JUST an everyday side street in Woodhaven, a short section of 102nd Avenue runs four blocks from 81st to 89th Street (some numbers are skipped) a block south of 101st Avenue. However its former name, Shoe and Leather Street (seen here at 88th St.), speaks about what must have been a former industry in this part of Queens. There were likely some leather works in the vicinity. The most famous of Woodhaven’s”works” was the Lalance and Grosjean tinware factory located on Atlantic Avenue at the Long Island Rail Road tracks; its clock tower still stands.
Beginning in 1915 and lasting for about 20 years, Queens’ streets were gradually unified under a numbered house and street number scheme that was meant to eliminate repeat street names in Queens’ disparate towns (this never bothered Bostonians, that city has several repeat names including four or five Washington Streets alone). That scheme, though, also wiped out several colorful names. A less publicized “purge” also took place in Staten Island in the 1910s, wiping out colorful names such as Gun Factory Road.
Here’s an early 20th Century map, made when the area was not fully built out, but with several key roads in place. Old South Road is still there in pieces, mostly Pitkin Avenue and Albert Road. Broadway became Jerome Avenue and then 101st Avenue; oddly, it now extends for one block into Brooklyn. Liberty Avenue was so named because it was never tolled. The grouping of three Jewish cemeteries remains, albeit in deteriorating conditions.
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3/24/26