One of the most perplexing situations as far as New York City streets and their names is concerned exists in Douglaston and Little Neck, where a curving road runs across Udall’s Cove (a short arm of Little Neck Bay) and past Aurora Pond between Douglas Road and Little Neck Parkway at the Long Island Rail Road tracks.
I have chronicled this road before as The Street With Three Names. The perplexing situation arises because most of the street is not officially mapped by New York City, and therefore, locals can pretty much call it whatever they please! (A similar situation exists when spelling Arabic names, because no set method of spelling in English names that are not ordinarily spelled with the Roman alphabet was ever devised; hence, you had spellings like Gaddafi, Khadaffi, Qaddafi, etc., etc.)
The west end of the road actually has a Department of Transportation sign marking it “Bayshore Boulevard”; a mailbox on a house toward the west end of the road is marked “Sand Hill Road.” Similarly, mailboxes along the east end of the road call it 39th Avenue. However, since the road is not officially mapped by the DOT, no street signs calling it “39th Avenue” are posted at all!
I found this homemade sign on Douglas Road (that actually has the old Queens street sign colors, off-white and blue) in the 1990s marking the road. “Sand Hill Road” has never appeared on a standard-issue NYC street sign. This sign had disappeared by the mid-2000s.
The confusion will, no doubt, continue indefinitely.
“Comment…as you see fit.”
4/20/17