The Filling of Douglaston's Swamps

In the previous “Conservation Conversation,” I described the steady filling of the swamps, or what we now recognize as ecologically valuable “wetlands,” around New York City.  The filling proceeded similarly to the growth of the city itself - outwards from Manhattan. 

When the Bayside, Douglaston and Little Neck neighborhoods were being developed, the city prepared official maps that reflected the anticipated filling of hundreds of acres of marsh on both sides of the Douglaston peninsula. Streets were mapped in a perfect grid starting west of Douglaston Parkway and extending all the way to Bayside. The same was done on the Udalls Cove side of Douglaston to the east.

During the first few decades of the 20th century, a large coal-fired power plant was built on the east side of Alley Creek between Northern Boulevard and the Long Island Rail Road tracks. The plant provided power to the railroad. 

Wharves were built along the creek for unloading coal and other goods. The power plant is long gone, as is Kiddie City, the amusement park that operated there in the 1950s and early 1960s. A mixture of woods and marshes have since reclaimed the area, but hints of the old wharves can still be seen in the stumps of wooden pilings along the sides of the creek.   

Douglaston Manor was developed in the first decade of the 20th Century by the Rickert-Finlay Company (as was the Westmoreland area of Little Neck and several other Queens communities). 

By that time, a seawall had been built along the west side of the peninsula, exchanging a natural shoreline with its beaches and marshes for the tidier, more genteel waterfront we know today.  On the east, a stretch of pristine marsh was used as a refuse dump. It was eventually covered over and became Memorial Field.  

A few houses were built – at least partially on fill – on the east side of Douglas Road near Gabler’s Creek. A small pond across from Memorial Field, at the corner of Douglas and Richmond Roads, was filled in for a new house in the late 1950s. The springs that fed the pond continues to run today, which is why there is a constant stream of water down the 300th block of Richmond Road. 

However, filling the Douglaston and Little Neck swamps did not start in earnest until the early 1960s. On the west side, behind P.S. 98, a developer filled in a large tract of marshlands, laid out streets and built a model home in its northwest corner at the intersection of 38th Drive and 233rd Streets.

A couple with three children moved into the model home. Alas, the weight of the structure on the unstable fill caused the house to settle. 

One tragic night the gas line serving the house consequently cracked. The house exploded. Two members of the family died and the other three were severely injured. (I was 9 years old at the time. Although I did not know the family, this news affected me deeply. A friend and I did some chores for neighbors and we contributed our earnings – just under $10 - to a fund for the family.)