It has been rainy and grey around here. This collection of J. L. Childs catalogs is a gloom fix!
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In 1874 John Lewis Childs of Buckfield, Maine, wrote to Charles Linnaeus Allen seeking employment. I guess he was invited down to Long Island because Childs arrived in East Hinsdale, Queens County. This area of Long Island had long been the home of florists and nurserymen as it was so close to the huge population in New York City’s boroughs. Childs became postmaster, and somehow got the name of the area changed to Floral Park. A fantastic address for a man who realized his future business was in mail order! By 1888 he was building a large brick seed house, donating lands so the community could establish churches, and soon had built a hotel, and an apartment house which was rented to his employees at a low rate and a printing house, the Mayflower Press, that could handle all his catalogs and printed matter.
This is the corner of Tulip and Violet Avenues in Floral Park today where Child's hotel was built.
I have no idea which corner...I am just showing a nice view.
Info distilled from Floral Park, Nassau County, By Walter E. Gosden
- By John Lewis Childs in 1893, printed at his own press -The Gladiolus: Its History, Species and Cultivation
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