queens

Queens, in many ways, is the youngest of the five boroughs. It became a part of the city when its widely separated towns joined with the Bronx, Brooklyn, Staten Island and Manhattan in 1898 to become the five boroughs. Part of Queens, though, wanted nothing to do with New York City and so the Queens towns of Hempstead, North Hempstead and Oyster Bay decided to form their own Nassau County.

In this Hammond map of Queens ca. 1910, much of eastern Queens is barely recognizable.

Until after World War One, much of Queens remained farmland or even empty woods, with only widely separated little hamlets in the eastern section such as Springfield, Locust Lawn, Bay Edge and Idlewild Park. The first roads through the eastern stretches of Queens were Locust Avenue (now Baisley Boulevard), Central Avenue (now Linden Boulevard), New York Avenue (now Guy Brewer Boulevard), Old Country Road (now Hollis Avenue), Springfield Road (now Boulevard) and Farmers Avenue (now Boulevard, which dates back to the days when there were real farmers in Queens).

So when you go looking for alleys in Queens, you're more likely to find vestiges of old roads that were once important, but have gradually, imperceptibly, gone out of use over the long decades. Queens has quite a number of them for the intrepid alley hunter.

Elsewhere on Jaegers Lane are the usual abandoned car or two, but the real find is the wrecked house in the woods at the end of the lane just before you come to the Belt Parkway. At one time this house was something quite grand. It was a forgotten hulk on an abandoned road. Its address was 11 Jaegers Lane. Now demolished.

A short, eminently forgettable stretch of road just east of Cross Bay Boulevard between Albert Road and N. Conduit Avenue, Jaegers Lane doesn't show up on most maps, but still exists as a dirt trail into the woods. It remains unmarked by the DOT.

The house on the corner of Albert Road and Jaegers Lane, however, faces the abandoned road, which gives a clue to its former prominence.

2002 update: all the scenes shown here have vanished. The old house is gone; the brush has been cleared; and new homes are being constructed on the site. Tempus is fugiting. RIP Jaegers!

Photos above and at right by Jeff Saltzman

The site looks like this now. Jaegers Lane is still recognizable as a short lane on Alberts Lane near Cross Bay Blvd.

One of the main roads of southern Queens from the late 1800s and early 1900s, the Old South Road, which ran from approximately the borough line with Brooklyn all the way to about where 150th Street is now. It paralleled the aqueduct from which Aqueduct Raceway and Conduit Blvd / N. & S. Conduit Avenues are named. (The ruins of the remarkable 1889 Romanesque pumping station that served one of the reservoirs along this aqueduct can still be seen from the Long Island Railroad in Freeport, east of the Baldwin station on the south shore).

But those aren't the only remains of Old South Road. Its twisting route has been assumed by two other roads in Ozone Park: Pitkin Avenue, and shown at right near Cohancy Street, Albert Road.

Today, the Old South Road exists in two separate pieces: the one shown at left, a short stretch between 76th and 77th Streets north of Pitkin Avenue, and another one located between the Belt Parkway and Kennedy Airport between 126th and 130th Streets.

Left off most Queens maps is the very short Doxsey Place, which can nevertheless be found between Silver Road and Cross Bay Boulevard north of 133rd Avenue.

While most of the old route of Old South Road was taken over by the Belt Parkway, a small piece of it branches from S. Conduit Avenue and extends to 130th Street in South Ozone Park.

Old South Road (on the right) branches away from the Belt Parkway at 124th Street

Linden Blvd. and DeSarc Road

Huh? Linden Boulevard, with a dead end sign on one of its corners?

The once-mighty, pedal to the metal Linden Boulevard, which at one stretch in Brooklyn assumes ten traffic lanes, is just a ghost of its former self once it reaches Ozone Park in Queens.

After emptying into Conduit Blvd, near the Queens border, Linden Blvd. is represented in Ozone Park by two dead end stubs, one on Pitkin Avenue and another one on DeSarc Road. They may be part of what was once a master plan to extend it through Ozone Park (as 133rd Avenue was some years ago).

Linden Boulevard catches its second wind at Rockaway Blvd. and Aqueduct Raceway, and continues all the way to Elmont in Nassau County.

Turning our attention now to Ridgewood, the part of Queens that most resembles Brooklyn because of its rows of brownstone buildings and brick apartments. Ridgewood shares a border with Brooklyn along Wyckoff and Cypress Avenues for the most part. In the past, Ridgewood was mostly a German neighborhood and was known as Old Germania Heights. The Dutch originally possessed the area and some area streets like Onderdonk Avenue and Suydam Street are Dutch in origin. Few German names persist in the neighborhood, with some exceptions...

It looks for all the world like a private driveway wedged between an apartment building and the M train elevated tracks on 60th Place, but Kleupfel Court is an actual street, appearing on city records and marked by the DOT. Two private homes are a short walk down the alley. (The DOT, true to form, misspells the street name.)

A short walk from Kleupfel Court along Putnam Avenue, which parallels the M train el tracks is tiny Stier Place, in what is (in my opinion) one of the most beautiful areas of Queens. Stier Place is hemmed in by gorgeous brownstone buildings on all sides. And, on the corner of Stier Place and Putnam is a true relic...

The Ridgewood Democratic Club is a building still pretty much in the same condition it was back in the 1930s, at the very least. Its original stained glass windows, still marked with an interlocking RDC, are still in place although cracked and somewhat the worse for wear.

According to Charles Ober, President of the Ridgewood Democratic Club, the building was purchased by the Ridgewood Democratic Club (founded 1908) in 1916. It was expanded and renovated to the current configuration in 1917 and the club moved in that year. A large two-story extension with a full basement was built to the rear of the building at that time. Shortly after the club moved into the building membership hit 1400 members; the membership hit a height of 2,000 and declined after 1950. There are currently 200 people on the club's mailing list and approximately 100 members. The lobby of the club is rather interesting: the floor has a mosaic with the name of the club in it, and there is a painting of the founder (Carl Berger, who served as president for some twenty years) with a brass plaque under it. In 2004, the most important elected official associated with the club is Assemblywoman Catherine Nolan, who is a Ridgewood native.

Bunnecke Court is a dead-end alley on Grove Street near 60th Place in Ridgewood.

Moving on to Elmhurst, a short ride northeast from Ridgewood, we find a couple of streets that don't look like much, but harbor some surprises when you take a closer look.

O'Connell Court, on 50th Avenue near 88th Street, looks like a number of other cul de sacs in this pleasant middle class neighborhood. But you have to walk down O'Connell Court to ascertain its true character.

Because O'Connell Court is L-shaped, residents in the inner crook of the "L" get a view of the massive Newtown High School, which towers over the little enclave like a medieval castle!

Breaking away from Elmhurst, in an area of Queens that has more in common with Long Island than with New York City...

Sandhill Road meanders in Little Neck from Douglas Road in Douglaston all the way to Little Neck Parkway and the LIRR Little Neck station. The DOT doesn't acknowledge its existence and refuses to mark it.

Oddly, rural Sandhill Road is the only through route between Douglaston and Little Neck north of Northern Boulevard. It runs through the preserved wetlands of Udalls Cove.

Sandhill Road near its junction with Little Neck Parkway and the LIRR

A sign installed by the neighborhood at Douglas Road proclaims the road as Sandhill Road. Meanwhile a DOT sign nearby has it as Bayshore Road.

Residents call it Sandhill Road.

Sandhill Road winds through Udalls Cove near Douglas Road

And finally a smattering of alleys from around the borough.

8th Road is a country lane tucked away in Whitestone between 149th and 150th Streets.

8th Road remained unpaved until the mid-1990s.

Apex Place is a short lane in Corona, just south of the LIE, connecting Yellowstone Boulevard with 62nd Drive near 108th Street.

It is a remnant of the old 19yh-Century North Hempstead Plank Road.

Hill Court, a short lane on 144th Street near 14th Avenue and the Whitestone Expressway in College Point, is otherwise known as 13th Road. It's a short private road dominated by a willow tree.

Mackintosh Street is a short dead end street off 63rd Street north of Queens Boulevard.

Railroad Place is a dead end off Maspeth Avenue just west of one of NYC's rare railroad grade crossings, where the avenue is crossed by the western end of the LIRR's Montauk Branch. This part of Queens is heavily industrialized.

Most Queens maps show a Henry Avenue running east from 70th Street and 49th Avenue southeast along the LIRR to 51st Avenue.

The road isn't marked, but there is a fenced-in Belgian-blocked road visible on 70th north of 49th Avenue; this is likely what the mapmakers are talking about.

Maps of Woodside show a Vaux Road between 59th and 60th Streets along the LIRR north of Roosevelt Avenue. This paved parking lot is likely what remains of the road, which was likely named for Calvert Vaux, who, along with Frederick Olmstead, designed and built Central and Prospect Parks. Vaux pronounced his name as it was spelled, to rhyme with "hawks."

Flushing has kept quite a few of its ancient paths and lanes. Most of Flushing has not participated in the overall street numbering system that swept Queens beginning in the early 1920s in which the entire borough was placed under the same numbering system. Many of Flushing's street names reflect that it was formerly home to a large number of gardens and plant nurseries.

Most maps don't show Murial Court in Ozone Park between 107th and 108th Street near Rockaway Blvd.

Grosvenor Lane is just one of he curving lanes laid out by Albon Platt Man when developing Kew Gardens, but is by far the narrowest.

Narrow Carlton Place is bordered with two-family homes and a parking lot; most of the rest of Flushing is dominated by apartment buildings.

Carlton Place is in the shadow of Flushing's Town Hall.

King Road runs in the old path of the LIRR Whitestone Branch.

King Road, a short lane between Northern Boulevard and College Point Blvd. near the Flushing River, is in the maze of auto collision shops that dominate western Flushing.

The view down King Road is of the old Serval Zipper factory with its distinctive clock tower. The factory is now a warehouse.

Janet Place is the first street Roosevelt Avenue encounters as it first sees the light of day after emerging from under the IRT Flushing Line el. A one block stret lined with old 2-family attached houses, it too is shadowed by the old Serval Zipper factory.

One of the last links in Jackson Heights to the large Leverich estate, this one-block street is between 35th Avenue and Road and 71st Street.

Old Lane, now marked by a stretch of sidewalk, once ran between Sanford and Franklin Avenues east of Kissena Boulavard...at least, it's marked that way on some maps.

Map courtesy Andy Hoffer

A look at Old Bowery Bay Road, one of the ancient roads through Jackson Heights, can be seen here.

Ah, but this isn't the only Old Lane in the borough...

Maps show an Old Lane in Maspeth, angling between 71st Street and Calamus Avenue. You can see where traces of it are, but the most palpable remnant is the bend 72nd Street takes south of Calamus.

Christina located a dead end called Dresden Street on a PropertyShark map on 59th Road between 60th Lane and 61st Street. It's not located on any other map...so she went over there and sure enough...here it is, though it's unmarked by he DOT.

Guinzberg Road is located in the heart of industrial Jamaica, between 150th and Tuckerton Streets south of Liberty Avenue.

E mail me at erpietri@earthlink.net.