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Reply to "NJ HiRailers H.C. Bohack Beer Special run Atlas 40 ft Reefer"

Hi Ben,

Ordered my Bohack car set. As the saying goes, “The check’s in the mail.”

Bohack holds a special place in my memory for a couple of reasons. First, of course, is shopping with my mother at our local Bohack’s in Valley Stream, which was only a short distance from where I grew up. It was just south of Sunrise Highway on Rockaway Avenue, the village’s “Main Street.”

But a more vivid memory is of their headquarters and enormous facility in Queens, on Metropolitan Avenue, near its intersection with Flushing Avenue. In fact, the intersection of Metropolitan and Flushing avenues was called “Bohack Square.” (Today, there’s an office building just east of there called Bohack Square.) My dad owned a small auto repair shop on Flushing Avenue, a half-block west of Metropolitan Avenue, the back of which was directly across the street from Bohack’s corporate headquarters building, see attached photo from an internet site on NYC history. (Dad’s building, which he leased, is still there; today it’s a body shop.) The Bohack headquarters building only recently—less than ten years ago—was torn down. But long after Bohack ceased operations the building’s facade still had “H.C. Bohack Co.” above the front doors, see the second photo. Bohack had a huge facility there, which received freight cars—mostly boxcars and reefers—full of meat and grocery items daily. When I was a kid in the early-/mid-’60s, when I’d go to work with my dad on Saturdays and during summer breaks from school, I used to love watching the trains cross Metropolitan Avenue and head into the Bohack property. There was even a Bohack restaurant near the same intersection. The third photo is from a Google image dated November 2020 of a chimney on Flushing Avenue, just off of Metropolitan that clearly still shows the Bohack name on it, more than 40 years after Bohack’s demise.

I look forward to getting my cars. They'll always bring back memories of my childhood.

Stay well.

Chris

Attachments

Images (3)
  • Bohack headquarters building, Metropolitan Avenue
  • Closeup of facade of Bohack headquarters building, Metropolitan Avenue
  • Nov. 2020 Google image of old Bohack chimney on Flushing Ave. near Metropolitan Ave., Ridgewood, Queens

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