History:

Tennisport is a sad sad sad tale of LIC History.



It's a story of a family run business, given the boot by a government that just plain doesn't represent the people anymore. These people built a business in an area that, at the time, no one wanted to touch. They survived and drew the rich and famous to their courts. Hell, John McEnroe paid for a court to be built there.



Tennisport first opened 33 years ago. It was the late 70s - a time when LIC was sucking wind. Manufacturing jobs first started to dry up around this time. The Daily News closed up shop, along with the BEDT and countless others. Even the LIRR's old freight yard shut down - a victim of too few goods to be shipped out.


The view of midtown manhattan though, was priceless - priceless enough for the government to force the owners to sell their property via threats of eminent domain.


The closure of Tennisport, along with the closure of The East River Tennis Club and LIC Indoor Tennis (scene of the the legendary 2005 LTV Invitational), has resulted in a serious reduction in tennis playing options within NYC.




Exploring:
When I saw the plywood fences go up, I knew I had to get to work. Tennisport had lay vacant for nearly a year and it's days were up. Heavy equipment soon arrived on the scene and it was now or never.

Access was a mild bitch. With the attack hoovercraft in the shop, we had wait until real late at night to get past the obsticles without being spotted by the new petulant residents of what was once the LIC I knew so well. These scum... they don't deserve to say they have anything to do with LIC... But I digress.

Exploring abandoned buildings is usually a very quiet, relaxing act. That was not the case here. The nearby nightclub 'Water Taxi Beach' features loud ridiculous music and probably a secret room in the back where Bloomturd can go sniff his coke. Why else would this place be the only business still open on the lower LIC waterfront??? Surely it's not for their 'public transportation'.

Anyway - the tennis courts were being bulldozed left and right. The building interiors were stripped nearly bare with the except of some leftovers in the kitchen and behind the bar.

The interior of the historic former Queens County Bank building stood vacant with the except of a small apartment upstairs. The loss of this historic building is truly sad. Surely it could have been made into some sort of park building or visitor center.  


On the way out we shot some more shots of the skylines. I didn't really want to walk away from this one, knowing that it'd be gone completely the next time I came by. Sure enough within 2 weeks Tennisport was basically gone without a trace.