by the late Frederick
W. Dunton, a nephew of Austin Corbin, president of the Long Island
Railroad. Mr. Dunton
was the president of the "Bicycle Railroad" and became interested in the
development of real estate on Long Island in 1883. He built good houses and sold them to
desirable citizens on easy payments. The village of Dunton was made up of small farms
prior to this time. Mr. George Maure, after whom Maure Avenue, now 130th
Street, was named, was actively connected with the progressive enterprises of Queens
County. He was commissioned by a New York syndicate to purchase large tracts of land on
Long Island, and later became associated with Mr. Dunton. Together they invested a large
amount of money in real estate in this section and laid out several towns, of which Dunton
was one.
The early maps of the community indicate that Dunton proper extended
from Atlantic Avenue to Jerome Avenue, or Broadway, as it was called in those days, and
from Van Wyck Boulevard to 126th Street. The section between Jerome Avenue and
Liberty Avenue, then called Centerville Avenue, was Dunton Park. If the library had been
in existence at that time in its present location it would have been in a section called
Liberty Hills.
The Dunton Civic League was formed in St. Mary’s Episcopal
Church, Van Wyck Boulevard in 1922 and has since been active in promoting projects for the
betterment of Dunton, in fulfillment of its motto, "Community Betterment." Mr.
Joseph A. Coyle is now president of the League. In the past the League was successful in
campaigning for many projects, of which some of the outstanding were the Dunton Station of
the Long Island Railroad, the $70,000 fire house, schools, and playgrounds. In one
campaign for a new school to replace P.S. 55, located at 130th Street and 97th
Avenue, which was called "Dunton’s Version of the Little Red Schoolhouse,"
the following adjectives were used: "Antiquated, inadequate, 40 year-old, unsanitary,
out-of-date, unsafe, and over-crowded." The adjectives must have served their
purpose, for a large, new, modern school building was built at 97th Avenue and
131st Street, and at the beginning of the term February 1939, was ready for
occupancy. It is reported that the League is now campaigning for a subway along Van Wyck
Boulevard from the Van Wyck Station on the Eighth Avenue Subway to Rockaway Boulevard, a
new Dunton Library, and a Dunton post office.
The Dunton Library had its beginning April 26, 1917, in a small
space in Thornton’s drug store at 31 Jerome Avenue, as a community station in the
Traveling Division of the Queens Borough Public Library. Two classroom cases were used for
children’s books. The adult books were in small collection cases in the window, and
were restocked from a station box kept in the back room. In June 1918, Mr. Thornton
rearranged his store to the advantage of the library, by making room for three large cases
farther back in the store. The library moved to a small store building at 104-12 130th
Street in 1928. In January 1934, it moved into much larger quarters at its present
location, 129-20 Liberty Avenue, a building formerly occupied by a branch of the Bank of
Manhattan Company. The building is still owned by the bank.
The community of Dunton is made up mostly of German, Irish, and
Italian extraction. There are a large number of Jewish families in the neighborhood; the
Dunton Jewish Community Center is one and one-half blocks from the library. Most of the
people are of the business class and many own their own homes. Most of the homes are
one-family houses, but there are a few two-family houses, and small apartment buildings.
Some of the storekeepers live over or in the back rooms behind their stores. There are
enough renters to make it seem as though Dunton has a quite transient population, if the
numerous changes of address recorded at the library is any evidence of fact.
Bernice Cunningham
Frederick
W. Dunton (1851-1931): Born in
Newton, New Hampshire, Dunton was blessed with his mother’s being a sister to
Austin Corbin, president of the Long Island Railroad. Frederick Dunton went on
to found Hollis (1884) and then Dunton (now Morris Park), southeast of Richmond
Hill. His residence, called Holliswood Hall, had a fine view of the Atlantic
Ocean! Among Dunton’s accomplishments was his help in founding the Bank of
Jamaica, his election (1869) and re-election (1896) to the Board of Supervisors
of Queens County, and his being supervisor of the Town of Jamaica. He is
interned at Maple Grove Cemetery.
Opened in 1875, Maple Grove Cemetery
is a beautiful, 65-acre burial ground in Kew Gardens, with its main entrance on
Kew Gardens Road and Lefferts Boulevard. It was modeled, in part, after the
Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn, a 478-acre tract, also well above (478 feet) sea
level, and established in 1838 as a rural cemetery and horticultural garden,
Maple Grove, like Greenwood, is an oasis in an urban environment.
Bordered on the west by the Park
Vendome, Park Chateau and Imperial, undistinguished apartment buildings built by
the Lefraks, in the north by noisy Queens Boulevard (Hoffman Boulevard), the
widest (over 250 feet in parts of Forest Hills) street in New York City.
Bordered on the east side by the Van Wyck Expressway, a Robert Moses highway
overcrowded in its first week of use, our verdant section is not only a fine
spot for contemplation but also contains the remains of some distinguished
individuals who left a mark on Central Queens culture.
The above article was
researched and compiled by Jeff Gottlieb from his article "The Famed at
Maple Grove Cemetery" (c) 1999
Fredrick W. Dunton, circa
1896 - Photo submitted by Carl Ballenas, Richmond Hill Historian.
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History
of the Broad Channel Islands, 1860s through 1920
