(unindexed to date - please scroll away)
This is yet another new (15 Mar 04) page to cover additional information and
photographs of this interesting old highway; see also my
Automotive, Chrysler,
Dudgeon (really!), Mercedes, and
SS and JAGUAR car pages and other related pages.
A Motor Parkway Panel has been convened to keep the
LIMP alive in situ, in minds, and in museums.
There is also a lot of automotive material on my ORDNANCE
and HISTORY pages.
Also, if you like automotive history, see the links on the
Automotive page.
RoW = Right-of-
Way.
LONG ISLAND MOTOR PARKWAY - continued
Central Nassau County)
(15 Mar 04)
[This material is about Central Nassau County and has been removed
from the Western Nassau County page, which had
overloaded.]
(15 Mar 04)
Roosevelt Field Area by Chopper (1950).
(26 Feb 04)
After Nixon debated Kruschev in the kitchen of an American prefab "House of
the Future" at a fair in Moscow on 24 Jul 1959, the house was disassembled,
brought backto the States, and set up between the two south marginal roads
at Roosevelt Field on Long Island. That south marginal road, just north
of Stewart Avenue in Garden City, IS the LIMP RoW. My folks
and I went to see the house and there, on the grass (now a parking lot) just E
of the house sat a Bell 47 helicopter of fledgling New York Airways, in back of
a sign offering 15-minute sight-seeing flights for an astronomical sum.
Well, Dad looked at me and I looked at him and Mom looked disgusted.
"You're NOT leaving me here alone!", quoth she, so up went all three of us,
crammed side-by-side in the bubble with the pilot. Admittedly this
makes no sense; it should have been a Bell 47J Ranger for that many people
but it was a full bubble and I have a shot of Mom looking grim as all get out
(she had a fear of heights) sitting in the bubble above absolutely nothing.
Be that as it may, the pilot took off facing due west so that the LIMP RoW was
to our left with Clinton Road directly ahead, bore right (N) over the W marginal
roads at about the N end of Raymond Court, just W of the SW driveway into
Roosevelt Field, heading N toward Old Country Road (I believe that's the old
Girl Scout headquarters building dead ahead in the infield and the old Franklin
National Bank headquarters building in the upper right, on OCR) with the LIMP
RoW between Pell Terrace and Russell Road off to our left:
(All photos 1959 by and © 1959, 2004 S. Berliner, III - all rights reserved)
[Thumbnail images; click on pictures for larger images.]
As we come up on OCR, there's aviation pioneer
George C. Dade's property dead ahead on the NW corner of Clinton and
OCR, with the bank building in which I had worked a few years earlier noted
by the arrow, Clinton in the lower right, OCR running L-R ahead, the LIRR Main
Line at the other end of Dade's big building at left, and the LIMP RoW crossing
Jericho Turnpike beyond that and running up to Westbury Avenue and Hillside
Avenue and beyond.
At that juncture we turned right again (E) along OCR and there's NY Telephone
Company's huge facility (with the curved driveways on East Gate Boulevard)
and Zeckendorf Boulevard (Bill Z. built R. Field mall) just beyond them,
coming in at the right and turning to the left to become the entrance to
Roosevelt Raceway off to the left. That's the LIMP RoW just beyond,
with Stewart Avenue just beyond that and the runways of Mitchel Field barely
visible at upper right:
Now this one's a bit tricky, indeed; it took me a while to figure it out (much has
changed over the 40 intervening years)! Proceeding E along Westbury
Avenue (or so), with the LIRR Main Line running L-R (E-W) just below, we
came to the newly opened Meadowbrook Parkway (MBP), and its interchange
with Old Country Road (OCR), with Carman's Road (CR) cutting away from it
towards the upper right (SSW) and bending left (S) and the Dutch
Lane/Hempstead Avenue bridge barely visible further S (up) along the MBP
and twice as far as that is Newbridge Road (NR - Route 106
) running (black
lines) diagonally along the upper margin and crossing the MBP at almost the
same spot where the LIMP runs L-R (E-W, white lines).
Turning right (W) along OCR, we come to Salisbury (now Eisenhower) Park
and the intersection of its W entrance oppposite the E end of Stewart Avenue
and Merrick Avenue (Post Avenue N of OCR; formerly Whale Neck Road).
The far right (SW) corner of that intersection is now the 1-800-FLOWERS
headquarters building. That's the LIMP RoW just on our side of the
intersection, marked by a line of trees and the abandoned Central RR of LI
RoW just beyond Stewart, also marked by a line of trees (our side of the lake),
with the abandoned two-story Meadowbrook Club RR station (then Abilities,
Inc.'s paint shop) on this side (past the empty plot) and the clubhouse on the
other side. The MBP runs to the right of the clubhouse and Mitchel
Field's runways are to the upper right:
Heading back to Roosevelt Field, we run between Stewart Avenue and the
LIMP RoW, with (as I recall) General Bronze ahead and the south end of the
Field to the right; the white dot is the tent where the prefab was and Raymond
Court is the line of trees running L-to-R from Stewart to the RoW where it
bends right (N) just past the entrance roads to the Field. That LILCO
(LI Lighting Co., now LIPA) gas holder is long gone.
Lastly, we're heading in to land between the south marginal roads, with the SW
entrance to the Field just over the pilot's right shoulder, looking right down at
the RoW, with Raymond Court clear as a bell just beyond that (black lines),
and Clinton Road running parallel to the top margin. I can't make out
the LIMP Super's house but it is at the near left of the intersection of the RoW
and Clinton and then you can see the RoW swinging northerly across Clinton,
heading right between Pell Terrace and Russell Road towards OCR, Jericho
Turnpike (with a toll lodge not yet modified beyond recognition), and Westbury
and Hillside Avenues:
(All photos 1959 by and © 1959, 2004 S. Berliner, III - all rights reserved)
[Thumbnail images; click on pictures for larger images.]
The Stewart Avenue elementary school playing fields are on the other side of
Raymond Court. The huge, round, grey gizzie to the right in the far
curve of the RoW is a sewage treatment facility, still standing today.
(27 Feb 04)
Other images taken on that flight had nothing to do with the LIMP; eventually,
they, too, will be scanned and will appear on my LI pages.
(27 Feb 04)
Roosevelt Field Area by air (1938).
(12 Mar 04)
Motor Parkway Panel Associate Howard Kroplick sent me this fantastic aerial shot of
the same area as it was in 1938; the image is an Army Air Corps photo extending
from the Mineola DPW lot (the white area at top L) just S of Westbury Avenue (just
above the top margin) down to the E-W segment of the RoW just N of Stewart Avenue (it is HUGE, 747Kb, so
I also broke it up into pertinent segments so you don't have to load so much):
(1938 USAAC photo)
[Thumbnail image; click on picture for VERY much larger image]
{It's labeled Mineola but the Field was actually in Garden City.}
That's Clinton Road running from top center down to lower L at Osborne Road).
The Roosevelt Aviation Service hangars on the S side of OCR stand out clearly as black
rectangles and that is the approximate area where today's Meadowrook Parkway
crosses OCR.
You can clearly see George Vanderbilt's revived Cup road course at R center, which is
about where Lindbergh took off, heading R (E).
Here's the segment with the main line of the LIRR running L-R near the top, Old
Country Road running L-R near the bottom, the LIMP RoW dropping around the
Mineola DPW lot at top and running due S just R (E) of the Fairhaven complex with
Wisteria Avenue clearly evident to the far L (W):
(1938 USAAC photo)
[Thumbnail image (R); click on picture for larger image]
Russell Road in Garden City is evident on the L (W) of the RoW but Pell Terrace had
not yet been laid out to the R (E). The second (R) shot shows the RoW from
Russell and Transverse Road, over Clinton Road on the bridge, past the
Superintendant's house, the Toll Lodge, and Raymond Court, and E along Stewart
Avenue (just below the bottom margin). What had been the SW corner of
Roosevelt Flying Field was (per Howard) the Old Westbury Golf Course in 1938, the
clubhouse can be made out just N of the LIMP Toll Lodge.
Next (L), I enlarged the curve area from the Clinton overpass to the N end of
Raymond Court:
times since the counter was installed.
The index on this page has
been truncated to save page space; see the LIMP Index
on the page preceding the main LIMP page.
