Issue date: 9/26/07 Section: Features

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[Click to enlarge]

Two years ago, on Sept. 15, 2005, to be exact, I found myself at Flushing Cemetery in the unlikely position of attending a ceremony given by the Central Queens Historical Society to honor Charles S. Colden, the founder of Queens College. On this warm and sunny late summer's day, a group of diverse people had been invited to come together to commemorate the 45th anniversary of his passing.

As I turned my car off Pidgeon Meadow Road, bearing left onto 46th Avenue, I entered Flushing Cemetery. Established in 1853, the non-denominational cemetery looked surprisingly lush and very well maintained. I drove past a striking monument that I quickly realized was a memorial to the World Trade Center. For on its center stone of black granite, were the unmistakable images of the two Trade Center towers. As I continued to drive along Northern Avenue, I passed landscape graced with magnificent Japanese Maples, huge Rhododendrons, European Weeping Beeches, American Elms and many other beautiful bushes, flowers and trees. It seemed to me more like a botanical garden than a burial place. Finally, I reached Section 7, parked my car, and advanced to the Colden stone where a small gathering of people had formed.

Standing in a loose semicircle around the grave site we would listen to Jeff Gottlieb, president of CQHA, speak of the man he referred to as the "Father of Queens College." Charles S. Colden, I would learn, was born in Whitestone in 1885, was a life-long resident of Queens, and a graduate of New York University Law School. Colden, who was bright, energetic, civic-minded and possessed a friendly manner, set up private practice in Whitestone in 1921. Over the years he served Queens in many capacities, among them: president of Flushing Savings Bank, trustee of Flushing Hospital, district attorney of Queens County, and he was on the County Court for 14 years until he was elected to the Queens County Supreme Court bench in 1942. But his greatest achievement was the founding of Queens College, a long political struggle in the face of a major Depression.

The story is as follows:

In 1934 at the request of his friend, Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, Charles Colden convened a Grand Jury to look into charges about a brutality scandal in the Parental School for wayward boys in Flushing. As a result of Colden's findings - for the school had indeed been misgoverned - the school was ordered closed. Charles Colden then led a major civic effort calling for a "Queens" college to be built on the site of the closed school, which resulted in hundreds of thousands of petition signatures. On a Christmas-day call to Colden in 1936, Mayor LaGuardia approved the concept of the college, and the Board of Higher Education and Apportionment allocated a bare $425,000 for its creation. On Oct. 11, 1937, Queens College opened its doors. Colden and the people of Queens had finally won their college!

Colden continued to be a champion of Queens College - lobbying for more land and capitol budget allocations for its expansion - by organizing and becoming the first and only president of the Queens College Association. In 1946, the faculty at Queens College voted him a Ffiend of Queens College and in 1956 he received an honorary doctorate. Colden died as a result of a fall during his vacation on Sept. 14, 1960. The following year, the newly constructed auditorium was named in his honor. Colden Center for the Performing Arts, in continuous operation since 1961, has recently been renamed Kupferberg Center due to a generous gift from fellow Queens residents, Max and Selma Kupferberg. But the Charles S. Colden Auditorium retains its original name - to commemorate the civic-minded goals envisioned and brought to reality by a foresighted American.

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