THIS is how Hagstrom Maps, founded in 1916 as a photo reproduction and retouching house that began selling maps a few years later, depicted the Bellerose section of eastern Queens in 1922. Most of the streets in eastern queens as shown here did not yet exist; Hagstrom was representing what developers had in mind. Major routes such as Hillside Avenue and Union Turnpike were still dirt roads at this point in time. Streets were indeed laid out eventually, but they took somewhat different paths than shown here. The Cross Island and Grand Central Parkways were on drawing boards, speculative maps and for the most part, still gray matter in Robert Moses’ brain.
Creedmoor Psychiatric Center is located on the grounds of the Old Creedmoor Rifle Range, deeded to New York State for that use by the National Guard in 1872. International matches were held between American and European teams; the grounds encompassed a clubhouse, railroad station (along the Central Railroad of Long Island) and a local hotel. Bowing to complaints of locals of drunken visitors and stray bullets zinging by, the rifle range closed in 1908 and became a state mental hospital in 1910.
The only vestige of Creedmoor’s shooting days are the names of some of its streets: Winchester, Sabre, Musket, Range, and formerly, Pistol. You might suspect Springfield Blvd. should be included among them, but the road is named for Spring Field, an old southern Queens settlement now a part of Cambria Heights.
Meanwhile, the course of the Central Railroad of Long Island is still well defined by the plot between 87th and 88th Avenue at the bottom of this map excerpt. To this day, there are relatively few places where traffic can traverse this path…where the last train, a shuttle to Creedmoor, chuffed past in the mid-20th Century!
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7/30/24