HERE’S a relic you can find at the 71st Avenue express station serving E, F, R and M trains on the Queens Boulevard IND. On the center pillars, you can find white and black enamel signs calling it “Continental Avenue/Forest Hills.” I’m unsure if they go back to when the station opened in 1936, but they’re very old and are likely still there because they’d be a pain to remove, mounted on pillars next to the express tracks. Both the Department of Transportation and Metropolitan Transit Authority are usually pretty ruthless about rousting out old or nonstandard signs, but not here. You can also find enamel signs with the number 4 at the 4th Street IND station complex in Greenwich Village.
However if you go up to the street you will not find a Continental Avenue. Pillar signs in the modern black and white signage proclaim it “71 Forest Hills.” Topside, you’ll find yourself on busy 71st Avenue. Meanwhile, roll signs on R-32 cars used till recently have the “Continental Avenue” moniker. And, larger panel signs in the station have “71-Continental Ave-Forest Hills.”
Here’s a very early 1939 Hagstrom subway map which calls 75th Avenue “Puritan Avenue” but fails to mention Continental. (There’s a lot to “unpack” on that ancient Hagstrom, but I’ll wait till another post.)
What’s going on? Forest Hills Gardens, a semiprivate community with lush parks, tree lined streets and Tudor houses, has maintained its own street naming system since it was built in 1908, and resisted the Queens Topographical Bureau’s Queens street house numbering and street numbering system, so that all its streets carry names and house numbers are nonhyphenated. At the undefended border between Forest Hills Gardens, 75th Road (not 75th Avenue) becomes Puritan, 70th Avenue becomes Herrick Avenue, and 71st Avenue, of course, becomes Continental. At one time there may have been a plan to extend the FHG names all the way to Queens Boulevard, and that’s how we get these odd station names. 71st Avenue becomes Continental between Station Square to midblock between Groton and Harrow Streets.
Oddly, I have never seen a map that clearly shows the Forest Hills/Forest Hills Gardens barrier. But once you’re in FHG, you know it. It has an aura all its own, complete with unique street signage and lighting, and, as we see here, street naming. Don’t park in FHG, you’ll find a wheel booted when you return.
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7/29/24