I recently learned that between Greenpoint and Long Island City—more specifically, between Newtown Creek, Calvary Cemetery, and the Long Island Expressway— is a neighborhood called Blissville. Do you know it?
This small triangle of western Queens is home to the biggest cemetery in America by number of interments, a fortune cookie factory that churns out 4.5 million cookies every day, and one of the last American factories making Statue of Liberty figurines.
Its namesake, Neziah Bliss, was a 19th-century industrialist who built steamship engines, developed much of the Greenpoint waterfront, and established ferry service between Greenpoint and Manhattan. Thanks to Bliss, by the mid-19th century the shores of Newtown Creek were soon lined with glue factories, refineries, and fat-rendering plants. In 1856, the city began dumping raw sewage into the water. And today, the creek is still one of America’s most polluted waterways. (The city still warns women under 50 and children under 15: do! not! eat! the! crabs!)
As 19th-century Manhattan’s cemeteries became overcrowded, the old St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Mulberry Street began buying up land in western Queens to bury its dead, opening Calvary Cemetery in 1848. Unlike Greenwood in Brooklyn and Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, which were designed as tranquil getaways from the crush of the city, Calvary Cemetery was more of a functional space for burials, primarily of the working class. (Annie Moore, the first immigrant to pass through Ellis Island, was buried there). Plots cost $7, and family members often dug the graves themselves. More than 3 million people are buried at Calvary today.
According to artist Hank Linhart, who released documentary about Blissville a few years ago, in the 1930s the neighborhood was home a large Romani village—“Ludar from Romania, noted for training bears for circuses.” In 1939, under the instructions of Robert Moses, the village was razed to create highway access to the World’s Fair.
In more recent years, Blissville was in the news as locals—which numbered 450 in 2018, according to NPR—rallied against the opening of a third homeless shelter, concerned that the homeless population would outnumber area residents in a community that doesn’t really have grocery stores, or laundromats, or medical clinics, and where the the closest subway station is about a mile away. Meanwhile, Long Island City—of which Blissville is technically a part—was the nation’s fastest-growing neighborhood in 2017. “A tale of two Long Island Cities,” as The Guardian called it.
I biked there earlier this summer, past trucks clattering over the Greenpoint Avenue Bridge, and a bar called Bantry Bay Publick House, and the iron cemetery gates. Past auto body shops and workers taking their cigarette breaks. “Here I am, in Blissville, Queens,” I thought. It felt exciting to go somewhere I’d never been before. Then I turned around and biked home.
150
number of families, 80% of whom have mental or physical disabilities, that the city is relocating from a midtown shelter to make room for homeless men being cleared out from the Lucerne Hotel to appease angry Upper West Siders. (NY Daily News)
Around town…
-A profile of one MTA bus driver steering through the pandemic and an uprising: “‘We were being lionized as heroic three months ago,’ he said. But now ‘we’re back to business as usual.’” (New Yorker)
- On the COVID-testing “whisper network”: “You shouldn’t have to go through a comment thread on Twitter to figure this out” (NY Post). FWIW that’s exactly what I did— I’ve been tested at the NY Health + Hospitals Fort Greene three times, and my results have come in faster than the last. Shortest turnaround was one day.
-When you find an escaped prisoner hiding behind your loom: “Terry Pierson was sitting in his Sunset Park home watching TV and drinking scotch on Wednesday night when he noticed an "odd lump" beneath his loom.” (Gothamist)
Didn’t think to take a photo, but spotted this banner flying over Jacob Riis Beach last weekend: