Edwin Sommerich residence front, "Florian Court," ca. 1905. Absent from the Queens Atlas 1901 edition, a one-and-a-half story home is listed on the 1907-08 map, at the southwest corner of Franklin and Bay View Avenues (today Dickens Street and Healy Avenue). The stucco mansion was home to Mr. and Mrs. Edwin Sommerich, whose travel plans appeared in the social pages of The American Hebrew in October 1921 (“in Wernersville, Pa. for two weeks”). In 1950, the Conservative Congregation Darchay Noam held its earliest meetings at Florian Court. In 1958, the Bayswater Jewish center was erected in its place.

National Bank of Far Rockaway, ca. 1912. The Greek Revival bank was built in 1912, on a wedge-shaped lot squeezed between Central Avenue and the tracks of the Ocean Electric Railway streetcar line. The OER’s Roche’s Beach line ran from the Far Rockaway Long Island Railroad station (then immediately west of the National Bank) to the Roche’s Beach bathhouse, along Central Avenue and Rockaway Turnpike (today Beach 20th and 19th Streets, respectively). The Roche’s Beach line was abandoned in 1924.