The Grand Central Parkway was the first arterial of its kind in Queens. Tribune Photo by Ira Cohen
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Boro Cow Paths Become Asphalt Arteries
By BRIAN M. RAFFERTY
For a borough now lashed in a web of highways, subways, bus routes and crowded side streets, you would think that getting from one place to another has always been a priority for Queens, but that is not so.
In fact the first highway of sorts didn’t even come into being until the Revolutionary war, when British troops wore deep ruts into an old Indian trail in the south half of the borough. That route, Jamaica Avenue, still runs today.
But how did the isolated farms of yesterday evolve into the massively connected grid of today? It all begins with privatization.
On The Road
In the early 1800s, Queens County sold rights to private businesses to build and maintain public roads. These turnpikes connected the independent towns and pushed the wheels of commerce forward.
In March 1801, the Flushing and Newtown Turnpike was incorporated followed by the Jamaica and Rockaway Turnpikes in 1809.
The creation of two racetracks, the Union Course just below Jamaica Avenue at 78th Street and the Eclipse, southeast of the intersection of what are now Woodhaven and Rockaway Boulevards, brought visitors to the area, increasing the demand on the roads and settlement along the major thoroughfares.
Steel Wheels
The Industrial Revolution linked Brooklyn’s shipyards with factories that began to pop up throughout Queens via the newest transportation conduit – the steam locomotive.
From 1865 to 1890 Western Queens went from the agrarian farms that dominated Newtown to the booming factories and manufacturing plants of Astoria, Long Island City, Ridgewood, Richmond Hill, Woodhaven and Ozone Park.
Factories could now bring in the raw materials, process, manufacture and then ship out completed goods that went either across the world from Brooklyn or across the river to Manhattan via ferries from Hunters Point.
By the end of the century, as Queens was brought in – against the will of many – to be part of New York City, the Myrtle Avenue elevated train began to take shape, clearing the way for trolleys and motorcars underneath.
The Pennsylvania Railroad bought up the 70-year-old Long Island Rail Road lines in 1905, electrified the routes by 1908, dug tunnels under the East River and connected Queens to Manhattan by 1910, forever changing the face of Queens, creating a commuter borough of workers from as far out as Little Neck who could earn their pay daily in Manhattan.
By 1928, the majority of the groundwork had been laid for elevated trains that ran along the new Roosevelt Avenue to Flushing, through Astoria, deep into Ozone Park and Richmond Hill along Liberty Avenue, and into the heart of Jamaica. As a result, during the 1920s Queens population increased 130 percent to just more than 1 million residents.
And Rubber Ones, Too
As the railroad grew and elevated trains began to snake their way through Queens, the motorcar started to take hold – especially in the borough rich with touring turnpikes.
In 1909 the Queensborough Bridge opened, linking midtown Manhattan to Queens with trolley cars, trains and wide lanes for the new automobiles.
To accommodate the surge in traffic, a new road was built – 200 feet wide and a dozens lanes across – Queens Boulevard was the main artery that linked drivers from Manhattan to their homes in the borough and beyond into the growing regions of Nassau County.
Bigger parkways were needed to accommodate traffic from all the new bridges – the Triborough opened in 1936, the Bronx-Whitestone in 1939. The Grand Central (1935) and Interboro (1936) Parkways were designed to help get people around.
Queens-based JetBlue’s terminal at JFK will handle 20 million passengers a year. |
With the opening in 1940 of the Queens-Midtown Tunnel, traffic swelled in Queens and there needed to be a way to handle the massive growth in volume. A four-lane road connected the tunnel to the still-new Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, but by 1945 urban planner Robert Moses pushed the expansion of the Queens Midtown Expressway to go all the way to Queens Boulevard, where it met up with the Horace Harding Expressway.
But that was quickly seen to be inadequate, so by 1953 the Long Island Expressway was announced and began to take shape, linking to Little Neck Parkway, just west of the Queens-Nassau border, though that portion of the road did not open until 1960, when the Clearview Expressway opened. Over the next decade, its link through Nassau County and into Suffolk was established, creating a single stretch of highway linking Manhattan to eastern Long Island and adding more cars than planners ever imagined for Queens.
Fly The Friendly Skies
The roads were also great for getting residents to and from the new airports that had opened. The Grand Central ran right past LaGuardia Airport, and the new Van Wyck Expressway made it easy to get to Idlewild Airport, which opened in 1948.
Though service started slow at the two airports, LaGuardia soon led the charge in passenger flights with Idlewild, later renamed JFK International, taking on a major cargo capacity.
Over the years, the two airports have consistently been in the top five nationally; most recently Kennedy airport moved 41 million passengers in 2005, while LaGuardia handled 26 million – all-time highs at both locations.
Though LaGuardia is built to its capacity, Kennedy is still continuing to grow. Queens-based airline JetBlue is constructing an $875 million terminal that will handle 250 daily flights and 20 million visitors a year. The terminal is expected to open in 2009.
