UNION Turnpike, seen here just east of Utopia Parkway and the St. John’s University campus, begins its lengthy run to New Hyde Park, Nassau County, from Myrtle Avenue and 86th Street. It appears on a Queens 1909 Bromley atlas as Union Avenue between Metropolitan Avenue and Brushville road (today’s 188th Street) in 1909, but by 1913 it had been mapped as Union Turnpike from Myrtle Avenue to the Queens line.
Unlike actual “turnpikes” it was unlikely that an actual toll was charged, with a large log, or pike, turned to admit traffic after the fee was paid (those were mostly phased out by the turn of the 20th Century). This was one of the few roads in NYC called a “turnpike” until 2007, when a section of Jamaica Avenue between Cross Island Parkway and the Nassau line at Little Neck Parkway was made into a western extension of Jericho Turnpike. Booth Memorial Avenue’s name until 1964 was North Hempstead Turnpike, as it pointed east toward the Nassau County town, formerly within Queens County.
Since the early 1930s, a lengthy section of Union Turnpike has served as the service road on either side of the Jackie Robinson (Interboro) Parkway, between Forest Hills Gardens and 141st Street in Briarwood. It has a center median for most of its length, a grassy one in Glendale at its west end. It passes Forest Park, Parkway Village, St. John’s U, Jamaica Estates, Hollis Hills, Cunningham Park, Creedmoor Psychiatric Center, and pokes briefly into Nassau County, reaching its east end at Marcus Avenue and New Hyde Park Road.
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10/9/23