There’s a wide, 6-lane boulevard way out in eastern Queens recently renamed for a small town of about 14,000 in eastern Nassau. Settled by Welshman Robert Williams after he purchased…

What’s the longest street that runs entirely in Brooklyn? It seems there are two candidates: Flatbush Avenue and Bedford Avenue. (Any drivers out there want to decide the matter using…

WHEN I REVISIT Brooklyn’s 5th Avenue, I am going back to a stretch I have traversed thousands of times. Each day between September 1971 and the fall of 1980 (the latter…

CONTINUED FROM PART 1 WHEN IT reaches Union Turnpike, the Jackie Robinson Parkway and the Van Wyck Expressway in Kew Gardens, Queens Blvd. begins its slow process of winding down. Quiet…

WHETHER it wants to admit it or not, the Department of Transportation’s main function is the movement of motor vehicles; to enable them to move as quickly as possible. That means…

FIRST of all, we’ll get Houston Street’s derivation, and its unusual pronunciation, out of the way: The street from the Hudson River to Bedford had acquired its name by 1803, when…