Queens’ record keeper: Jason Antos named borough historian
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Jason Antos, the newly appointed Queens borough historian. Eagle photo by Ryan Schwach
By Ryan Schwach
Did you know that the first ever baseball game with paid admission took place in Queens? Or that British people in Western Queens were pivotal in pushing the Dutch out of New York? What about the story of Far Rockaway’s trolley system?
Queens’ new borough historian, Jason Antos, did.
Antos, a 44-year-old lifelong Whitestone resident, was named as the next Queens historian by Borough President Donovan Richards last week. He is believed to be the youngest person ever to hold the role – and it may be left up to him to confirm that fact.
He is now the newest in a line of historians responsible for the preservation and chronicling of over 400 years of Queens County’s diverse and often fascinating chronology.
“I've been chronicling the history of Queens for 30 years,” he told the Eagle, speaking from his office at the Queens Historical Society. His office, which doubles as the society’s library, sits on the second floor of Kingsland Homestead, an 18th Century farmhouse smack in the middle of the densely populated streets of Downtown Flushing.
He succeeded the previous borough historian, Jack Eichenbaum, who died in 2023.
“I'm very honored and very blessed,” he said of his new role. “I'm proud to be doing it. It started from a hobby and a curiosity, and I was able to make a career out of it, which is pretty awesome.”
“It's a big responsibility,” he added. “[New York City] the largest great metropolis of the world, and I'm the official historian for one of the boroughs.”
Growing up in Queens’ northern neighborhoods, it was old houses that first got Antos hooked on history.
A report in grade school at P.S 193 tasked a young Antos with researching any topic he wanted. His mother remarked to him that a nearby house had once belonged to famous magician Harry Houdini, so he and his friend went over to investigate.
The owner of the house let them in, and showed them a trap door in the floor and a door that led to nowhere. It was fascinating to the young Queens kids.
It turned out that the home never did belong to the famous illusionist. It instead belonged to Howard Thurston, one of Houdini’s magical forebears. With no books at the library on the lesser known Thurston, he and his friend abandoned the idea as their report topic.
While the original project, much like the trap door, led to nowhere, it marked the first in a long line of Queens historical ventures that Antos would soon dedicate his entire adult life to.
After school, Antos attended CW Post in Long Island, and worked for a brief time at Random House Publishing. He also helped his father at the luncheonette he owned on Rockaway Turnpike.
He wanted to become a writer, and his eye again turned to history.
“I was still writing about local history, and walking around photographing [historic] sites,” he said.
The internet made it easier, with blogs popping up on various niche topics related to New York and Queens history.
“I was blown away by them, I was so fascinated,” he said. “I made it a hobby of mine to just going to all these locations.”
He began to realize how close he was, and had always been, to a number of small historical sites in Queens and New York City.
Sometimes he would grab a friend and go looking for an historic place.
“They’d be like, ‘This is what you do in your spare time, bro?’” he recalled.
After college, Antos went to study journalism at the University of Miami’s graduate school, which is where he finally figured out he could join together his two loves.
“That's where it began,” he said. “I had a focus in journalism, and then I said, ‘You know what? I'm going to combine both. I'm going to do journalism, but I want to write about New York history and New York contemporary things. I want to write about New York.’”
A few years later, he began research for his first published book, a history of his hometown of Whitestone.
That’s also how we got involved with the Queens Historical Society, and became acquainted with some of his borough historian predecessors.
“There was always a group of people, be it one or be it a dozen, who knew that this was a very special place,” he said.
The Queens Historical Society is based in Flushing. Eagle photo by Ryan Schwach
Since then, he has built a career on Queens’ history. He has written eight books in total on the borough's timeline, and has been executive director of the Queens Historical Society since 2021.
Queens, he said, is full of fascinating history.
“There's so much that has happened here in 400 years,” he said.
He points to the diversity, where it came from, and how people settled in a swamp that would one day be known as the World’s Borough, a collection of neighborhoods all collectively making up a vibrant whole.
“The boroughwide history is the history of the neighborhoods,” he added. “The history of every neighborhood is different and has its own contribution.”
After dedicating his life to the history of the borough, Antos began to realize the work was personal.
“This is where my parents met, this is where I went to school for everything from kindergarten through high school, this is where all my friends are,” he said. “This is where everything in my life is.”
In his role as the borough historian, Antos will help establish and develop programs, while also helping preserve and chronicle the history of Queens through tours and presentations.
His dream in the new job is to help spread the importance of Queens’ history, even further.
“One of my goals while I have this position is to work with the Department of Education, also with the borough president's office, to make up some kind of curriculum that could be taught in the public school or in charter school,” he said. “I think it would be a wonderful thing if Queens took the lead in making some sort of curriculum where it's infused in the learning.”
“Queens could do what Queens does best, and that is to be the first,” he added. “We've been the first in many things in our hundreds, hundreds of years of history.”
On top of his work as the new borough historian, Antos is working on a book on the history of Woodside and Sunnyside, which he hopes to publish by this time next year.
“I'm still learning,” he said. “To this very day.”
