Defunct Queens airports you’ve never heard of

JFK used to be Idlewild. LaGuardia was North Beach Airport, and before that, Glenn H. Curtiss Airport.

But predating both was little Flushing Airport, just a mile from where LaGuardia would be built (as this 1960s-era Texaco road map reveals).

“Flushing Airport was opened in 1927 as Speed’s Airport (named for former owner Anthony “Speed” Hanzlick),” states airfields-freeman.com. “It became the busiest airport in New York City for a time.”

Once LaGuardia hit the scene, four-runway Flushing lost traffic. In the 1960s and 1970s, it was used for blimps. It shut down in 1984.

A similar fate befell Holmes Airport, launched in 1929 by a real estate developer on 220 acres in Jackson Heights.

Holmes was busy—for a time. Eastern scheduled flights to Miami; bizarre promotions offered $1 short flights.

But then ground broke for LaGuardia. Holmes’ owners tried to get a court injunction to stop construction.

It didn’t work. LaGuardia opened in 1939; Holmes closed in 1940. The Bulova Watch Factory was built on the site.

An early view of Victorian Flatbush

These gorgeous homes are just as lovely today as they were in 1901, the year stamped on the back of this postcard.

That’s right about when Flatbush was colonized into middle-class neighborhoods of single-family houses.

“No section of Brooklyn has witnessed a more attractive and satisfactory development than the Flatbush section,” reports a New York Times article from 1910, kind of an early “If You’re Thinking of Living in” piece.

“Enjoying good transit facilities, with pleasant surroundings and admirably situated lots, it is not surprising that thousands of residents who wish to be close to the centres of the city’s commercial industries and yet possess the advantages of pleasant suburban homes have chosen Flatbush as a home site.”

I wish I could make out the handwriting at the top left. It looks like “565 East 31st Street.” It must be the address of the sender rather than the cross street in the postcard, since East 31st Street doesn’t cross Ocean Avenue.