freshmeadows


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Here's a few shots I got in July 2006 while wandering fairly aimlessly around the border of Auburndale and Fresh Meadows, which meet at Kissena Corridor Park, which occupies the old route of A.T. Stewart's Central Railroad of Long Island. It ran from what is now the Port Washington line to department store magnate Stewart's new development Garden City: new in the 1870s, that is.

The Corridor runs from College Point Blvd. east to Kissena Boulevard and Kissena Park proper, and then from Fresh Meadow Lane southeast to the Long Island Expressway. East of Fresh Meadow Lane, it is bordered by Underhill Avenue on the north and Peck Avenue on the south. Both these avenues occupy odd routes in Queens, since each exists in a few pieces each. Slices of Peck can be found in Flushing, Fresh Meadows, and again a couple of miles east in Hollis Hills. Underhill begins at 164th Street at Kisena Park and runs to the LIE, but old maps show it northeast after that along the Long Island Motor Parkway into Glen Oaks. That piece of it has disappeared.

Today's title card shows the confluence of 188th (Saul Weprin) Street, 50th Avenue (the old Lawrence Road) and Underhill Avenue. I call these parts the Queens Plains, since the buildings are all built low to the ground, the streets are extraordinarily wide, and the sky is a constant backdrop. The photo gives you an idea of what it looks like from about 47th to the LIE and between Utopia Parkway and Francis Lewis Boulevard.

GOOGLE MAP: FRESH MEADOWS-AUBURNDALE

From 46th Avenue south to Underhill, between Auburndale Lane and Utopia Parkway, a number of streets atre named in alphabetical order: Ashby, Bagley, Courtney, Effington, Fairchild, Gladwin. The "D" street is occupied by 47th Avenue. These are part of a long-ago real estate development, as we see some gateposts at the west end of these streets along Auburndale Lane, which also abuts Flushing Cemetery. A coiuple still have their original sloping crowns, an echo of the roofed homes found along the streets.

A stroll along Courtney reveals a mini-Levittown: Small homes that have been personalized by their owners, as far as zoning laws permit, anyway. Some have siding, some have stucco. Compare to modern developments heavy on concrete lawns and compare to this, which likely goes back to the 1940s or earlier.

Crossing Utopia and heading SE on 188th Street, we find a mini- Tudor enclave, a style I've always admired. Both 188th and a street a little further north, 46th Avenue, boast center medians each with ample green and trees.

Attaining 50th Avenue and nearing the Kissena Corridor, you pass a charming Korea Presbyterian church with modern stained glass work.

Follow 188th sufficiently south and you are snapped out of your reverie quickly as you encounter the massive Fresh Meadows apartment complex at the LIE, which is Boston Chickened, Kohled and Starbucked up pretty massively. However, I spotted a NYC 1940s-1950 relic on 64th Avenue: a metallic street sign covered in either enamel or porcelain, with embossed street names. These were once the dominant genre of NYC street sign; when first built, Fresh Meadows must have employed them, as well.

Photographed July 2006; page completed February 21, 2008

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