed it to me. It was a beautiful home once upon a time and I wish I could find out more about it. It looks like it was built in 1901 and the original address was 219-26 141st Rd. NYC Dept of Records & Information Services has a pic of what it looked like around 1940.
Does anyone know who live in that black RV? I’ve been hearing that person has been setting tires fire in the front yard of this place.But I’m so interested in the history of this home,like the first buyers ,what does it look like inside and anymore photos