Story as it appeared in the Forest Hills Times
An excerpt:
Over the course of two days last week, a neglected underpass on Ascan Avenue was transformed into a work of art titled “A Tribute To Ascan Avenue & The Forest Hills Gardens.”
After the positive response last summer to the Ramones mural on Continental Avenue by street artists Crisp and Praxis, natives of Australia and Columbia respectively, this columnist approached them about creating a second mural.
The new mural pays homage to some of the founders of Forest Hills Gardens, including financier and railroad executive Russell Sage and philanthropist Margaret Olivia Slocum Sage, who with her husband’s fortune helped establish the Russell Sage Foundation, which purchased 142 acres for Forest Hills Gardens in 1909.
Also profiled is “King Farmer” Ascan Backus, regarded as one of the most successful 19th century commercial farmer in the northeast, when Forest Hills was known as Whitepot.
Also honored is Forest Hills Gardens’ principal architect Grosvenor Atterbury and urban planner and landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr.
