Moving to Queens

Tommy & Patty on the front stoop, 1930

Right after Tommy, the youngest of the 13 kids, was born in 1929 the McNallys moved out of the city to Queens Village.

Dorothy, Grandma and Patty.

Jackie in the front row, about 1942.

Jackie, born to Marie in 1937,

lived with his grandparents in Queens Village during the '40s

 

It was a brick house with a front stoop, nicely landscaped.

 It looks Tudor style, a typical Queens Village house.

Whose first communion? A cousin?

There was a yard with a trellis.

Grandpa seems to have been the gardener. The cigar was a period gardening accessory.

Grandma and Grandpa about 1942

The address was 89-02 215th.

It was as an impressive accomplishment at the beginning of the Depression for a man with 13 children to buy a house in Queens Village---and to keep it. I imagine the older kids worked to help.

The house may be the same one at 89-02 215th Place that sold in October, 2009 for $440,000. Records say it was built in 1925. Today it has approximately 2,432 square feet of living space and is listed as a three-story house.  A lot of room for a lot of kids.

In 1930 none of the girls had married yet. Marie, the oldest was 23. Billie and Vera were in their twenties. Cele, Lora, Peggy and Ann were teenagers, Dot was 10, Kay 8,  Jack and Buddy were 6 and 4, Patty was 2 and Tommy was a baby.

After Adelphi Street in Brooklyn, Queens with it's 2-story commercial areas and boulevards planted with trees must have looked positively rural.

The family was part of the suburban migration leaving the city.

The newspapers in the 1920s were full of ads for dream homes on the island.

Queens Village is on the eastern edge of the borough.

Does anyone know when they left this house and moved to Floral Park?