This is a quick park and grab geocache. The area is usually full of muggles, so use caution and stealth. The cache is an empty M&M's tube, big enough for a pencil and some small trinkets. Welcome to Astoria!
Astoria is the neighborhood in northwestern Queens (pop. approx. 225,000), constituting the part of Long Island City north of Broadway, east of the East River, west of roughly 51st Street and south of the Long Island Sound. There may be as many geographic descriptions of Astoria as there are residents. It was developed from 1839 by Stephen A. Halsey, a fur merchant who petitioned the state legislature to name it for the prominent fur trader John Jacob Astor, in an unsuccessful effort to have Astor become a financial patron of the area. During the 1840s and 1850s it grew slowly inland from the ferry landing at the foot of Astoria Boulevard (where an early settlement was known as Hallett's Cove). Wealthy New Yorkers built mansions on 12th and 14th streets and on 27th Avenue. The German United Cabinet Workers brought four farms in 1869 between 35th and 50th streets and developed a German town. In the following year Schuetzen Park was laid out at Broadway and Steinway Street (this remained a landmark for half a century) and a large trace on both sides of Steinway Street from Astoria Boulevard to the East River was bought by the piano maker William Steinway, who set up factories along the shore and a village to their south. On May 4, 1870, Astoria, Hunter's Point, Steinway and Ravenswood consolidated to form Long Island City. Treacherous reefs in Hell's Gate were dynamited in 1876 and 1885 at the behest of the federal government. Thousands of houses were built during the 1890s and the early twentieth century. The shore of the East River became a park in 1913, and the first rapid transit line, the Astoria elevated, opened on 31st Street on February 1, 1917. Many six family apartment buildings and housing projects were added during the 1920s and 1930s.
A little guitar pick for the FTF! Congrats to PON NYC on the FTF!