THOUGH most of Queens’ streets, except lengthy main roads such as Northern Boulevard, Queens Boulevard, etc. were numbered beginning in the 1910s and 1920s, some outmoded names continued to show up on Hagstrom editions until the end of the 20th Century, whereupon the company’s maps were redrawn with CAD. Today, I’ll talk about a few of those I’ve located in Woodside, Queens.
Vaux Road
Seen in the above photo is Vaux Road, between 59th and 60th Streets along the Long Island Rail Road north of Roosevelt Avenue. Today, it exists as a parking lot and doesn’t appear to have been a public street for many years.
In older maps, 60th Street is tagged as Vaux Street and was likely named for architect, designer and landscaper Calvert Vaux, the co-designer of Central and Prospect Parks with Frederick Law Olmsted. Two other existing nearby roads, Trimble and Hicks, also replaced lengthier Trimble and Hicks Streets when Queens street were numbered.
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Burrough Place
20th Century Hagstroms showed 66th Street north of Woodside Avenue running on a slant to meet 67th Street at 41st Avenue, but in my memory it was always 66th Street instead of Burrough, and I don’t know when the change was made, but I doubt it’s recently.
The Burroughs family was prominent in western Queens, and this short street wasn’t the only namesake to disappear. There was a Burroughs Cemetery in nearby Corona, on Alstyne Avenue east of 94th Street. The entire cemetery was paved over and remains may still be below ground. NYC Cemetery Project has the whole story.
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Henry Avenue
Until recently, Hagstroms showed a Henry Avenue angling southeast along the Long Island Rail Road from 70th Street southeast to 74th, crossing 51st Avenue.
Today, Henry Avenue is represented by a bricktopped private driveway and storage yard for a building products company.
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Bush Street
The portion of 61st Street between Queens and Laurel Hill Boulevards along a ramp leading to the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway was formerly mapped as Bush Street. The name is remembered by the adjacent Big Bush Playground.
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11/20/24