I have written about Kings Highway a number of times in FNY and have walked much of its length over the quarter century I have posted on Forgotten NY. I have always been fascinated with it because it meanders across the street grid of southern Brooklyn, seemingly aimlessly. It follows a colonial-era road that likely overlaid a Native American footpath. However, the modern Kings Highway, which runs from Bensonhurst to Brownsville, is actually an amalgamation of two separate roads. The road has a split personality; the west end, up to Ocean Avenue, is two lanes but is one of Brooklyn’s busiest shopping strips. East of Ocean Avenue and Avenue P, Kings Highway gains multiple lanes and acts as a surface highway; both Kings Highway and Linden Boulevard were converted to their current form at the dawn of the auto era in the early 1920s.
The term “highway” refers to a main road between two towns or cities, one that was under the special protection of the monarch as an essential communications link (hence the later phrase the “king’s highway” to refer to such important roads). Kings County’s Kings Highway originally began at Fulton Ferry and followed the courses of Fulton Street and Flatbush Avenue south to about Flatlands Avenue and then turned southwest toward today’s Gravesend and Bensonhurst. A piece of that road remains today as Kings Highway. As for the piece of Kings Highway northeast of Flatbush Avenue, I’ll get to that.
Today I’m here to talk about Kings Highway’s east end, which I always found a bit curious. Years passed between when I first saw it on maps in the 1960s and when I actually saw it from a vehicle in the 1970s. Kings Highway’s official end comes at East 98th Street, shown in the photo above. But a road continues northeast of that. When i first saw this map in the 1960s I assumed Kings Highway continued north to the intersection of Sutter and Howard Avenues. A road does continue there: but it’s not Kings Highway. (In fact the Geographia “Little Red Book” street guide — I have multiple editions — calls it Kings Highway…erroneously).
Instead, in a very curious situation, the road continuing north is a wide section of Tapscott Street between East 98th Street and Blake Avenue. North of that, the Kings Highway “path” is a wide section of Howard Avenue. Why traffic engineers set it up like this is a mystery to me.
What is now known as Kings Highway northeast of Flatbush Avenue was never a part of the colonial-era Kings Highway, whose route I mentioned previously. Instead, it overlays on an old road called Flatland Neck Road, which ran from Flatbush Road (now Flatbush Avenue) northeast to a country road in New Lots that has utterly disappeared, Hunterfly Road.I have marked Kings Highway’s route on this 1873 map of the area. As you can see, area homesteaders had familiar Dutch names, Remsen, Bergen, Kouwenhoven, Wyckoff. Some of these houses are still in place, lost now amid tract housing. You have to know where to look for them.
Flatlands Neck Road was a quiet country lane after it was renamed Kings Highway. But then in the 1920s, everything changed as pre-Robert Moses traffic engineers gave it multiple lanes as the auto age was born. Kings Highway’s pre-widening appearance
Have I mentioned that the west end of Kings Highway used to be Denyse’s Ferry in the shadow of what is now the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge? I just did, but that’s a story for another day.
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10/10/23
11 comments
I cannot recall where I read this: A highway is a road where drainage ditches were dug out on both sides of a road and the dirt was piled up between the ditches, hence making the road “higher” than the surrounding terrain.
In England, what would be called “Main Street” in the US is usually the “High Street”– I always thought that a “highway” was the road between two towns, connecting their “High Streets”
Going back to common law, a “highway” is any road or path used by the public. That’s pretty much the American legal definition. Colloquially, it seems “highway” today refers to limited access highways: as in “get off the highway and take the service road.” There was an official King’s Highway linking the colonies from Boston to Charleston, SC. Boston Post Road is a piece of that. But the term has been used in a number of places.
There’s a Kings Highway in St. Louis MO, which is a boulevard (officially “Kingshighway Boulevard,” spelled that way) which dates to French settlement days. Apparently its name was an adaptation of “Rue Royale,” which became “Camino Real” under Spanish rule in the late 18th C., and after the Louisiana Purchase in 1804 the Americans anglicized the name.
East 98th Street, where Kings Highway ends, is the route of the IRT New Lots Avenue Branch, shown in the photo. It’s the only IRT elevated trackage in Brooklyn. East 98th connects the subway portion under Eastern Parkway (at the Utica Ave. Station) with the remaining elevated trackage, all atop Livonia Avenue. It was built 1920-22, and was the last IRT trackage built until the #7 line extension to Hudson Yards debuted in 2015.
I always wondered about the origin of the name Livonia, and learned through this Wikipedia link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Livonia that it’s a historical region on the eastern shores of the Baltic Sea in Northeastern Europe. It is named after the Livonians, who lived on the shores of present-day Latvia. There is also a city in Michigan named Livonia (Wikipedia link, https://www.michigan.org/city/livonia).
The elevated line above East 98th Street and Livonia Ave. has two tracks, with room for a third middle track that was never build except at Junius Street to permit a non-electrified connection, using diesel work trains, to NYC Transit’s Linden Track Shop, which assembles track switches and other related components.
There was IRT trackage added 1925-28 extending the IRT Flushing Line from 103rd Street to Main Street also.
Yes you are right. I stand corrected!
There was other IRT trackage added in the mid-1950s to connect the Dyre Avenue line with the line over Westchester Avenue now used by the 2 and 5 trains. I recall watching the construction of a flyover which allowed trains bound south from Dyre Avenue to access the tracks coming in from White Plains road, without the dangers of a grade crossing.
For more on Livonia Avenue, visit this Forgotten-NY page.
I lived in Bensonhurst where Kings Highway started at Bay parkway and worked in the 73 police precinct where Kings highway ended in the 1970s i did that ride every day and night i too was fascinated by it , it really runs through so many areas i would play a game in my head ( i was 23 years old as to where certain areas began and ended landmarks like gas stations , car dealers etc . I will never forget i was a young Italain guy and always hung around my own area ,when i got assigned to the 73 pct i had never heard of it i called the station house to get directions and the cop told me just take Kings highway till the end ,what a shock after i passed E 98 street and turned on to Howard ave ,i never looked at Kings highway the same ,but i grew to love it my daily ride both during the day and in the middle of the night .it has always been a part of my life
I lived Avenue J near Kings Highway