St. Agnes was the name of the street in 1905. It was later named Palmer Avenue.
BETWEEN BASSETT AVENUE AND STILLWELL AVENUE:
As late as the 1960s there was a lot of vacant land that extended between Palmer Avenue and DeReimer Avenue, from Bassett Avenue to Stillwell Avenue. That wooded area was the frequent playground of all the kids and teenagers.
There was a rope swing with a rope knot as a seat hung from a high tree branch. What fun to swing on that swing. But if you didn't cushion the rope seat with something, you sure felt it later!
There was also a pigeon coop located in that wooded area that the boys tended to.
The wooded area had a lot of trees and bushes, and pretty little woodland flowers to dress it up.
There was a worn-down path, often used to cut between Palmer Avenue and DeReimer Avenue - rather than walk all the way to Stillwell Avenue to get from one block to the other.
At one end of the wooded area near the iron/steel works building along Bassett Avenue there was another well-worn path to cut between both Palmer and DeReimer Avenues.
Eventually the beautiful woodland between Palmer and DeReimer Avenues was sacrificed to the building of new houses, the tree rope swing and home-made pigeon coop taken down - new residents not even knowing about their existences, but not forgotten by those of us who played in that area in a bygone time.
BETWEEN STILLWELL AVENUE AND THE HUTCHINSON RIVER PARKWAY:
When the exit ramp from the Bruckner Expressway to the neighborhood and then to the Hutchinson River Parkway was built, it required the land that had been home to many houses on Palmer Avenue. All the houses that were odd-numbered from 2301 - 2399 were razed, demolished, taken probably by eminent domain by the city of New York, to create the ramp that eventually split between the neighborhood and the Parkway.
What the ramps gave us were two beautiful green fields where the neighborhood kids could play. The lower field along Palmer Avenue was often used to play ball. The upper field along the Expressway and the Parkway was used in the winter for sleigh riding. It even had a variety of slopes - almost flat, used by the smallest children to slide down, to steep which - if you slid down fast enough - made one end up just short of landing on the Parkway itself! Both fields yielded clover. The honeysuckle clover flower could be picked and you could suck out the honey from the pink flower petals - competing, of course, with the bees. The green clover always led to a search for the elusive, rare, lucky four-leaf clover. Dandelion leaves, if they were young, could be picked and brought home to make a dandelion leaf salad, or cooked into a soup or just as cooked greens. But they had to be the young leaves; the old leaves were bitter. The dandelion flower stems would be picked and split into four stems that curled up to make pretty ringlets. Even the lowly plantain weeds were fun to play with. You had to have a special knack to wrap up the stem and snap off the seed head of the weed.