Bohack Square is located on the border of New York’s three most burgeoning neighborhoods: Bushwick, East Williamsburg, Ridgewood and Maspeth. These four neighborhoods have become major enclaves for the bohemian, creative class professionals.

 

Right around the corner from Bohack Square is the Knockdown Center, a three-acre 50,000 square foot arts center that hosts exhibitions, lectures and concerts. Ridgewood’s hottest restaurant Bunker, a Vietnamese joint where fleets of customers line up to dine, is just down the stretch from the Square on Metropolitan Avenue.

 

The neighborhood’s artistic essence and unabashed grit makes it so attractive for creative professionals, business owners, residents and visitors alike.

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The intersection of Metropolitan and Flushing avenues was the seat of operations for supermarket king Henry C. Bohack, who owned hundreds of supermarkets throughout Brooklyn, Queens and Long Island. The complex was so big that technically parts of it were in Brooklyn, Maspeth and Ridgewood because it straddled the borders of these three areas. The supermarket complex employed over 5,000 people.

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The supermarket chain faltered after Bohack’s death, struggling to survive through a succession of management teams that all lacked Bohack’s dominating will and ability to make decisions that kept up with the changing times.

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A group of Puerto Rican businessmen were in charge of the company when they made the final, painful decision to close their doors forever in 1972.

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The huge complex went through many tenants—from moving and storage, a chocolate factory, and lighting manufacturing manufacturing railroad branch, whose form still influences the site today.

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The name Bohack is still faintly visible on many of the buildings for many years, testament to the great empire that once thrived here and that we look to honor by merging the legacy of the Bohack’s with the contemporary culture, art and heritage of the neighborhood.

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-Some information comes from Queens Chronicles News Paper