A changed neighborhood, but still a comfortable one

BY ROBERT POLNER | NEWSDAY STAFF WRITER

March 18, 2006

Elmhurst resident Marian Castano in front of her home. (Newsday Photo/ Alejandra Villa / December 28, 2005)

Marian Castano woke up one morning last summer to find her garage door scrawled with graffiti.

"It's still a nice neighborhood," insisted Castano, 70, who has lived in a two-family home in Elmhurst for 33 years, and who is impressed by the tidiness and courtesy of the recently arrived Asian neighbors, though distressed to see many older homes being replaced by multifamily structures of little character. "It looks like a trend," she said.

Castano's brother-in-law, his wife and their child rent the downstairs apartment in her modest home on St. James Street, and Castano said she has long been a volunteer and parishioner at St. Bartholomew's Church, a century-old community fixture at the corner of Ithaca Street and Whitney Avenue. And she likes to shop at stores such as Target on Queens Boulevard, and eat Colombian food on Corona Avenue, and Chinese and Malaysian, or sometimes a blend of both, on Broadway. She has no plans or desire to leave, despite her brush with vandalism, which she called a "kind of nuisance around here."

"I feel comfortable here, day or night."

Castano grew up in Manhattan. Her mother, who lived well into her 80s, helped Castano pick out her home, which she said cost $53,500 in 1973 and is now worth upward of $450,000, based on recent sales of comparable properties. Her father was a German seaman who jumped ship in the United States, "just in time for the Depression." He died in his late 30s, shortly after World War II, she said.

Castano's first husband, of Italian stock, also died relatively young, about 20 years ago, of a heart attack. Her second husband, whom she met when he was living in a house just behind hers, is from Colombia, and has lived in Elmhurst since the mid-1980s. "My feeling is that most of our neighbors are wonderful people. I just wish that they were a little more, well, 'English-speaking,'" she said.

"Even my husband" -- William, 65, a maintenance worker for Modell's -- "he speaks English but could do better. I always said that I'll learn Spanish when he learns to speak English more properly," she added, with a laugh.