TIRED of the unrelenting dead canine humidity of NYC summer? It’s humid and getting humider, year after year. Here’s a winter 2021 view of Station Road along the Long Island Rail Road in Flushing. Station and Depot Roads are so named because they abut the LIRR Broadway station; Station Road also runs past the Auburndale station (see below). On this page, I’m not going to overly concentrate on the Broadway station, because I’ve already done a comprehensive page on it; Broadway was my home station for 14 years, and after I moved to Little Neck, it was completely rehabilitated from its decrepit condition to the pleasant suburban station we see today. It has entrances/exits on Northern Boulevard and 164th Street onto both Station and Depot Roads. The station is far from Queens’ Broadway, which today is in Astoria and Elmhurst; until 1920 or so, Northern Boulevard was called Broadway from the Flushing River to the city line, and the neighborhood surrounding it was developed in the early 20th Century as Broadway-Flushing.
Why am I drawn to these two roads? It’s partly nostalgia: I lived in the eastern Flushing/western Auburndale neighborhood they are in for 14 years between 1993 and 2007. In 2021 I surveyed the two roads following a snowstorm, which I hope we get a few of in 2024-2025.
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8/2/24
7 comments
Thanks for posting. Brings back lots of memories. I grew up on the LIRR Port Washington Branch and between the ages of 5 and 23 took hundreds of train rides to and from Penn, passing this exact location too many times to remember. I well remember the parallel and disjointed Station and Depot Roads alongside the tracks. When I first encountered the word “depot” I pronounced it “DEE-POT” until my fourth grade teacher politely corrected my speech to drop the T and explained that it is the French word for railroad station. Never forgot that.
As a teenager I used to cut school and hang out at Murray Hill station. Loved toy trains as a kid. One day I decided to walk the tracks to Broadway. A few days later I decided to see what was beyond Broadway and walked to Aurbandale. I climbed the platform and sat there looking at the peaceful neighborhood not realizing I was born a few blocks away. Loved the old stations and surrounding areas.
I moved to Port Washington from Jamaica Queens when I was 10. At age 13 I started riding the LIRR to the stations along the way just to see what different towns were like. That was the start of what seemed like endless trips to explore Manhattan. I moved West at age 20 and did not return except for few visits. Sometimes I nostalgically watch live streams of the Port Washington Line. Amazing how the scenery near the tracks has not changed much after 50 years.
This lecture has excellent historic photos of all the early stations along this branch as well as historic facts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFr1Ti67UGQ
The name “Broadway”, in Flushing, actually started a few blocks east of the Flushing River. When the throughfare touched down from the drawbridge it was called “Bridge Street” for a short while, to about Prince Street. It was here that the LIRR Whitestone Branch crossed it and had a station, which was “Flushing – Bridge Street”. Normally, the LIRR would name a station after the community, such as “Flushing”. In this case, there was another station in the community, so the name had to be expanded to include a local street name. That is why the sole, current station is “Flushing – Main Street”, to differentiate it from the other Flushing station which hasn’t existed for 92 years.
Auburndale Station was the only station with the platform in the middle, I believe. I grew up 192 and 35 ave way before IS 25. My mom and I would walk by the vacant lots (4 blocks I think) to meet my dad when got off the train. I can still smell the urine stench on the stairs all these years later
So I grew up and raised on 162 st ,and worked the block s down from Northern to 45 th ave,
Station rd was a different world ,
It was residential then stoped at 160 st.
Then picked up again then stoped at 158 st,stopped and ran again.
As kids we through it was a,short cut,but was it really I don’t know
We walked it along side the long island rail road, and sometimes we” walk the tracks ”
Good memories of it.