Letters from Our Readers:

In letter dated Wednesday, October 21, 2009, Helen MacMartin -Trent writes to Rockaway Memories

An actual photograph later transferred onto a postcard showing Grand View Avenue in 1914 - before the city would intervene and change the street name to Beach 35th Street. The photo is taken facing north, with the camera man's back to the ocean. The cross street to the east (right side of the card) is Spray View Avenue. Only part of Beach 35th Street was paved at the time the picture was taken. One of the reasons this particular card is so unusual is that the large landmark Edgemere Club Hotel - at the southern foot of the street is not shown.

Dear Webmaster,

Thank you so much for displaying the beautiful picture of the old Edgemere Club. I fear these days Edgemere is mostly forgotten. I have even heard the village referred to as "Crackmere," referring to what seems to be the drug of choice these days.

I was born on Beach 35th Street in October of 1922 — my mother was taken to Rockaway Beach Hospital on Beach 84th Street after the fact and I am told she was admitted and was able to stay for a week. These days, if you have a baby, the hospital sends you home in 48 hours.

I was one of two children. I had an older brother but he died almost fifty years ago in a horrible traffic accident. My mother saved information on both of her children in special albums called "Baby Books" and after seeing the picture you posted, I went through my book and my brother's journal and I found a special photo I knew I had seen on one of the pages. It is an old sepia photo taken around 1914 and shows Grand View Avenue, the name the street was called back then, in a view facing north towards the street-level train station, on the old Edgemere Avenue.

I have many memories of the area from my own childhood. Both my brother and I attended the elementary school on the same block and same side as our house. In the picture I enclose, our house is on the east side which is the right side of the old postcard and we were almost directly across from the Ambassador Hotel which is the second building in on the left side of the card. I don't remember the street actually looking like this picture. By the time I was aware of my surroundings, the large schoolhouse had already been built. I think my brother had attended a different school (PS 42?) before the red brick local school opened but I really don't remember what year that was.

I attended Far Rockaway High School for my first year. In those days the elementary schools went as far as the eighth grade and I moved over to the high school for my freshman (or 9th grade) year. My parents were not happy with the education I was receiving at the high school. They wanted me to move to a business school and major in shorthand and typing. The high school did have typewriters but that practice was reserved (at that time) for the more advanced students; meaning the older ones. So, after completing my first year at Far Rockaway, I traveled each day by train (LIRR) into Jamaica station and I was enrolled in Drake's Business School, in a building overlooking the train station.

Some of my first memories of living in Edgemere were how lovely our little street was, all year long. Each evening at 6:30,1 would walk down to the train station (one block north) and then a policeman would help me cross the street and I would wait for my father's train to arrive. In those days, the train schedules were not so accurate so often I would have to wait ten or fifteen minutes . An eternity for a little girl. When father arrived, he made me feel so wonderful and we would walk home hand in hand.

There was a very large hotel across the street from where I lived, at the southern end of the street. This was the Edgemere Club you show in your wonderful picture. The hotel only operated during the summer months. For most of the time, it was closed and my brother and I spent many happy hours playing on the wooden floor of the long spacious veranda. I knew we shouldn't have been up there but no one ever chased us away. There were no chairs or anything for us to sit on so we would sit on the stairs and make believe we were guests of the hotel and would "order the staff' around like we were rich . Of course there was no one there except for the two of us children.

I don't remember the year anymore, but sometime at the end of the 1920s, a city crew came around one March morning and began tearing down the boardwalk that had been built by the hotel. After school my brother and I went down to see what the workmen were doing.

They were chopping up the old wooden walkway and they had dug a large crater on the beach and were filling it up with the debris and setting it on fire. I wondered about the nails. Certainly the old nails wouldn't burn and eventually they might rise to the surface of the sand and someone could step on them.

These are the kind of thoughts that run through the head of a little girl. My brother asked the men if he could have some of the old wood and they offered to let him take whatever he wanted. He took a few of the old boards and I remember helping him carry them home. A few days later, we watched as the men built wooden molds and then poured cement for the supports that would carry the new boardwalk. As I remember it, the work went on for months and they continued to move eastward towards Far Rockaway. They told us the new boardwalk was going to extend right down to Atlantic Beach.

On the southwest corner of our street there was a small grocery store. I remember shopping in that store with my mother. In those days, mother prepared a list and she carried a small wicker basket under her arm. When we went into the store, she would give the list to the grocer and he would go around and select what we wanted. There were no carts to push and we had no selection of brand names. I remember the Campbell soup cans; the label has not changed a bit over the years.

I met a boy who lived over one of the stores on Edgemere Avenue. The store under his apartment was a fruits and vegetable store and I still can vaguely remember the smell of fresh greens and pungent fruits. He and I played together. Then we split up for awhile. Then we got back together. This went on for years. The reason I remember it so well is I ended up marrying him when I was 19. He was a few years older than I. His father was a butcher and he was expected to go into the family business. There were many problems with our relationship. I was born and raised a Catholic and my man was Jewish. Mixed marriages were not so popular back in 1942 when we tied the knot. We appeared before a Justice of the Peace in Manhattan and said our vows. Our parents did not approve of our union but they never gave us any flack about it. At least not to my knowledge. After we married, we moved across the street from my husband's old home. We took a two-room loft over a store front on the north side of Edgemere Avenue but we eventually would move out of the area within only a few years. My husband had heart trouble (even as a child) so he was excused from military service. He ended up selling insurance for a living.

There are so many more stories I could tell. I remember during the height of one summer season, I must have been about ten, my husband-to-be, my brother and I got caught stealing food from the back of the Edgemere Hotel. Back in those days, a delivery wagon delivered small bottles of milk and juice to the kitchen entrance of the inn. The bottles were more like pint-sized and they came in returnable wooden cases. The cases were stacked one on top of each other and they arrived packed in crushed ice. So one hot morning the three of us snuck over and we each stole a bottle of prune juice. Naturally we got caught. Some gentleman dressed in a business suit, I can still see him, so regal looking with glasses and a little bow tie. We expected him to report us to our parents but he told us not to steal again — and he let us keep the juice we had taken. I now understand why he was so patient with us, the neighborhood children. He was afraid that at the end of the season when no one was around, we would come back and do damage to his establishment. I only figured that out years later when I read about an incident (regarding some other area) in a newspaper. Children, even back in those days, can be very evil.

Well, like I said before: thank you very much for your interest in Edgemere. Although I am not really acquainted with the other areas of old Rockaway, I still do find myself engrossed in your many many wonderful articles and I have looked over most of your postcard books. I turned 87 a few weeks ago and I don't get out much anymore. My husband passed in September of 2001, exactly nine days after the big attack on the World Trade Center; he had been ill for some time so it was no surprise. The daughter of a childhood friend (who did not live in the Rockaways) is staying with me these days and it is she who showed me your wonderful website on her flattop computer. I really enjoy the work you are doing and I appreciate the respect and the devotion you so obviously feel for the Rockaways.

Sincerely, Helen MacMartin-Trent