Taking It To The Streets

183-foot Valentine Place is near mammoth Atlas Park.

By Ellen Thompson

As soon as the traffic light blinks green, you’ll be able to get away from all of this stop-and-go nonsense of the Horace Harding expressway. Blink- all right… go!

Now cut the wheel left. Merging into a rushing river of trucks and cars, known all too well as the Long Island Expressway, you’re on your way.

To your left and right, just above eye level, through green expressway brush, row after row of stores blur past. Exit 19- Route 25, Queens Boulevard, Woodhaven Boulevard. Traffic slows. Take the Queens Boulevard ramp towards Route 25 West. Once again, merge onto another thoroughfare of stop and go nonsense.

The clock on the dashboard says you have just three minutes to find an empty meter and make it to your destination, point B.

It always seems to be about rushing from point A to point B, when just below the expressways and behind the congested thoroughfares, something goes unnoticed.

Those streets you rarely ever travel. The streets this borough’s history has worn in with story after story, even the shortest streets.

Just off Broadway in Elmhurst there is a 491-foot nearly forgotten dirt road; its green sign reads Claremont Terrace. According to Kevin Walsh, creator of Forgotten-NY.com, historical data is shaky, but the dusty road may have led to the old Long Island Railroad station (not the present-day LIRR) which was located on Broadway.

Over in Long Island City, located between 29th and 30th Streets and 37th and 38th Avenues, lays a pretty short street,314 feet, with a pretty long story. Old Ridge Road, the last piece of the original road in LIC, according to Walsh, is a humble driveway now, but bore the weight of more than 200 years of history.

Gated off from traffic, all 278 feet of Dorothy Place in Astoria might as well be a driveway some say. It lays northeastof traffic-beaten Astoria Boulevard cutting into 29th Street. The next neighborhood over in Long Island City, a 252-foot street is all that is left of a decades old road, intersecting 27th Avenue, known as Blackwells Lane.

The shortest and most telling street in Queens is hidden away just off Cooper Avenue in Glendale. Valentine Place, a quiet 183-foot residential street, has thousands of stories that are rarely ever heard over the commotion of the busy intersection of Cooper Avenue and 80th Street, now home to the Shops at Atlas Park.

As soon as you’re finished at point B, just remember there are dozens of little streets throughout Queens that are waiting for you to add to their unnoticed stories.