Glendale, Queens: Myrtle Avenue, the Cemetery Belt and a Fight Over a ZIP Code

The United States Postal Service's Glendale Station is at 69-36 Myrtle Avenue, and FDNY Engine Company 286 and Ladder Company 135 share a house at 66-44 Myrtle Avenue. Zum Stammtisch, at 69-46 Myrtle Avenue, describes itself on its own site as a Bavarian-style pub, and its published telephone number is (718) 386-3014. The restaurant's own history names John Lehner, from Freising in Bavaria, as its founder, records an expansion in 1988 and Lehner's death in October 1993, and credits Hans and Werner with carrying the business on.

The Shops at Atlas Park is at 80-00 Cooper Avenue, and the Queens Public Library keeps an annex there; the Glendale branch itself is at 78-60 73rd Place. Sacred Heart R.C. Church and Sacred Heart Catholic Academy are at 83-17 78th Avenue, and St. Pancras R.C. Church is at 72-22 68th Street. Pinocchio Playground is at 74-01 78th Avenue, and the "Uncle" Vito F. Maranzano Glendale Playground is at 2869 Central Avenue. Drumm Triangle, where Cooper Avenue meets Cypress Hills Street and 65th Place, is called "a sanctuary for Glendale residents" on its NYC Parks sign. The Glendale Veterans Triangle, at Myrtle and Cooper Avenues, holds the Glendale War Memorial, whose monument record gives the People of Glendale as the donor. P.S. 91 is named after Richard Arkwright.

Wikipedia states that Cooper's Ale House, now "Yer Man's Irish Pub", is featured in the show The King of Queens as a local bar; Yer Man's is at 70-26 88th Street. Wikipedia also gives 89-70 Cooper Avenue as the house seen in the opening of All in the Family. That house is a private single-family residence, and its ZIP code is 11374.

Community District 5 covers Glendale together with Ridgewood, Maspeth and Middle Village, and its population of 166,924 and median household income of $71,234 are figures for that whole district rather than for Glendale alone.

NYC Parks gives Dry Harbor as Glendale's original name; Wikipedia gives Fresh Pond instead. Wikipedia describes Glendale as taking in the smaller areas of Evergreen and Liberty Park, and credits Liberty Park with the Ivanhoe Park Hose Company, a fire company organized in 1896 by Henry Meyer. NYC Parks places Mafera Park, in Ridgewood, on the boundary between Glendale and Ridgewood, and names a semi-professional team, the Glendale Farmers Base Ball Club.

According to Wikipedia, Glendale addresses were assigned Brooklyn ZIP codes in 1963, shared with Bushwick, and were moved to 11385 in 1980. The same article records that the campaign was revived in 2007 and again in 2012, and that a separate 11384 code was proposed for the neighborhood.

Sacred Heart's own parish history sets out the boundary drawn for the parish in 1929, beginning at the southeast corner of 78th Avenue and 75th Street; it is a dated account of where East Glendale was held to begin. The same parish history says the Glendale War Memorial included a German cannon captured by Andrew J. Hergenrother.

The National Register of Historic Places lists historic districts inside the neighborhood. The Cooper Avenue Row Historic District runs from 64-34 to 64-46 Cooper Avenue; the 75th Avenue-61st Street Historic District takes in 75-02 61st Street with adjoining stretches of 60th Lane and 62nd Street; and the Central Avenue Historic District is roughly bounded by Myrtle Avenue, 70th Avenue, 65th Street and 66th Street. Each district's own Wikipedia article opens by placing it in Glendale, Queens. The National Register itself disagrees: it files each of them under Ridgewood.

The Cemetery Belt rings Glendale. Mount Carmel Cemetery prints Glendale addresses for its main office and Section 1 at 83-45 Cypress Hills Street, for Sections 2 and 3 at 66-02 Cooper Avenue, for Section 4 at 82-99 Cypress Avenue and Cypress Hills Street, and for Section 6, Mount Neboh, at 82-07 Cypress Hills Street, and heads its own pages "Mount Carmel Cemetery / Glendale, NY." Section 5, Knollwood Park, the cemetery assigns to Ridgewood. Wikipedia, quoting The New York Times, says there are more tombstones in Glendale than living residents.

Glendale has no subway station. The M train calls at Fresh Pond Road and at Forest Avenue, both stations in Ridgewood, and at Metropolitan Avenue, which is in Middle Village.

The Long Island Rail Road's Glendale station closed in 1998, and no Long Island Rail Road station operates in the neighborhood now. Wikipedia describes the Fresh Pond and Fremont rail yards as located in Glendale, while its article on the Fresh Pond Road station places that station in Ridgewood, with the yard beyond it.

Myrtle Avenue runs through the neighborhood and carries the post office, the firehouse and Zum Stammtisch. Glendale borders Forest Park, and Wikipedia says the neighborhood contains part of it; the Department of City Planning treats the park as its own 2020 neighborhood tabulation area, QN8291, rather than part of any neighborhood's. Policing is by the NYPD's 104th Precinct. Glendale's ZIP code, 11385, also covers Ridgewood, so a postal address alone will not tell you which of the two you are in.