Roslyn Toll Lodge.
John Russell Pope
Western Terminus
(193rd St./Peck Av./Underhill Blvd./Horace Harding Blvd./LIE).
On this LIMP Maps Page:
1928 Soils Map Nassau-Suffolk.
Mitchel Field Aerial Views.
WWI Long Island Map.
Bethpage/Central Park Area "Map".
(22 Nov 05)
This is yet another page (02 Feb 02) to cover maps and 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 minds and 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
MAPS
Here's a very simple map of the route of the Long Island Motor Parkway:
(04 Jun 02 map, with more accurate dating 20 Dec 2005;
by and © 2002, 2005 S. Berliner, III - all rights reserved)
Although this page was originally created to showcase the 1928 Soils map (below), the "holy grail" of LIMP afficionados is an exact depiction of the final Western Terminus at 193rd Street and Horace Harding Boulevard, either free of copyright restriction or con permezo. Panelist Mitch Kaften has been searching the Queens County files and turned up these two maps, which come close (but no seegar - at least not yet):
(Maps courtesy of M. Kaften.
Thumbnail images; click on the pictures for larger images.)
To further confuse things, here are four images of what appear to be a September 1930 (1950?) property map of the run from 73rd Avenue east to "Springfield (Rocky Hill Road)":
{images lost}
(Maps courtesy of M. DeSantis. The last two are
thumbnail images; click on the pictures for larger images.)
1928 Soils Map
In the stairwell of the SPLIA (Society for the Preservation of Long Island Antiquities) Gallery in Cold Spring Harbor, on the south wall, hangs a 5' long map, under glass, put out in 1928 by the U. S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Chemistry and Soils, Field Operations. The bad news is that it only covers Nassau and Suffolk counties; the good news is that it covers them very well, indeed, showing the then-extant and operationg Long island Motor Parkway for its entire original length!
The LIMP originally started from Lakeville Road, as shown on the map, and continued eastward across Nassau County, crossing into Suffolk County where the north end of the SUNY-Farmingdale campus is today and ending at the western shore of Lake Ronkonkoma. Later extensions took it westward into Queens, to Rocky Hill Road (today's Springfield Boulevard, 1911) and later (1926) to 193rd Street and Horace Harding Boulevard (today's LIE). A northward Commack Spur took it to Jericho Turnpike in Hauppage (along what is today's Harned Road).
First, here are angled shots of the entire map from the east looking WSW and v.v. looking ESE to give you an idea of how awkward the lighting and access were:
(Photos by S. Berliner, III - from SPLIA Gallery by permission - all rights reserved.)
Next, using photofloods at the sides for illumination, here are a series of close-ups, heavily overlapping, vignetted by the close-up lens used, and highlit by large RED arrows at the western and eastern termini, and with thin RED guidelines to ease your finding the RoW running from the Queens line eastward to Ronkonkoma:
(Cropped from photos by S. Berliner, III - from SPLIA Gallery by permission - all rights reserved.)
These images are otherwise unedited; the intent is to created a stripmap but that will take time and this allows the interested observer to see the accurate 1928 RoW now, instead of having to wait until I get around to making such.
Welllllll - - - not quite; obsession is a terrible thing, but it does get this done, a full set of detailed maps with the LIMP RoW marked off in RED.
For further guidance, these detail maps cover, sequentially W-to-E, the areas noted:
[a] - Queens/Nassau line and Lakeville Road, New Hyde Park Road, Old Courthouse Road, Shelter Rock Road, grazing I. U. Willetts Road, Searingtown Road, to Willis Avenue,
[b] - Willis Avenue, LIRR Oyster Bay Branch, Roslyn Road, to Hillside Avenue,
[c] - Hillside Avenue, Jericho Turnpike, Westbury Avenue, the LIRR Main Line, to Old Country Road and Curtiss Airport (Roosevelt Field),
[d] - Curtiss Airport and Clinton Street to Post Avenue/Merrick Avenue, Stewart Avenue, Newbridge Road, and North Bellmore Avenue,
[e] - North Bellmore Avenue to Jerusalem/Gardiner's Avenue and North Wantagh Avenue,
[f] - North Wantagh Avenue and Massapequa-Hicksville Road to Deadman's Curve and N across Central Avenue and the LIRR Central Branch/Main Line to Powell Avenue,
[g] - Central/Powell Avenue to a horizontal reference line,
[h] - the line to the Old Bethpage Road/Round Swamp Road/Bethpage-Sweet Hollow Road area,
[i] - Round Swamp Road to the Nassau/Suffolk line, Broad Hollow Road (110), and Duryea and Ruland Roads,
[j] - Ruland Road to Pinelawn/Wellwood Avenue, Colonial Springs Road, and N along Bagatelle Road,
[k] - Bagtelle Road to Half Hollow Road (and today's extant Route 67) and Deer Park Avenue,
[l] - Deer Park Avenue to DeForest Road/Carll's Straight Path, Commack Road, Wicks Road, Old Willet's/Caleb's Path, and Joshua's Path/ Wheelers Road,
[m] - Wheelers Road to Hoffman Lane and Blydenburgh Road,
[n] - Blydenburgh Road to Bedford Avenue (jog) to Nicholl's Road and Terry Road,
[o] - Terry Road to Rosevale Avenue at Lake Ronkonkoma (and the Petit Trianon), just S of Richmond Boulevard.
a - Queens/Nassau line and Lakeville Road, New Hyde Park Road, Old Courthouse Road,
Shelter Rock Road, grazing I. U. Willetts Road, Searingtown Road, to Willis Avenue -
Plattsdale is now Herricks.
b - Willis Avenue, LIRR Oyster Bay Branch, Roslyn Road, to Hillside Avenue -
c - Hillside Avenue, Jericho Turnpike, Westbury Avenue, the LIRR Main Line,
to Old Country Road and Curtiss Airport (Roosevelt Field) -
d - Curtiss Airport and Clinton Street to Post Avenue/Merrick Avenue, Stewart Avenue, Newbridge Road, and North Bellmore Avenue -
{That appears to be Stewart Avenue running E just under (S of) the RoW
and then angling ENE at Merrick Avenue.}
e - North Bellmore Avenue to Jerusalem/Gardiner's Avenue and North Wantagh Avenue -
f - North Wantagh Avenue and Massapequa-Hicksville Road to Deadman's Curve and
N across Central Avenue and the LIRR Central Branch/Main Line to Powell Avenue -
g - Central/Powell Avenue to a horizontal reference line -
h - the line to the Old Bethpage Road/Round Swamp Road/Bethpage-Sweet Hollow Road area -
i - Round Swamp Road to the Nassau/Suffolk line, Broad Hollow Road (110),
and Duryea and Ruland Roads -
j - Ruland Road to Pinelawn/Wellwood Avenue, Colonial Springs Road, and
N along Bagatelle Road -
k - Bagtelle Road to Burr's Lane and Half Hollow Road (and today's extant Route 67)
to Deer Park Avenue, immediately S of Wolf Hill Road -
l - Deer Park Avenue to DeForest Road/Carll's Straight Path, Commack Road, Wicks Road,
Old Willet's/Caleb's Path, and Joshua's Path/ Wheelers Road -
m - Wheelers Road to Hoffman Lane and Blydenburgh Road -
n - Blydenburgh Road to Bedford Avenue (jog) to Nicholl's Road and Terry Road -
o - Terry Road to Rosevale Avenue at Lake Ronkonkoma
(and the Petit Trianon), just S of Richmond Boulevard.
(Cropped and marked up from photos by S. Berliner, III - from SPLIA Gallery by permission - all rights reserved.)
I only used a single-pixel-wide line to avoid obscuring details and the RoW itself.
(Someone will catch me up on some of this, no doubt! Catch away; let's get it right.)
Mitchel Field Aerial Views
On 31 May 02, I went back to Long Island's Cradle of Aviation Museum at Mitchel Field specifically to photograph an aerial view of the area. However, I also discovered a map of the First World War military aviation facilities on Long Island and tried, under appalling lighting conditions, to photograph that, also, as it shows the LIMP quite clearly, running from Creedmoor (Rocky Hill Road) to just past Rosevale Avenue at Lake Ronkonkoma, thus allowing for the Petit Trianon driveway (now Lake Avenue).
- there is so much detail on this aerial that, instead of fitting the images to the screen, I am putting them up at full size and asking you to scroll.
First the aerial view in full, from Old Country Road at the top (N) to Hempstead Turnpike [to the right (E) of the last line on the sign toward the bottom (S)], and from Washington Avenue (Roslyn Road) [arrow straight vertically near the left (W) edge] to Post Avenue [(at top (N)]/Merrick Avenue [from OCR down (S)], running parallel to Roslyn Road near the right (E) edge, with Roosevelt Field (the shopping mall) in the center top, S of OCR and between Clinton Street (running diagonally left of center) and the Meadowbrook Parkway (wandering right of center), The upper ¾ of the picture to the right (E) of Merrick Avenue is the old Salisbury (now Eisenhower) Park:
(All photos taken 31 May 02 by and © 2002 S. Berliner, III - all rights reserved.)
The sign states
"You are standing on what was the historic Mitchel Air Field.
It closed in1961. It is now a
Long Island center of
education, recreation and commerce."
The "small" angled black rectangle in the upper right above the curve of the Meadowbrook Parkway is the wreckage of what was Roosevelt Raceway's grandstand and the green outline at center right is the Cradle of Aviation Museum on Charles Lindbergh Boulevard.
Next close-ups; first the segment from the LIRR Main Line (Voice Road is just off the upper margin, between the RoW and Clinton Street) down (S) across Old Country Road between the Fairway Apartments and a commercial building (white), between Russell (W) and Pell (E) until it curves right (E) across Clinton at Vanderbilt Court [the General Manager's house is visible to the left (W) of the white tank], above the playing fields of the school, and off E under the S end of Roosevelt Field mall:
This view shows the S end of Roosevelt Field mall in the upper left; the LIMP RoW runs W-E along the lower of the two service roads and the E across the LIRR spur running up from the Garden City freight yard (you can see it snaking up across Stewart Avenue at the bottom and Meadowbrook Parkway) and then along South Street:
The street coming up from below and across Stewart in the center bottom, just E of the LIRR spur, is the N end of Quentin Roosevelt Boulevard out of Mitchel Field, and the strongly-shadowed white building just to its E (at the bottom margin) is the Garden City Postal Facility.
There's a sad close-up of the old Roosevelt Raceway grandstand in the upper left and the E extension of Zeckendorf Boulevard running W-E across the top, crossing Ellison Avenue, which neatly bisects the view vertically, and that crosses Meadowbrook Parkway in the lower left center, becoming Endo Boulevard after it crosses Stewart Avenue at the very bottom. That's the ReFuel co-gen plant belching steam just to the NE of Ellison and Meadowbrook; the LIMP RoW is very obvious just N of that:
The RoW runs between the bright-white and the tan roofs, crosses Merrick Avenue (where nothing shows on the ground except the embankment on the E side), and then, on a trace surprisingly obvious from the air, runs diagonally ENE across Eisenhower (old Salisbury) Park to the upper right corner of the photo:
This was an early '50s projected plan for the area that did not come to pass; Stewart runs diagonally from lower left to upper right, Meadowbrook Parkway from upper left to lower right, Ellison bisects things, and Merrick Avenue is on the E, in this N-facing rendering:
Finally, I show a 1966 rendering for a proposed John F. Kennedy (one assumes "Jr.") Center but hadn't the foggiest notion of how the view lies; although I assume that's the Nassau Coliseum at far upper right, so that we must be looking SE over the LIMP RoW in the lower left:
World War I Long Island Map
The next five images are the WWI map (I give these both at screen size and oversize). The first is an overall shot (I couldn't use flash - it bounced right back); that blur says "Military Airfields - 1914-1918" and the rings are 5-mile markers running out from the Mitchel control tower:
"1" is Roosevelt Flying Field, "2" is Mitchel, and "5" is Floyd Bennett); I'll have to look up the others.
Next is a blurred close-up showing (or purporting to show - I could not get enough light into the camera) the LIMP from Creedmoor on the left (W) to Ronkonkoma:
This close-up shows the LIMP starting at Rocky Hill Road (Springfield Boulevard - the 1911 westward expansion) under the "d" of "Creedmoor", and just above the old LIRR Creedmoor Branch (the old Central RR of LI) and running NE to "Lake Surprise" (Lake Success), looping around the Williston Park Golf Club (the "1" bullseye) and again around Roosevelt Flying Field (the "2" bullseye - wow, are those bullseyes mislocated!) and out to Deadman's Curve in Central Park (Bethpage), thence N and E around the old LIRR/CRR Bethpage Branch:
The above view also shows the LIRR (Central Branch - old CRRofLI) running from Creedmoor to Bethpage Junction.
Picking up the RoW at Bethpage, the LIMP woggles SE alongside Colonial Springs Road towards Wyandanch and then NE around Half Hollow, where it becomes today's Suffolk County Route 67 and so E to Ronkonkoma:
Overlapping the previous badly blurred view, this last shows how the draftsperson (man, betcha) ran the RoW just E of Rosevale to represent the Petit Trianon driveway. The Commack Spur (todays Harned Road) wasn't built yet; it was done in 1926, but it ran N just about from mid-view above the "e" in "Brentwood" to the Jericho Turnpike (barely vsiible at the top):
(All photos taken 31 May 02 by and © 2002 S. Berliner, III - all rights reserved.)
I will try to get permission to go back to the Cradle of Aviation Museum before or after hours with lights and redo all these and then highlight and mark the resultant views as I did the Soils Map (above).
The Nassau County segment of the base map, without the aviation overprint shown
here, but with a different aviation overprint, is
now
available on my Long Island continuation page 2.
(29 May 03)
Because the Main Page overloaded, please visit the many Continuation Pages noted on the LIMP Index page.
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S. Berliner, III
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of this series of Long Island Motor Parkway pages.
© Copyright S. Berliner, III -
2002, 2003,
2005
- All rights reserved.
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[If my discs weren't floppy, my photos wouldn't be LIMP!]
times since the counter was installed.
