By COLE SINANIAN | news@queensledger.com
Bargoers packed into Willow’s Tavern in Ridgewood last Thursday evening for Ridgewood History Night, the Queens edition of a popular Greenpoint series that has locals give often humorous, always lighthearted presentations about an interesting aspect of their neighborhood’s past.
The evening featured presentations on the historic Ridgewood Theater, which was the oldest continuously open theater in America when it closed in 2008, and the influential architect who designed it, Thomas W. Lamb, as well as world-famous magician and one-time Ridgewoodian Harry Houdini, the ancient Fresh Pond trail once used by the indigenous Mespeatches people, and the neighborhood’s own wacky hyperlocal newspaper, the Ridgewood Times.
The tavern was dressed with holiday lights and packed to the brim with patrons sipping Guinnesses and Peronis, a warm respite from the frigid gusts of the December evening. Talking through her Google Slides presentation to a packed tavern, Ridgewoodian Courtney Howard traced the history of the Ridgewood Times, a once-beloved hyperlocal newspaper. An article from the 1920s, for example, documented how residents of Middle Village wanted to change the neighborhood’s name to “Middle Town,” since it had grown too large to be referred to as a village.
Under the editorship of Carl Clemens in the 1940s, the Ridgewood Times became the largest weekly newspaper in the country. The offices were located at the intersection of Cypress, Myrtle and Cornelia streets, an area now known as the Clemens Triangle.
“If you can guess what the Ridgewood Times building is now, I might just buy you a shot,” Howard said. The answer, perhaps unexpectedly, is a dollar store. But Howard explained that she could find few archives of the Ridgewood Times from the 1930s, which she revealed was likely because the neighborhood had by that point become a hotbed of Nazi activity. She quoted a New York Times article from April 1934 headlined “Fists Fly at Rally of 9,000 Nazis,” about an event that had taken place at the Ridgewood Grove Arena. Counterprotesters included a mix of communists and Jewish-American war veterans.
The “history night” series is the brainchild of Greenpointer Rick Paulas, who, as a bartender at Oak and Iron Tavern in Greenpoint, began hosting Greenpoint History Night as a way to get people into his bar. The series has since garnered a cult following, with Greenpoint locals as well as wayward travelers from distant lands such as Maspeth, Ridgewood, Bushwick, and Bed-Stuy packing into Oak and Iron on history nights (usually held on Wednesdays), getting tipsy as they listen to wacky stories about their neighborhood told in a register somewhere between lecture and stand-up comedy.
So popular is the series that Paulas decided to take it on tour. History Night made stops in Bushwick on November 13, Astoria on November 20, and finally Ridgewood on Thursday, the last stop on the tour. Paulas, however, urged spectators to steal his idea.
“This is a concept that somebody besides me should run with,” Paulas said. “I do not live in Ridgewood, I live in Greenpoint. But this should hopefully give you an example of what something like this is.”
