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