Then & Now: “The Most Difficult Turn” on the 1906 Vanderbilt Cup Course
John M: "My family has a legend connected to the Cup races. My Grandmother's family at one time lived in the house on the triangle at Mineola Avenue and Old Northern Boulevard. One year the race went by the house and they supposedly did a good business selling sandwiches and allowing parking for a very high price to race goers out from the city."
John, the good news is your family's home is still standing at the intersection of Mineola Aveune and Old Northern Boulevard. Here's a "Then and Now" look.
The turn with the house in the background was featured in a Brooklyn Daily Eagle postcard as part of a series documenting the 1906 course.
The cover article in the August 23, 1906 issue of Automobile described this corner as "the most difficult turn" on the 1906 course.
During the race, Duray's Lorraine-Dietrich was seen overtaking Shepard's Hotchkiss at the turn.
Here's the turn as it looks today. The house is now a doctors' office in a section called "The Triangle".
A close-up shows that the 1906 stone wall surrounding the house is still there today!
Comments
From John M:
“That’s it. My Grandmother’s family name was Tilley. There is a street by that name in Sea Cliff. However, her Mother was married twice, and I can not remember the stepfather’s last name.
Maude Tilley by all accounts was a bit of a rebel, somewhere there is a WWI era photo of her in an airplane, and evidently she did fly as a passenger. By the time she married my Grandfather, in the late 1920’s, she had evidently settled down, and that may have been her second marriage. Family age and times of death means there was very little opportunity to get much info from my Father or Grandparents re that side of my family.”