I recently walked/bicycled the length of the Rockaway Peninsula boardwalk. It cones in two separate sections: the boardwalk at Riis Park and beach, and the eastern section, formally called Ocean Promenade, which runs from Beach 126th Street to Beach 9th Street. I will be featuring what I found in FNY and in SpliceToday.
The Riis Park recreational area is located immediately east of Fort Tilden and was named for crusading journalist and photographer Jacob Riis (1849-1914) who made his home in Richmond Hill, Queens, beginning in 1886. In 1887, Riis photographed the squalid, inhumane conditions prevalent in New York City’s tenements, and his 1890 book “How The Other Half Lives” has become an influential text to the present day. His cause was taken up by Police Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt, who encouraged legislation that would help ease the burden of NYC’s poorest.
Riis Park was one of NYC’s first formal seaside parks after Coney Island became well-established; it was developed by Robert Moses around 1932. Riis Park’s 1930s bath house and boardwalk clock are both landmarked, and the park features a truly immense parking lot; only the one at Orchard Beach in the Bronx rivals it.
Today I’ll mention the Art Moderne-style boardwalk lamps, which I imagine date to the park’s beginnings. They currently carry 1980s-era Holophane sodium lamp “buckets” but I remember them with incandescent Gumballs. The Orchard Beach boardwalk in the Bronx also features these, and that makes sense sith both beaches were developed in the same era.
The 1939-40 Flushing Meadows World’s Fair also had marvelous Moderne poles, seen especially at the IND subway stop abandoned soon after the park closed. I’m glad we still have flocks of these survivors.
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10/24/18
6 comments
Riis Park was always a mini version of Jones Beach to my family….It was always enjoyable to sit in the back seat of my Dad’s Ford going there across the Marine Parkway Bridge, as we knew it then….Nice Memories
I remember walking the length of the boardwalk from B 126 St to it’s other end. I believe I was about 12 or 13. I took the subway back from the other end to B 116 St. I had to pay a double fare. ($.75 was the single fare at the time.) It was a long walk, but I was really bored that day, hanging out at my G-parents house. It was also cold. Either late fall or early spring. A wintery day, but I don’t recall any snow accumulations. That was 50 or so years ago.
Riis Park became the go-to beach destination after my folks bought a car in the mid-50’s. No more riding the “D” train home from Coney Island in a wet bathing suit. And it was a lot cleaner and less crowded…
The Riis Park bathhouse and clock are not officially landmarked, although they certainly should be.
My father taught me to drive in the Riis parking lots which were empty during the winter months.
Jacob Riis’ house on 120th street north of 85th avenue was torn down in the 1950s or 1960s.