EVERY so often, I like to note place names that are unique to New York City and it’s likely I won’t find another Watchogue Road with a search on Google Maps (I haven’t tried, I’m just assuming). I first found it on a map in the 1960s when I was a kid, and glimpsed it for the first time in 1977, when the MTA had a pilot program for a couple of months in the summer in which they ran bicycles from the 95th Street station to Fingerboard Road in Staten Island specifically for bicyclists: the buses had the seats removed. It hasn’t been mentioned since and I may be one of the only people remaining alive who remember it. Now that entities like TransAlt and Streetsblog have elevated bicyclists to the exalted level of urban saints, I wonder why there isn’t a renewed push for this, since the Verrazzano Narrows Bridge still doesn’t allow walkers or cyclists.
Watchogue Road runs from Victory Boulevard and Jewett Avenue west to Willowbrook Parkway and forms one of the main east-west routes in Westerleigh, which was founded by fundamentalist enemies of the demon rum in the mid-1800s. Sumptuous private homes line its streets, which are named for prominent Prohibitionist politicians as well as “dry” states. When I first saw the name, I thought Watchogue was pronounced “watch-a gyoo” (as in Montague) but I later discovered it simply rhymes with Long Island’s Patchogue, which is the same name but with a different first letter. According to Long Island researcher William Wallace Tooker, both names are Native American in origin; “Watchogue” is a simplified spelling of what the natives pronounced as “Wadchumes” or “Wadchuwemesash” which meant “land of little hills.” Westerleigh is indeed mostly flat with only a few mild hills, easy on bicyclists.
Kevin Walsh is the webmaster of the award-winning website Forgotten NY, and the author of the books Forgotten New York (HarperCollins, 2006) and also, with the Greater Astoria Historical Society, Forgotten Queens (Arcadia, 2013)
12/10/23
18 comments
Hey Kevin – What is your problem with Cyclists? I’m certainly not a saint – but I think cyclists deserve a safe means of transport.
It’s not wanting to ride a bicycle that I’m against, it’s the attitude such groups with them tend to display towards others, plus a good number of them hardly follow the traffic laws despite demanding everyone who drives should follow every letter of the law with tough enforcement while crying foul whenever it’s on them hence the double standard.
Bicycles & scooters have been electrified & are now capable of higher speeds. So now you have unlicensed, uninsured & underage individuals ignoring every vehicle & traffic regulation. Plus: the lithium ion batteries that power these vehicles have caused numerous apartment fires. BTW Meltzer: If cyclists deserve “safe transport” they should use the bicycle paths in NYC’s numerous parks (which is better than “playing in traffic”).
so right
Watchogue Creek is in Bay Shore, Long Island. It’s interesting how the same Native American name will sometimes appear in two places far apart.
Does the last syllable rhyme with log or vogue?
“log”
Many of the native tribes would move around the area seasonally. So however the name came about with the settlers, it’s not surprising that it might repeat in moderately separated areas.
Thanks for that tid-bit of info, Joe! I was straining my brain trying to think of where I had seen ‘Watchogue’ before…and thought it had something to do with a Long Island locale (Like ‘Aquabogue’ ‘Cumsoque’, etc.). But I didn’t know it was a creek in Bayshore…but I should have, having been a clam digger out of Patchogue and then Babylon! (I assume I probably had seen the name on that creek on a nautical chart….)
That stretch of road was used for a location shot for the movie ‘The Amityville Horror’
Most of “Amityville Horror” was filmed in Toms River, NJ. I don’t remember any filming on Staten Island at the time (1978). Where did you see Watchogue Road in the film?
Tooker’s book, The Origin of Indian Place Names on Long Island, is THE go-to volume on the subject. It is also the ONLY such study on the subject. Tooker’s scholarship has been called into question, but there’s no one authoritative enough to give a true assessment.
Staten Islanders pronounce it “Watch-awg” Road. As a kid, I too called it “Watch-a-goo” but was set straight by some older Islanders. Supposedly, the name may also be a corruption of “Watch Oak” for a tree that stood in the area during Revolutionary War days, but that could be an old legend.
William T. Davis’s book “Staten Island Names” has an interesting, possibly apocryphal theory on this, a passage of which I’ve excerpted here:
“Watchogue. Situated a mile south of Old Place. Owing to the similarity of the name Watchogue to the Long Island town of Patchogue it has been thought that like the latter, it was of Indian origin. This, however, is a mistake, and the original name, which was Watch Oak, was acquired in the following way: The hamlet was first called Merrill Town, owing to the number of families of that name living in the vicinity. Among them was Ike Merrill, who owned a large farm, a portion of which was covered with oak timber. A man by the name of Brunsen was a neighbor of Merrill’s. He was a smart man and is said to have been most clever in defending himself in court, in which, for one reason and another, he had considerable practice. Among other accomplishments, he could write with both hands at once, and, when he thought no one was looking, he could steal Ike Merrill’s oak trees as well. This was known to Merrill, and when a neighbor called one day and asked for a certain farm hand, Merrill told him he was out “watching oaks.” The Merrill farm was called in time “Watch Oak Farm” — the place where they watched the oaks. This has been corrupted into Watchogue, and this, unfortunately, changed to Bloomfield.”
The most extreme case I can think of is Matawan near South Amboy NJ, and Matteawan in Beacon NY. Apparently the same name. It’s too bad the Europeans did not care more about native American languages and place names. So much was lost that could have been saved.
The Ojibway and Chippewa tribes of the northern US and Canada are one and the same, both are variant pronunciations/spellings of the original name.
Little late, but the most separated Indian names I know are Wyoming PA and Wyoming, the state. That’s cheating though, because the state was not named by Indians.
Well,it was in one of The Amityville Horror films,I disremember which one
Watchogue is not a good through traffic road here, which Does make it attractive to live on. As bikes and mopeds swarm onto the asphalt, they need to be i sure and registered (money!), and operators need to learn and obey the rules of the road. (More money). Money is needed because, by strangling car drivers, they’re killing the goose that lays the golden eggs (via uncollected tolls, summons, gasoline taxes, etc). The city can no longer afford to keep these freeloading cyclists on the dole. They must pay their own way—and obey!