STEVENS HOUSE
Vernon Boulevard and 30th Road, Astoria
MAY 25, 1937. ABBOTT FILE 242

The Long Island village of Astoria, named after much dispute for socially powerful John Jacob Astor, was founded in 1839 by prominent New York families as a site for their country estates on the banks of the East River. The same day she photographed the Queensboro and Hell Gate Bridges, Abbott photographed two of Astoria's crumbling mansions. One had belonged to Ebenezer Stevens, a Revolutionary War general who purchased the house from an Englishman in 1784. By 1870, the Stevens family had sold the house, and when Abbott visited, it was condemned and soon thereafter demolished. A single-story industrial building occupies the site today.

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