UNTIL mid-century, mid-Queens was still rather sparsely settled and was a place of wide open spaces. This photo from 1947 shows Kissena Boulevard looking south from Rose Avenue at the western edge of Kissena Park. If you use your imagination when looking at this modern-day view, things have not really changed all that much. Kissena Park is still on the left side of the picture, but relatively new housing is on the right, or west, side of the road, which has been widened somewhat over the years.
Kissena Boulevard evolved in the 19th Century from a rural route, Jamaica Road, that connected Queens’ two largest towns, Flushing and Jamaica , but ran through rural farms and fields to do so. Presently, the route runs past flocks of high-rise apartment houses but also the open fields of Kissena Park and the fairly expansive Queens College campus, which still contains a number of buildings left over from when it was the grounds of the Parental Home. Kissena Park lies on the former plant nursery grounds of Samuel Bowne Parsons, and does, in fact, contain the last remnants of their plant businesses. A natural body of water fed by springs connecting to the Flushing River was named Kissena by Parsons, and is likely the only Chippewa (a Michigan tribe) place name in New York State. Parsons, a native American enthusiast, used the Chippewa term for “cool water” or simply “it is cold.”
If you jumped in the H.G. Wells time machine again and moved back another 70 years, you would have seen a railroad and steam engines. In the early 1870s, Scottish immigrant and department store magnate Alexander T. Stewart purchased plots of land from local farmers and built the Central Railroad of Long Island as a means to connect western Queens with a new development of his, Garden City.
The railroad was a financial failure and survived for just a few years, yet the railroad, built over 140 years ago, still survives…after a fashion… as Kissena Corridor Park, which matches its fate with that of the High Line on the west side of Manhattan.
For much more on Kissena Boulevard, FNY has you covered.
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12/11/22
7 comments
There’s one patch of residences between 151street and Kissena Boulevard, between Peck Avenue and 56th Avenue that seems to be carved out of Kissena Park. Wonder how that community came to be with park on all sides.
It may have been the opposite, the houses first the park later. There’s a group of houses showing in the 1926 Belcher Hyde map on 151st and 152nd. Below that was the bed of Mill Creek a tributary of Flushing Creek that ran to a mill at Kessina Lake. The houses may have ben built on the most stable ground at the time.
Hi Kevin. The “Central Railroad of Long Island” link seems to be misdirected.
I lived just off Kissena, at the corner of Union St. and Franklin Ave., between 1973 and 1978. My wife and I had our first child there, so we frequently pushed the baby carriage along Kissena Blvd. with our son. By then the area in the photo was very built up and Kissena Corridor Park was developed beyond the unimproved state that existed in 1947. A major bus route, Q25/34, operated through the area connecting College Point. Flushing, and Jamaica. It was known as “the Orange Bus” because its operator, Queens Transit Corp., painted its vehicles in an orange and white livery, almost like a Creamsicle. Queens Transit’s routes became part of MTA Bus Company in 2005.
Hello -Sergey’s website brings so many questions about yesterdays Queens.One of which relates to where the Central Rail/Stewart line crossed Lawrence st (now college pt blvd) right where Crommelin St starts..I understand there was an old tunnel under today’s College Pt Blvd.A DEP pumping station now stands at the site and one day I asked some of the workers about it who didnt seem to know of it..What ever happened to this tunnel I wonder. Was it just abandoned? I live near Flushing Meadows and visit the park often but I originally grew up in Bayside Queens where a station called Frankiston once stood.Thank You FNY for all you do.I would like to hear from anyone about this old rail line Regards Harold Flushing NY
Just another note about above post-Here is a link about an abandoned tunnel discovered by Bob Diamond in 1980 under Atlantic Ave in Brooklyn.www.atlasobscura.com/places/atlantic-avenue-tunnel The article states Mr.Diamond found out about the tunnel by reviewing microfiche at the local library and locating an old blueprint in the borough president’s office.I was curious if similar sources could provide info on above referenced tunnel in Old Flushing of yesterday.I don’t know what local newspapers existed at the time and I guess it would be a laborious search for what might be a single story on a single day.Hope to hear reply from fellow NYers-Harold
Came accross this from Seyfried’s LIRR history where Lawrence tunnel is mentioned.Also noted is Black Stump road (73 ave) where Frankiston Station once stood.I spent my early life in this part of Queens .Have not much info on the general area of Frankiston .It seems Green Oaks farm of the Richards family was nearby. Article _On March 7, 1871, Mr. John Higgins of Flushing, who did much of the work for the Flushing & North Side road, began work at Lawrence Street, Flushing, on the tunnel that would carry the tracks beneath that street. The tunnel was to be 160 feet long and 17 feet high, to be built of Greenwich stone in irregular rectangular bond work with neat facades and parapet walls at each end. In April all the contracts for the Central R.R. were let. Messrs. Smith and Ripley won the contract for grading the first half of the first section from Central Junction to Lawrence Street, and for a small section at Black Stump Road (Seventh-third Avenue); Messrs. Dunne and Lowther continued the work from Lawrence Street to 197th Street with eighty men and thirty-five horses;_He goes on as the line continues southeast toward Hempstead /197 st seems to be close to Queens road Holl Ct of today/
Harold