In the 19th century,  Astoria was the summer playground of New York’s elite.

GEOFFREY COBB | gcobb91839@Aol.com

Author, “Greenpoint Brooklyn’s Forgotten Past

My wife and I have always had a soft spot for Astoria. We lived there in the early 90s and fell in love with the immigrant vibe, the food and the amazing cultural diversity. Astoria was very Greek then, but there were also Italians, Croats, Serbs, Czechs and Irish. Since then, Egyptians, Brazilians and other immigrants have arrived, adding to the area’s amazing diversity.  The streetscape is a mix of bustling avenues full of shops, ethnic restaurants, trendy bars and cafes, along with side streets, which are a mix of decades old row houses, squat two family homes and brick apartment buildings.

Today’s working class, low rise, multi-ethnic Astoria seems light years away from what Astoria was in the nineteenth century. It is hard to believe that Astoria was once an elite community of mansions, elegant estates and the summer residence of New York’s merchant kings. Astoria was once what the Hamptons are today.  A lengthy 1896 New York Times profile of the area stated, “The history of Astoria would read like a sketch of some of New York’s oldest and most honored families, because thirty years ago the summer homes of many of New York’s famous old New York merchants lined the shores, surrounded by generous and beautiful grounds superbly kept.”

Though I lived there, I never suspected Astoria boasts the oldest continuously occupied residence in New York City, the Lent Riker Homestead erected in 1656. The house remained in possession of the Riker-Lent family until the 20th century, when it passed to William Gooth, who had been the personal secretary to the last Riker owner of the house. Gooth rented the house to tenants during the mid-20th century, on the condition that nothing about the property could be changed and almost nothing has. Today, you can tour this historic home.

Many of these legendary mansions are long gone, but a few have survived. One of the victims of time was an elegant country home called Sunswick that stood near today’s Hallet’s Point. Built in 1792, it was the home of Major John Delafield and his wife, Ann Hallett.  The two-story home with an elegant façade faced the East River and was surrounded by a wide expanse of farmland.

Another ancient house was the Josiah Blackwell Mansion that once stood on the former elegant Franklin Avenue around what is today 27th Ave and 8th Street. The home belonged to the family who were the original settlers of the area and who once owned Blackwell’s Island, now known as Roosevelt Island. The home featured two floors of doric columns and an elegant veranda as well as a large lawn.

Stephen Halsey, the founder of the village of Astoria, came to Astoria from Manhattan fleeing a cholera outbreak. Finding the area rural and charming, Halsey decided to stay and built his home in 1838 around the same year he named the area for his friend, fur merchant John Jacob Astor. Halsey hoped that Astor could be induced to sponsor the new neighborhood by naming the new village Astoria in his honor, but Astor, a shrewd businessman, only contributed $2,000, yet the name stuck. Still fearing disease, Halsey built a mansion in 1840 with two-foot-thick granite walls. He lived in the house until his death in 1870. The mansion later became an elementary school and lasted until 1953.

The Josiah Blackwell Mansion, which stood on what is now the corner of 27th Ave and 8th Street. Photo via Queens Public Library.

Other wealthy New Yorkers followed Hasley. Astoria offered large, inexpensive plots of land just a ferry ride away from Manhattan. Manhattan merchant Horace Whittemore built a three-story residence called La Roque Mansion with elegant columns nearby the Halsey estate. Its sumptuous interior featured a large central hall flanked on the right by a pair of formal parlors and on the left by a family living room and a billiards room. Though the house was demolished in 1965, its parlor survives today in the American Wing of the New York Metropolitan Museum.

The 1896 New York Times article mentioned the elegant Barclay Mansion. The Barclays were a rich merchant family, whose name graces a street in lower Manhattan. The three-story brick mansion built in the 1840s featured verandas on the first two floors and spacious grounds. The mansion was demolished in 1916, and the site of the mansion today lies in Astoria Park.

The mansion once known as Rosemont has survived at 25-37 14th Street, but little of its former glory survives. The home was once a beautiful two-level Doric-columned country house, built in a grand Southern-plantation style by varnish moguls Smith & Stratton in 1852, who operated in Astoria Village till 1856. The house then passed to the Benner family.  Mr. Benner was an enthusiast in floriculture and arboriculture. His beautiful gardens contained many specimens of rare trees and shrubs while the flower beds, chrysanthemums and rose houses had wide renown. The cultivation of these flowers was Mr. Benner’s delight, and he added many new specimens by propagation and cultivation to the world’s knowledge.

Steinway Street is one of the principal thoroughfares of Astoria, named for German-born William Steinway, who not only built his piano factory here, but much of Astoria as well. Luckily his mansion survives at 18-33 41st Street and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The Italianate and Renaissance Revival house was built by Benjamin Pike in 1853-1854, but in 1870 Steinway purchased the mansion and the grounds, which he used for his Steinway Village, which became home for many of the workers in his piano factory.

Many of these old mansions were located on Astoria Boulevard in Hallet’s Cove. So, what happened to them? Robert Moses had them in his sights for urban renewal. The City wanted to build the Astoria Houses and acquired title to 134 properties on 29 acres on Hallets Points including the old Haley mansion. In 1946, the groundbreaking took place and the last Hallets Cove mansions vanished, robbing Astoria of a rich architectural legacy.

BY COLE SINANIAN

cole@queensledger.com

Thirty-seven-year-old Bayside Woman Tiffany Yang was sentenced Wednesday for running an online scam that stole millions from 13 victims around the country. 

Yang befriended the victims online and convinced them to invest their money in fraudulent assets and fake websites, which showed artificial gains to convince the victims to continue depositing money. Eventually, the money was routed to shell companies that Yang controlled and the websites where the victims had been “investing” the money were shut down. 

As part of the sentencing, the 13 victims are receiving $2.5 million in restitution, or 75% of the total funds stolen from them. 

Yang pleaded guilty on March 18 to grand larceny in the third degree before Supreme Court Justice Leigh Cheng and sentenced to120 days in jail. Restitution was made in full by April 9, according to the office of Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz. Additionally, authorities will be auctioning off several luxury handbags and watches seized from Yang, whose proceeds will go towards further restitution for the victims once sold. 

“These so-called pig butchering scams are exploitative and profoundly harmful,” said Katz in a press statement. “The defendant participated in a predatory scheme that targeted victims across the United States and carefully cultivated their trust before luring them into fraudulent investment opportunities and stealing their money. Thanks to the diligent work of my Cybercrime Unit, the defendant has been held accountable for her actions, and 13 victims will recover a substantial portion of the funds that were stolen from them.”

One victim began chatting with an online user called “Lily List” over Facebook messenger in March 2023. As the conversation continued, trust grew, the chat moved to WhatsApp and eventually “Lily List” proposed a financial opportunity to the victim on a trading platform called Spread Ex Ltd. The company’s name appears to mimic that of “Spread Ex,” a legitimate financial and betting services company.

A short while later, the victim began wiring money from his personal accounts to what he believed to be his personal Spread Ex Ltd. account – completing 13 wire transfers between March 2023 and February 2024. All the while, the victim regularly logged into the fraudulent website to view his “investments,” which appeared to be growing. 

According to a press release from Katz’s office, the victim eventually attempted to withdraw money from the account but was unable to do so. He then lost access to the Spread Ex Ltd website before it was removed in its entirety. The subsequent investigation surrounding the victim’s losses determined that one of the victim’s wire transfers was deposited into a JP Morgan Chase account linked to a residential property on 77th Avenue, Apartment 2B, in Flushing. A records search revealed that at least 97 JP Morgan Chase customers, many purporting to be businesses, had used the same apartment as the listed address on the accounts. Some of the names on these accounts were Jian Ma Foot Spa 2 Inc., Chen Graceful Nails, Inc., Chen the Bronx Bar Inc., Chen New Funny Nail Inc., Chen I love Spa Inc., and Fend Thao Nail Inc. A further review showed multiple wire transfers into these accounts that were recalled or were confirmed to be fraudulent by the sender.

“Pig butchering” refers to a kind of cybercrime in which scammers earn a victim’s trust by chatting with them online — often under the pretext of a long-distance friendship or romantic relationship — before persuading them to deposit money into a fraudulent account or invest in a fake cryptocurrency. 

Originating in China in the 2010s, the phrase “pig butchering” evokes earning an animal’s trust in order to fatten it up before slaughter. The practice has been linked to human trafficking in Southeast Asia, as many of the perpetrators are forced to work as scammers in windowless  “scam centers” in Cambodia, Laos, or Myanmar. A 2023 New York Times investigation documented a 28-year man who was told he had been hired as a translator for an online e-commerce company, before being trafficked to Thailand by a Chinese gang and forced to work as a “pig-butcherer” in  a scam center. 

Artist and Medusa owner Katherine Grammes.

BY COLE SINANIAN

cole@queensledger.com 

ASTORIA — For any Astorians who may have been wondering what exactly goes on behind the green facade of Medusa Art Studios at the corner of 21st St. and Astoria Blvd, you’re in luck. The studio and event space is now opening as a whimsical new bar, part of owner Katherine Grammes’ yearslong vision to merge her love of hospitality, art, and fantasy into a single, one-of-a-kind experience.

Grammes has operated Medusa as an art studio since 2021, but as she explained in an interview, integrating her two livelihoods — art and hospitality — into a single venture had always been the plan.

“I thought it’d be a cool idea in the end to eventually have a place that could support both things,” she said.

Originally from Maryland, Grammes has lived in Astoria since 2019, where she’s worked as a photographer and set designer, supporting herself as a bartender in between when necessary. Now that she’s finally got a liquor license for Medusa, Grammes has committed to hiring fellow artists who can’t quite make ends meet on their art alone; one of her bartenders has a homemade candle business, another is a singer.

Medusa’s decor comes mainly from Grammes’ personal antique collection. It counts a cozy back patio, a spacious back room with several tables and a fireplace (stand up comedy happens here), a transitionary nook with a giant leather chair and a “cave wall,” and a “splash room” decked out with curtains and ever-changing mood lighting. Gargoyles, Roman statues, masks, skulls, faux ivy and whimsical paintings of all sorts adorn Medusa’s corners, the bounty of a lifetime of perusing the antique shops of America.

“It brings a welcoming aspect to the space,” she said. “So when people come here, they can speak to another world a little bit, but also just relax and feel welcomed.”

From the bar at the front comes an expansive list of bespoke cocktails with names like “Strawberry Monster Matcha Martini” and “Medieval Cherry Blossom” featuring several varieties of nordic meads (one of which is called “Viking Blood”). For the less adventurous there’s wine of all shades and local beers by the can.

Regarding her mead-heavy cocktail menu, Grammes explained that the ancient honey-wine pairs well with Medusa’s aesthetic.

“It worked well with the fantastical and the Renaissance— we have a lot of those themed events here,” she said. “Not everyone’s tried mead, so the first week I had to do a buy-one-get-one-free so people would be more open to trying.”

Rather than just a bar or art studio, Grammes wants Medusa to be something in between, what she describes as a “community creative space.” Come on a Tuesday and you might find comedy in the back room. If it’s a Wednesday it might be a movie in the “splash room.” Grammes’ calendar is already packed— on Thursday, April 16 an event called “Intuition and Oracle Cards 101” is listed, during which a professional Tarot reader will give a class on the secrets of her craft. Last Thursday was Dungeons and Dragons. Come on a weekend afternoon for a “Ritmo and Reiki’ Zumba class or a workshop on “enchanted figure drawing.” While the activities are fun, guests are welcome to drop in for a quick drink as well; the separate rooms are intentional, allowing multiple vibes to be cultivated simultaneously without interference or interruption.

“Tuesdays, you can still chill out, but if you want a good laugh at the end of the night, come,” Grammes says. “Wednesdays, if you want to chill and watch a movie and just get the week over with, you can watch the film or you can still hang out over here.”

As for the name, Grammes says it comes from her childhood affinity for the monstrous Greek goddess, whom she says is misunderstood. Also, with her Greek roots and deadly looks, Grammes pointed out that there’s something vaguely Astorian about Medusa.

BY COLE SINANIAN

cole@queensledger.com

CITY HALL  — Amazon does not directly employ its delivery drivers, but that could be about to change thanks to a bill sponsored by Astoria City councilmember Tiffany Caban.

The New York City Council’s Committee on Consumer and Worker Protection convened Thursday to hear testimony regarding Intro 518, also known as the Delivery Protection Act. The bill, which would require last-mile delivery facilities to obtain licenses from the city, has been backed by unions and Mayor Mamdani, who’ve hailed it as a potential win for labor that would make Amazon accountable to its workers and improve street safety. Critics, however, have maintained that the bill would only cost consumers by adding unnecessary fees to the delivery process, and hurt the local “Delivery Service Partners” that Amazon contracts to complete deliveries.

Though they wear Amazon uniforms, drive Amazon vehicles, and deliver Amazon packages, Amazon delivery drivers are not technically Amazon employees. Instead, they are employed by the smaller, local companies that operate the last-mile warehouses, called Delivery Service Providers (DSP). Amazon pays workers salaries and sets their schedules and quotas, but if something goes wrong — a traffic accident, for example — it is the DSP that is liable, not Amazon.

As Caban explained in her introduction Thursday, high delivery quotas encourage drivers to move as fast as possible, increasing the risk of accidents. According to a 2025 report from the city comptroller’s office, rates of traffic accidents are on average 137% higher around last-mile facilities. In the streets around just one in Maspeth, Queens, crash rates rose by 53 percent.

“And when these accidents happen, the company who controls the van, the worker, and the route suddenly tells us that this worker is not their employee and that it’s the subcontractors who are to blame,” Caban said.

“My bill would make New Yorkers, including workers, safer,” she continued. “It would require licensing for last mile facilities, direct employment of drivers, protection against unfair termination and retaliation, real worker training, and we have an outpouring of support from workers, unions, environmental groups, and traffic safety organizations.”

City Councilmember Tiffany Caban, who introduced the Delivery Protection Act, at Thursday’s hearing.

If passed, the Delivery Protection Act would require DSPs to pay $500 for a city license. Carlos Ortiz, chief of staff and deputy commissioner of external affairs at the Department of Consumer and Worker Protections (DCWP), characterized the bill as necessary to holding corporations accountable for malpractice.

“This model externalizes costs as well as liabilities which can lead to labor violations and the exploitation of workers in unsafe working environments,” Ortiz said. “We can’t allow protections for New Yorkers to be held hostage to corporate threats.”

As lawmakers heard testimonies at City Hall, a group of delivery drivers convened by a coalition of trade groups called New York Delivers rallied outside against the Delivery Protection Act. Councilmember Caban, however, noted that she had received an email from a group of delivery drivers prior to the hearing which suggested that DSPs had paid their workers to show up to the hearing to protest the bill.

“Drivers were forced to attend,” Caban said in her introduction, quoting the email. “In mandatory meetings, management asked in front of everyone who was not going to go, and they made us raise our hands in front of our co-workers.”

One Amazon driver, a man named Jose Suerta who’s worked at the DBK1 warehouse in Woodside for four years, testified in support of the bill, criticizing the company’s apparent disregard for worker safety.

“I decided to focus on organizing after a particularly hot summer day when a co-worker fainted,” he said, speaking in Spanish through an interpreter. “When she called the dispatcher, this was her response: ‘Sit down, drink some water, and then continue with your work route.’”

”The following week, the same thing happened to another woman,” Suerta said. “She received the exact same response when she called the dispatcher of Amazon.”

Manhattan Chamber of President Jessica Walker, meanwhile, criticized the bill, noting that while its intentions were good, it would add needless bureaucratic hurdles and contradict Mayor Mamdani’s affordability agenda.

”I support every goal this bill claims to address,” Walker said. “I want  delivery workers to be safe. I want them paid fairly. I want our streets safer. “What I oppose is the mechanism because the mechanism doesn’t achieve any of them and it imposes serious collateral damage on small businesses and consumers in the process.”

She continued: “This is the equivalent of putting a New York City tariff on every package that is brought into our city. 2.5 million packages a day. Every one would be more expensive.”

Manhattan City councilmember Harvey Epstein, who chairs the Committee on Consumer and Worker Protection, clapped back:

“There’s an agreement that we need to deal with the issues of additional crashes that are happening in our city, so the questions are, how do you resolve those problems? Sounds like you may disagree that that will resolve those problems, but we need tools to be able to resolve these issues in our city.”

The insurgent progressive and former diplomat is running for congress on a promise to put Queens’ working families first. 

BY COLE SINANIAN 

cole@queensledger.com 

Take an afternoon stroll down Roosevelt Avenue and amongst the street vendors selling momos and tamales, you may run into Chuck Park, a 40-year-old former foreign service officer running for New York’s 6th Congressional District, which includes Flushing, Elmhurst, Forest Hills, Maspeth, Middle Village, Kew Gardens, Bayside, and parts of Woodside. 

If not, you’ll surely see his Instagram reels, in which he looks directly into the camera, often while walking, and delivers blistering, highly quotable condemnations of the Trump Administration, corporate super PACs, or his opponent, the incumbent centrist Democrat Grace Meng.

“Hey Representative Meng, let’s break the ICE,” he says in one. “A few months ago, you signed on to this resolution, thanking ICE. A whole lot’s happened since then.” 

It was this clip, which goes on to show a montage of brutality by federal agents, that first caught the attention of Thuy Petersen, a mom of three who described herself as, until recently, largely apolitical due to her sense that most politicians are bought by corporate and foreign lobbyists. 

But not unlike those of Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the slew of insurgent progressives challenging incumbent Democrats from the left, Park’s campaign was, to Petersen, a breath of fresh air. It’s grassroots and laser-focused on ending foreign wars, boosting social welfare, abolishing ICE, and getting big money out of politics — an appealing message to those who’ve felt squeezed by an ever-rising cost of living and abandoned by the Democratic establishment as federal agents kidnap immigrant schoolchildren and war rages on in Iran, largely on the behalf of Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government in Israel. 

“You can’t make decisions for the people you represent when you are accountable to the people that give you money,” said Petersen, who’s now a volunteer for Park’s campaign. “With Chuck, I felt like here’s someone who is brave enough to stand up for what he believes in.” 

In person, Park is energetic, tan and clean-cut. During an interview at the Queen’s Ledger’s Sunnyside office, he was quick to admit his black corduroy-lined jacket was in fact a Uniqlo knockoff of a designer brand. 

One of five, Park was raised by Korean immigrants in Woodside. Back then his parents sold jackets and jeans on Canal Street in Manhattan. When ICE raided Chinatown last October, Park couldn’t help but see his own family’s experience in the merchants facing down armored vehicles and masked men in military fatigues.

“That’s where my dad used to sell T-shirts,” Park said as tears welled in his eyes. “I get so angry just thinking about it. When I see them grabbing a dude, they’re grabbing my dad. They are destroying our stories before they can even start.”

Park’s congressional run is an attempt to channel his anger into something productive. When ICE detained a seven-year-old elementary school student in Elmhurst with her mother last August, a chorus of elected officials issued statements calling for her swift return. But Representative Meng said only that her team had contacted the family and “we are seeking more details.”

The next day, Park filed his candidacy with his wife as treasurer. 

“They murdered Alex Pretti and Renee Good,” Park said. “They’re shooting high school kids in the face with pepper spray, point blank. That needs to be wiped clean. I want to abolish ICE. That is a clear difference between me and my opponent.”

“A New Beginning” 

Park studied economics at the University of Pennsylvania and got a consulting job in Manhattan after graduation. Politics wasn’t a huge part of Park’s life until Barack Obama started campaigning for the presidency in 2007. At the time, Park saw Obama’s rhetoric as the embodiment of the optimism that underpins the American Dream. Park cited Obama’s landmark “A New Beginning” speech in Cairo in 2009, during which the president confronted historic tensions with the Islamic world and vowed to fix them, as an expression of this optimism. 

Inspired enough to take the foreign service exam and begin a career abroad, Park worked first in Juarez, Mexico at the US consulate, processing immigrant visas. He described sitting on the other side of a pane of bulletproof glass and speaking to Americans who also grew up in Queens, who spoke no Spanish, but whose parents had brought them across the border as children and had to return to Mexico to process their US citizenship requests. 

“It definitely taught me in a very personal way how broken and stupid our immigration laws are,” he said. “What the hell are the two of us doing on the opposite side of this window? We have the same exact freaking story.” 

After Juarez, Park worked in Portugal and Canada before returning to the US in 2019. By this point, Donald Trump was president and the hopefulness of the Obama era felt distant, Park said. The US government, despite Obama’s wishes expressed in  “A New Beginning,” was not the force for good Park had wanted it to be.

Forever Wars 

Nowadays, as Trump and Netanyahu’s war brings destruction to Iran and costs America billions, the notion that the US government’s actions abroad are in the best interest of Americans seems far from reach, Park said. As he sees it, broadly popular welfare programs like universal healthcare and childcare won’t be possible until politicians stop taking money from weapons manufacturers and foreign-interest lobbies like the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). 

“They’re burning through a billion dollars a day for bombs and missiles from Palestine to Iran to Caracas, instead of spending that billion dollars a day to take care of our own sick here in the United States, in Queens in New York City,” Park said. 

“There’s no confusion among the Democratic base,” he continued. “We want health care and child care. We don’t want to be engaged in these endless wars overseas. It’s our leadership that’s not meeting the moment.”

Despite his progressive politics, Park has been passed over for key endorsements. In a rare break with its membership, the Working Families Party’s top state officers opted not to endorse Park in this cycle, even though 90% of its local chapter voted to back him. 

Seeking an endorsement from the Democratic Socialists of America, meanwhile, is off the table for Park. Although he’s attended DSA meetings and aligns with the organization’s values, he is not a dues-paying member and, as he put it, doesn’t want to “pop up and be considered a poser.” 

Still, Park’s grassroots approach remains popular among working families in his district. For Petersen, he’s the only candidate that seems truly willing to listen. 

“People are really tired of being ignored,” she said. “People are really tired of struggling for the benefit of the wealthiest and corporations. Capitalism is wonderful until it’s not. So I think that’s the effect that we’re seeing. People are just tired of having to struggle while the interests of the uber rich continue to be the priority.”