During World War II, Walentyna Stocker (1913-2020) was the primary secretary and translator for the Prime Minister of the Polish Government-in-Exile. Walentyna (pronounced “Valentina” in English) translated reports from the Polish Underground State into English which first revealed Nazi atrocities–including the existence of concentration camps in German-occupied Poland–to the United Nations. Walentyna’s translations revealed the humanitarian crisis occurring in Europe to the Allies, putting her at the center of Polish intelligence during the War. Walentyna also kept the Polish resistance alive from abroad, organizing and broadcasting Dawn, a secret radio station to Poland. Her service didn’t end after the War – she joined the Women’s Auxiliary Service in the rank of Second Lieutenant in the Polish Army. In this role, she worked with concentration camp survivors and prisoners-of-war, and was present at the Nuremberg Trials. She was recognized in 2011 with the Medal of Merit for Polish Culture by Poland’s Ministry of Culture and National Heritage and received the Jan Karski Eagle Award in 2016. Her life will be honored with a state funeral in Poland in 2021. A coalition of local activists seeks to honor her life by securing landmark status of her chosen and adopted home of Elmhurst, Queens. Walentyna’s husband Aleksander was a Polish author and reporter. He was living in Paris when Germany invaded Poland, and promptly joined the Polish Army there. When the Nazis captured France, Aleksander concealed his Polish identity and played the role of a Frenchman, as it was known among soldiers that Nazi treatment of Polish partisans was especially brutal. He passed as a French prisoner-of-war and was kept as a slave by a German family until his escape to England in 1942. While Walentyna and Aleksander were in France and later England during the same time, they didn’t meet until they each moved to Buffalo, New York after the War. They married only five months after meeting, and left Buffalo for New York City in 1955. They made their home in Elmhurst (88-28 43rd Avenue) by 1960, and their house was known as the nucleus of the Polish émigré elite in the United States. Walentyna remained here until her death at 107 years old in April 2020. Support the designation the Walentyna Janta-Połczyński house!

The "old" New St. James Protestant Episcopal Church, 84-07 Broadway at Corona Avenue, opposite the Reformed Dutch Church. Built 1848, consecrated 1849, enlarged 1871, destroyed by arson fire October 1975, and then replaced by a new building.

St. Marks Church, February 1924. The African Church, as it was originally known, was established in 1828. Four former slaves founded the congregation and purchased land on Union (now Corona Avenue) to erect a church. The property would come to include the mid 19th century church building, a parsonage, and a cemetery. The church served the local community until 1929 when the land was sold and a new church building erected on 95th Street and 32nd Avenue in East Elmhurst. In 1930 the graves were removed to a plot in Mt. Olivet Cemetery in Maspeth. Following the razing of the church and the removal of the bodies, a warehouse was constructed on the lot. In 2011 construction crews demolishing that warehouse structure dug up an iron casket of a woman buried in the 1850s. Construction was halted and the partial remains of 15 more individuals were discovered. Despite the findings and the communities wish to preserve the plot for its historical significance, the planned structure, a four-story brick building, was completed in 2014.

Elmhurst Branch, Designed by Lord & Hewlett and completed in 1906, the Elmhurst Branch typified the suburban style of Carnegie libraries. It was a single story, freestanding structure within a larger lot. The library was built with an original landscaped rear garden, which was removed and replaced with a parking in the mid 20th century. The surrounding neighborhood, established as Dutch community in the 17th century, became a thriving multi-ethnic enclave in the 20th century. As such the library offered publications in Bengali, Chinese, English, Gujarati, Hindi, Korean, Spanish, Tagalog and Urdu. The Georgian Revival building survived 106 years through numerous renovations and additions before it was demolished in 2012, much to the disappointment of preservationists. It was replaced in 2016 by a larger modern glass and masonry structure.

The first European settlement in Elmhurst was founded in 1642 at the head of the Maspeth Creek. The town was destroyed due to increasing conflicts between Native Americans and the Dutch, and was replaced in 1652 by a new village located on safer ground inland, at what is now Queens Boulevard and Broadway. The English called the place Middelburgh, since Dutch authorities required a Dutch name, but referred to it as Newtown among themselves, to distinguish it from the old town at Maspeth. The 18th century was a period of prosperity for Newtown Village, population slowly increased and the local economy became more diversified. The proximity to New York allowed for crops to be sold in the open market or traded for manufactured goods, and also provided access to luxury goods and services. The road system was largely created during this time, connecting the outlying hamlets with the churches and town offices at Newtown, giving them access to the mills, the meadows and the shore. During the Revolution, the British Army occupied Newtown. Officers were billeted in the houses and buildings were repurposed for field hospitals, armories and headquarters. After the war, the town recovered gradually, mostly thanks to new practices and technologies in agriculture that boosted the economy. Social change was spurred by the abolition of slavery in New York State in 1827 and a group of newly freed African Americans established the first African Methodist Episcopla (A.ME.) Church and cemetery in the town. In the years before the Civil War, and during the first decade after, Newtown remained largely a one-street town. Although there was some commercial growth, and a new building was erected for the Newtown High school (site 6), attempts to expand the limits of the old village were unsuccessful. This began to change in 1869, when large estates were auctioned. In 1893, the Meyer brothers, led by Cord Meyer Jr., bought over 100 acres of the Samuel Lord estate to develop an ambitious plan for a new suburb northwest of the old Newtown Village. This development was planned to offer amenities rarely present in a rural district, and certainly nowhere else in Queens at the time: paved streets, a water system and private sewers. The project proved to be extremely successful, and the neighborhood became known for its fashionable housing developments and infrastructure. Cord Meyer, Jr. also lobbied to have the name of the village changed to Elmhurst, to avoid any association with the polluted Newtown Creek. The name is said to have been inspired by large, mature American elms that existed along Broadway, particularly in front of St. James Church (site 9a). Despite initial resistance from the townspeople to discard the historic name of the village, in 1896 the Post Office officially changed to Elmhurst. The opening of the subway in 1936 spurred local development which resulted in the destruction of much of the old village’s building stock, most notably the Moore Homestead (site 1). After the Second World War, Elmhurst became a place for architectural innovation. Influenced largely by the New York World’s Fair of 1964, buildings like the Pan American Hotel, the Queens Place Mal, and the former Jamaica Savings Bank branch changed the neighborhood’s landscape. In the 1980s, immigrants from many different countries changed Elmhurst from an almost exclusively white community to the most ethnically diverse neighborhood in the city.

Old St. James Episcopal Church. 1922. St. James is the oldest surviving Anglican building in New York City and the oldest structure in Elmhurst. Built in 1735, the single-story wood-frame church served the Anglican community in what was then the town of Newtown. By 1848 the parish had outgrown the building and moved to a new church, though the old building remained, as did its small churchyard cemetery. After the church moved to the new structure, this building was used as a Sunday School and parish hall. Its tower (part of the original building, and replaced in 1760) was destroyed in a storm in 1883 and never rebuilt. In the 1883 renovations after the tower collapse, Victorian architectural elements were added, such as drip moldings, decorative bracketing on the gables, and pointed arched window openings. A necessary and thorough restoration of the church was undertaken in 2004, and the church was brought back to its polished 1883 Victorian style. Today it is used as a meeting space for community groups. The church has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1999 and in 2017 was calendared for landmark designation.

W.F. Shattuck House at the southeast corner of Corona Avenue and 87th Place. The ornate, central tower of Newtown High School can be seen in the distance at left.

Dutch Reformed Church of Newtown, 1927. The Reformed Church of Newtown was founded in 1731 and built its first church building soon there after in a Greek Revival style. Early services were conducted in Dutch, the language of its farmer and tradesmen founders. That church stood for about 100 years, surviving the Revolutionary War when it was commandeered by British troops as an armory. In 1835 the original building was replaced by the present Georgian-style edifice. The church property also includes (unsurprisingly) a graveyard, likely dating to the founding of the congregation. Today the community, reflecting the multiculturalism that is present throughout Queens, the church now offers services in English and East Asian languages.

Elmhurst Baptist Church and rowhouses on Judge Street, 1936. The cobblestone church was built in 1902 and today offers services for the local Burmese and Indonesian communities.

In 1828, one year after the abolition of slavery in New York State, newly freed African Americans formed a religious community and congregation of their own. The United African Society, later known as the African Methodist Episcopal Church, established a church and burial ground at this site. St. Marks A.M.E Church started as a small church surrounded by a cemetery which would later be replaced by a new building thanks to the efforts made by the congregation and contributions from other local churches. Construction began in 1908, but only the shell of the building would be completed due to a lack of funds. In 1911, the Queens Building Department deemed it unsafe and ordered posts to be set up in the basement to hold up the weight of the floor. This prompted renewed efforts to raise money, and by the end of the year, the church was completed and dedicated. Little is known about what happened to this building, but in 1928 the congregation moved to a new location in North Corona and attempted to move their deceased, but the City of New York declined the request and only twenty remains were successfully transferred. While there are no physical markers that remain of this burial ground, documentation has determined that there are 310 interments, the majority of which remain beneath the earth today. Nearly forgotten, vast public interest of this site was awakened after Martha Peterson was found in an iron coffin in 2011. Ms. Peterson’s life — and death — was the subject of a special television program that aired on PBS in 2018. Though small plot of land has survived as a touchstone to one of the earliest freed African American communities in the region and its history is nearly as old as freed African American society in New York State itself. Photo courtesy of the Queens Library.