Ridgewood, Queens: Myrtle Avenue, the County Line and the Onderdonk House

Myrtle Avenue is Ridgewood's commercial spine. The business improvement district along it is defined as Myrtle Avenue from Wyckoff Avenue to Fresh Pond Road and contiguous side streets including triangle parks. Clemens Triangle, at Myrtle Avenue, Cypress Avenue and Cornelia Street, and Myrtle Avenue Clemens Triangle, at Myrtle Avenue, Cypress Avenue and Putnam Avenue, are NYC Parks properties.

The Ridgewood Theater Building stands at 55-27 Myrtle Avenue. Its 1,950-seat William Fox moviehouse operated until March 2008, and the building is now occupied by a fitness club. The theater building and the Onderdonk House — which the Landmarks Preservation Commission designated under the name Adrian and Ann Wyckoff Onderdonk House — are Ridgewood's individually designated New York City landmarks.

The Commission has also designated historic districts across the neighborhood: Stockholm Street, LP-02081, designated November 28, 2000; Ridgewood North, LP-02319, calendared October 28, 2008 and designated September 15, 2009; Ridgewood South, LP-02348, calendared April 14, 2009 and designated October 26, 2010; and Central Ridgewood, LP-02448, calendared October 26, 2010 and designated December 9, 2014. Ridgewood North covers ground with entries on Forest Avenue, Gates Avenue, Grandview Avenue, Palmetto Street and Woodbine Street. A National Register district also carries the name Central Ridgewood Historic District, listed September 30, 1983 under reference number 83001762 — a different designation with different boundaries, thirty-one years earlier than the Commission's. The Ridgewood Fresh Pond Road-Myrtle Avenue Historic District, reference number 100007371, was listed on the National Register on January 26, 2022, covering generally Fresh Pond Road and Myrtle Avenue. According to NYC Parks, 3,982 local homes are on the National Register.

St. Matthias Roman Catholic Church, at 58-15 Catalpa Avenue, is on the National Register under reference number 12000599. The Commission's report on the Ridgewood South Historic District dates the combined church-and-school building to 1909 and the church itself to 1926.

The Queens Public Library's Ridgewood branch is at 20-12 Madison Street. Grover Cleveland High School is at 21-27 Himrod Street. P.S. 81Q Jean Paul Richter carries the name of a German writer. Middle Village Prep Charter School, at 68-02 Metropolitan Avenue, is placed in Ridgewood both by the Department of Education's own neighborhood field and by the city's 2020 tabulation-area boundaries, although postal usage on that address reads Middle Village.

The Vander Ende-Onderdonk House is at 1820 Flushing Avenue, at the corner of Flushing and Onderdonk Avenues, and the museum describes itself as located in Ridgewood on the border of Queens and Brooklyn. Its age is told differently by different bodies. The museum gives 1709. The Landmarks Preservation Commission's designation report, LP-1923, treats 1709 as the year the land changed hands — "The land changed hands several times prior to 1709, when one hundred acres were purchased by Paulus van Ende" — and puts the house itself in the third quarter of the eighteenth century, while LP-2081 says it was "Built in the last quarter of the eighteenth century." The distinction between the purchase of the land and the raising of the house is what separates the accounts.

The boundary story is told differently too. The Greater Ridgewood Historical Society says the building "was a prominent marker in the 1769 settlement of the boundary dispute between Bushwick in Kings County and Newtown in Queens County." NYC Parks says that "In 1769, English colonists settled the dispute by placing the 'Arbitration Rock' at the intersection of Montrose and Onderdonk Avenues, officially defining Ridgewood as a part of Queens." LP-1923 reads the 1769 survey the other way, noting that it placed the house in Bushwick, and records that "In 1937 a county boundary adjustment by the State of New York placed the Onderdonk House in Queens," footnoted to Chapter 929 of the New York State Laws of 1937. The Historical Society says the site is also the location of Arbitration Rock. The rock's original position, per NYC Parks, was the intersection of Montrose and Onderdonk Avenues.

The line kept moving on paper into the twentieth century. According to the neighborhood's Wikipedia article, "In 1925, the political boundary was adapted to the street grid, resulting in a zig-zag pattern." LP-2325 dates residents' vote to change their address to Queens to 1979. The postal change was a separate event: the same Wikipedia article, citing contemporaneous New York Daily News reporting, says 93 percent of the returned ballots voted for the change and that the change to ZIP Code 11385 was made effective January 13, 1980. Ridgewood itself was named for the reservoir, according to LP-2081; the Ridgewood Reservoir is in Brooklyn.

Gottscheer Hall is at 657 Fairview Avenue, and P.S. 81Q carries Jean Paul Richter's name. According to NYC Parks, the Ridgewood Times publisher George Schubel "expanded the newspaper to include the new station WHN" in 1920; "The station's lack of success nearly bankrupted the paper, and eventually Schubel sold WHN to Loew's Theaters." Schubel also wrote A History of Greater Ridgewood, published by the Ridgewood Times Publishing Co. in 1912. Ridgewood Savings Bank was chartered as Savings Bank of Ridgewood on June 18, 1921, and its headquarters, built in 1929 to designs by Halsey, McCormack and Helmer, Inc., stands at the intersection of Myrtle and Forest Avenues; Wikipedia calls it the largest mutual savings bank in New York State.

The 2010 census counted 69,317 people in Ridgewood; the 2000 count for the same area was 69,455. Starr Playground, at 210 Onderdonk Avenue, was renovated in 2022, and NYC Parks names ecuavolley among the games played there. Mafera Park, at 65 Place and Shaler Avenue, was known in its early years as Farmers Oval, Ridgewood Park and Glen Ridge Park, the last of those names referring, in NYC Parks' words, to "the park's location on the boundary between Glendale and Ridgewood." Evergreen Park, at 60-09 Saint Felix Avenue, is bounded by Metropolitan Avenue and Evergreen Cemetery. Rosemary's Playground is at 751 Woodward Avenue, Grover Cleveland Playground at 3-96 Grandview Avenue and Benninger Playground at 60-45 Madison Street.

Several of the neighborhood's businesses sit on these same streets. Rudy's Bakery and Café is at 905 Seneca Avenue, reachable at (718) 821-5890. Rolo's is at 853 Onderdonk Avenue. TV Eye, at 1647 Weirfield Street, describes its own location as on the Bushwick border. Trans-Pecos is at 915 Wyckoff Avenue, an address its own site prints as both Queens and Ridgewood.

The M train calls at Fresh Pond Road, Forest Avenue and Seneca Avenue, which the MTA records in Queens. The L calls at Halsey Street, which the MTA also records in Queens.

The Vander Ende-Onderdonk House names two buses in its own directions: the Q54 to Flushing and Metropolitan Avenues, and the B57 to Flushing and Onderdonk Avenues. The same directions send visitors to a Brooklyn subway station, the L to Jefferson Street — a fair measure of how the county line runs through this neighborhood's daily geography.

The house charges admission to enter the property, including the grounds. Its telephone number is (718) 456-1776.