Firewood Briarwood, NY

The neighborhood is named for the Briarwood Land Company, headed by Herbert A. O’Brien, which built housing there around 1905 or 1907. O’Brien decided on the name Briarwood because of the brambles in its thick woods. The Ottilie Orphan Home was built on 148th Street in 1906. The Briarwood Land Company went bankrupt soon afterward, however, and the area was largely empty until 1924 when it was divided and sold at auction. Land went for $300 each for inside residential lots to $2,800 for lots along Queens Boulevard. Over the next four years, several single-family homes were built on the land. Briarwood’s first school, P.S. 117, was built in 1927. Additional land was auctioned in 1928.

On May 30, 1928, about 500 members of the Klansmen of Queens assembled in the forest of Briarwood. They burned a 50-foot cross, sang songs, and gave speeches. When police officers arrived, the group’s leader, Major Emmett J. Smith, said that they had the right to assemble and speak on the land, because they had signed a lease to the land the previous day. The group soon left the area, without any physical violence or arrests having taken place.

In 1936, a company called Briarwood Estates, owned by Leon, Morty and A. B. Wolosoff, started building Colonial and old English-style homes north of 84th Drive and west of Main Street. The homes sold for about $5,000, the equivalent to $110,000 in 2023. After World War II ended, other developers built houses closer to Parsons Boulevard.