ARE my eyes deceiving me here at the Brooklyn Queens Expressway where Boody Street meets Astoria Boulevard at the Art Moderne Bulova Corporate Center? They must be. How else can these Nassau County-style longarmed stoplight stanchions be here in Queens County, miles away from Nassau? How did they get here? Why are they here? Your guesses are entertained in Comments. Is the NYC Department of Transportation about to begin employing the Nassau lights and replace the guy-wired poles whose design is more or less unchanged since the early 1950s? Can it be?
Boody Street is another mystery, as it is the name the DOT has on street signs for the BQE service lane between 31st Avenue and Astoria Boulevard. The name appears on maps as early as 1940, as a dead end stub on Astoria Boulevard, long before the BQE was constructed here. Who was Boody? My guess is a traffic engineer they wanted to honor in some way.
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12/14/21
13 comments
If you want to find out about Boody, you just have to call.
There is a David A Boody Junior High School (now a middle school) in Gravesend, Brooklyn, on Ave S and West 4 St. I think Boody was an old time NYC mayor or Bkln Borough president.
As per Google Maps Street Views those posts have been there more than 5 years, since at least June 2016. My question is why were they installed with two different angles for the overhanging arms and at different heights?
David A Boody was a carpetbagger from Maine who moved to Brooklyn in 1862. He was mainly involved in the banking and brokerage business. He was elected to the 53 Congress as a Democrat and held office from March 4, 1891 until his resignation on October 13, 1891 after winning the Brooklyn mayoral election and served as such from
1892 to 1893.
Those poles were installed during December of 2013. I remember them being worked on when I passed by on my way to see my dear sister who was in Calvary Hospital in the Bronx.
These low hanging light poles are there because they are “Low” to prevent them being possibly hit by airliners landing at LaGuardia, this area is right near the runway.
Except that not 15 feet away is a street light that is twice as tall as these. And just out of view to the left is an even taller pole with what looks like a traffic cam on it.
That spot is pretty close to the airport but not in a direct line with the runway.
David A. Boody was Mayor of the City of Brooklyn in 1892 and 1893, and resumed his former banking and brokerage business. He was President of the Louisiana and Northwestern Railway and Vice-President of the Sprague National Bank. He served as president of the board of trustees of the Brooklyn Public Library from 1897 until his death, and was a member of the New York Stock Exchange but retired in 1926.
“Hey, NYC DOT? We got these two extra Nassau style traffic-light poles– you could be real pals, and take them off our hands, y’know? I’m sure you MUST have SOME intersection where they wouldn’t stand out TOO much from the rest of the poles in Queens–whaddaya say?”
Sometimes that’s how you get “oddball/one-of-a-kind”-type ANYTHING.
Correction: Boody was elected to the 52nd Congress.
I want NYC to continue to have its unique traffic light and streetlight structures. It has always been a cinch to determine immediately that the outside scenes of a film or TV show were filmed on location in NYC OR determine that the story claims to be set in NYC but the externals were filmed elsewhere or on some backlot.
Although, to be fair, once you’re away from “Landmark” type locations, a city like Toronto, built up at the same time as much of the outer boroughs were, requires the sort of practiced eye for the details you mention that I don’t have, and I’m born and raised in NYC. I figure, as long as there are no palm trees showing it clearly to be Los Angeles, there are many cities you could use to double for NYC (and vice versa) depending on the sort of architectural backdrop you need.
I’ll tell you one intersection that badly needs Nassau County styled traffic light poles. Union Tpke and Metropolitan Ave in Forest Hills. The NYC style poles awkwardly sit in the middle of the intersection on both sides of Union. If they could use these long armed ones from the side of the road, proper left turn lanes onto Metro could be created, making everything more efficient.