88 AND 88: JOSEPH MARTUSCIELLO WAY, WOODHAVEN

I don’t often find people I knew on street signs, but one exception is at St. Thomas Church in Woodhaven at the corner of 88th Avenue and 88th Street, which is subnamed Rev. Joseph A. Martusciello Way. Fr. Martusciello was a parish priest at St. Thomas, which is a long way from my boyhood Bay Ridge home, but I met him in high school at Cathedral Prep Brooklyn, where he was a teacher, administrator and in my senior year, principal. As I recall, he was kind and unflappable, a key asset in an all-boys’ school.

Geography and statistics being what they are, there were spots where both the east-west numbered streets and north-south numbered streets are the same. You can take a street map of Queens, hang it on a wall and use a ruler and a pencil to draw a line through those neighborhoods where the numbers come together, from Astoria southeast through Sunnyside, Ridgewood, Glendale, Woodhaven and South Jamaica.

Single numbered Avenues, Drives and Roads occur only in Whitestone, so they don’t meet the single numbered Streets, Places and Lanes in Astoria and Hunters Point. Ditto for the Teens. There’s a 20/20 corner, and 21st Street meets Avenue, Road and Drive in northern Astoria. 23/23, 24/24, 30/30, 34/34, 35/35, 36/36, 37/37, as well. In Sunnyside, 43rd Avenue meets 43rd Street, and there’s 47/47 and 48/48. And then, there’s Maspeth, and the concept goes nuts. 56th Road, 56th Street and 56th Drive come together by the LIRR railroad tracks, and 56th Terrace is nearby. 58th Street encounters 58th Avenue and Road, as does 58th Place. 59th Street and 59th Place meet 59th Drive. And all the 60s come together as well.

The axis of like-numbered encounters continues in a general southeast direction in Queens. 62nd Street meets both 62nd Avenue and Road. There’s  70/70, 77/77 and 78/78 encounters in Glendale. Then the action shifts south of Forest Park to Woodhaven and Ozone Park, where 85th Avenue, Road and Drive all meet 85th Street. There’s an 86/86 meeting, 88/88 (here), 89/89, 91/91, 95/95, 97/97, 101/101, 103/103, 107/107, 109/109, 111/111 (six same digits is the most in a NYC intersection), and near Kennedy Airport there’s a 131/131, 133/133 and 135/135. And that’s it — the number combinations don’t encounter each other south of that.

This situation likely occurs in other cities with plenty of numbered streets.

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1/11/23