[the material, not the street!]
Nassau Boulevard.
That Dudgeon is for real; it is an 1853/66
steam auto, one of which survives in running condition!
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
Dudgeon page.
Other good places for automotive history are Kevin Walsh's
Forgotten NY site, Steve Anderson's excellent
NYC Area Roads, Crossings, and Exits site [where you will also find info on, and
links to, Web Rings (not my thing) for East Coast Roads, Interstate Highways, New
York City, and Long Island], Mike Natale's
The Road House, Dave Schul's North American Auto Trails,
and Jeff Saltzman's Streetlight
Site*, each with all sorts of old highway information and more links.
The pages on the Long Island Motor Parkway
and the newly-convened L. I. Motor Parkway Panel
(convened to "keep the LIMP alive in situ and in minds and museums"), have an
enormous amount of automotive information.
A pair of Motor Parkway afficionadoes, Sue and Rob Friedman, turned up with
a great site about the Bronx's old "
Freedomland".
Mike Natale has a fascinating "
THE TOLL ROAD MAP MASTER LIST" and also has a page on
the abandoned highway and tunnels of the old South Penn RR/Pennsylvania
Turnpike route, with great color photos.
Dave Schul's North
American Auto Trails.
Fans of NYC streets should look at Jeff Saltzman's
NY Expressways and his
NY Parkways, Tom Scanello's OldNY.com,
Steve Anderson's NYCRoads, and Kevin
Walsh's Forgotten NY, just to name a
few; links on their pages will carry you on.
Odd New York City Street!
(moved from Automotive Continuation Page 1
on 16 May 02)
Driving back from documenting LaGuardia Airport's
Marine Air Terminal and on my way to try to document the
Western Terminus of the 1908 Long island Motor
Parkway, I was eastbound on Horace Harding Boulevard (the south service road
of the LI Expressway - I495) and instantly after the Van Wyck interchange and Mount
Hebron Cemetery, there was a stub street with a city street sign, so I doubled back
(unfortunately, this I did by making right turns - bad mistake!) and here is what I
found:
(Photos by and © 2001 S. Berliner, III - all rights reserved)
[To be recovered or reshot.]
Lawrence Street was cut off by the construction of the LIE back in the '50s
and this is all that's left of the southern end; it's apparently actually a City street!
There are any number of street signs to so indicate! The second shot shows a
modern sign on the south side of HHB, the third shows an ancient sign on a pole at
the southern end of the stub, and the fourth shows the signage at the north (LIE)
side of HHB.
Nassau Boulevard
[Missing images recovered 29 Apr 2007]
This Nassau Boulevard is the one that runs west-east and spans the
Deepdale (Little Neck, Queens County)/University Gardens (Lake Success, Nassau
County) line
on Long Island, New York, immediately north of the Long Island Expressway
(I495>.
It is NOT the Nassau Boulevard that runs north-south
through Garden City and Franklin Square in Nassau.
As noted on the Long Island Motor Parkway page, et
seq., and especially on "Road and Place
Names - Old and New (and Bogus)" on LIMP Continuation Page 9, this
Nassau Boulevard was once Horace Harding Boulevard.
This Nassau Boulevard appears on a 1927 Socony
Vanderbilt Cup race brochure as the western entry to the 1908 Long Island
Motor Parkway from New York and Brooklyn on three alternate routes: via
Flushing - Queensborough Bridge to a left turn onto Jackson Avenue to a right turn
onto Jamaica-Flushing Avenue to a left turn onto North Hempstead Road to Nassau
Boulevard; via Long Island City - QBB to a right turn onto Queens Boulevard to a left
turn onto Union Turnpike to another left turn onto Fresh Meadows Road to a right
turn onto Nassau Boulevard; and via Jamaica - Hillside Avenue to Fresh Meadows
Road to a right turn onto Nassau Boulevard. Horace Harding Boulevard is
shown as formerly Nassau Boulevard in Fresh Meadows on the 1937 Queens
Hagstrom's. This is NOT the Nassau Boulevard running north-south in
Franklin Square and Garden City.
After going in to Flushing on 16 May 02 to find traces
of the old Central RR of LI in Flushing and further documenting the
LI Motor Parkway between Horace Harding Boulevard/Long Island
Expressway and Union Turnpike, I headed for this odd little set of roads
in Deepdale. Yes, Virginia, there IS a Nassau Boulevard
running across the county line west-to-east just north of the LIE. There are
also Horace Hardings there; one is Horace Harding
Boulevard and one is Horace Harding Expressway (more on that below).
To avoid breaking copyright, I have put up my own map of the area here:
(Map by and © 2002 S. Berliner, III - all rights reserved
Thumbnailed image - click on picture for larger image.)
Because the north (westbound) service road of the LIE is one way, I abandoned my
usual west-to-east convention and followed Little Neck Parkway north under
the LIE, turned right (east) onto Bates Road and followed it to the end where
it joins Nassau Boulevard/Horace Harding Boulevard between where they diverge from
the LI Expressway about 1,000' west of Little Neck Parkway and 2,000' east of it.
Horace Harding Expressway (in Queens) is the service road for the Long Island
Expressway; it has various other names in Nassau. . I've always known
of the small segment running due west off the north service road that cuts across
north of the former Deepdale General Hospital to Little Neck Parkway as Horace
Harding Boulevard (for a short stretch further east it is Fairway Drive).
While trying to find details noted on Traces of the
CRRofLI RoW in Flushing? on 16 May 02, I noted on my 1998 Hagstrom's NYC
Atlas that the continuation of that road westerly is marked as !
Thus, I went with camera and found these street signs:
The first pair is at Cornell Street, looking south, confirming that our road is
indeed Horace Harding Boulevard in Nassau; the second is taken 260th
Street in Queens (NYC), a short distance east of the intersection of the road with
Little Neck Parkway, looking south at the former Deepdale General Hospital,
now as Nassau Boulevard.
Then, moving a few yards west to the intersection itself, here is the pair of signs at
Little Neck Parkway and Nassau Boulevard (through the windshield,
looking north-northwest) and finally all the way to the western end at the north
(westbound) service road, we find ourselves at Nassau Boulevard and
Horace Harding Expressway ((through the windshield, looking northwest;
shot against the sun of light yellow signs - I had to doctor this one heavily to bring up
an image):
(16 May 02 photos by and © 2002 S. Berliner, III - all rights reserved)
Odder and odder! If you'll refer to the revised map, my 1967 Hagstrom's
Nassau Atlas shows the entire run from the eastern intersection with the LIE to the
western one as Horace Harding Boulevard, as does my 1994 Hagstrom's
NYC Atlas, while my 1966 Hagstrom's NYC Atlas shows it as Nassau Boulevard
all the way east to Bates Road, where it is labelled Nassau Boulevard Extension
(if anything , it would more properly be Bates Road Extension)! Now,
for even more confusion, my 1998 Hagstrom's NYC Atlas shows it as Nassau
Boulevard eastward to Bates, from whence it is Horace Harding Boulevard
while the 1994 NYC shows it as Horace Harding Boulevard the whole way to
Fox Hunt Lane and unlabelled from there to Fairway.
While I was at it, I looked at the names of I495 and its north and south service roads;
the 1998 NYC shows the service roads as Horace Harding Expressway (as in
the Lawrence Street photo in the preceding article and in the western end photo
above), but only in Rego Park, but both Nassau atlases shows the south service road
as "Nassau Boulevard Ext." from Shelter Rock Road (Exit 35) to
Willis/Mineola Avenue (Exit 37)! The names vary from there eastward.
The other older atlas only labels I495, but all four show that as the Long Island
Expressway. Eventually, Fairway becomes Powerhouse Road and so
easterly to other names.
Who the hell WAS this guy, Horace Harding anyway?
Naturally, I can answer that; see Horace Harding (of
Boulevard fame) on my LIMP page 2.
Kevin Walsh (Forgotten NY, linked above) sent this along instantly; he says that
Nassau Boulevard has quite a "collection of ancient street signage: Queens County
white-and-blue 1964 vintage signs, and an even older one which predated those":
(Cropped from photo by K. Walsh - all rights reserved)
This intrigued me enough to pop recharged batteries in the digital and head right
back there to see for myself; well, my idea of NYC "white-and-blue" signs and Kevin's
are a wee bit different. I was thinking (hopefully) of the old
white-on-blue porcelainized plates and the ones Kevin meant are the newer
blue-on-what-was-once-white kind. While there, however, I did a more
complete survey of the signage, starting at the east end again, where there is no
signage whatsoever, then shooting the first one, Links Drive, on the south, looking
WSW, and the Fox Hunt Lane on the north, looking NE:
(21 May 02 photos by and © 2002 S. Berliner, III - all rights reserved)
There are several other streets with similar signs, including Links coming around again, in a loop to the west and bracketing Fox Hunt across the street, but I am not trying to document (or map) all the local streets, only Nassau Boulevard. Next came the bend in HHB, where it appears to be a continuation of Bates and is signed to show that is not so; this is in the Vee on the south side of Bates and the north side of Nassau, looking NW, and then, crossing the City line into Queens and trying another shot of that pesky sign at the northeast corner of Little Neck Parkway and NB, opposite 260th Street:
Again, there are a fair number of NB/LNP signs at that intersection; this is only a representative sample. Crossing LNP, and going west a block, I shot the other side of the sign on the north side of NB which Kevin pictured above; his shot was to the north (the lights are those of the strip mall) and this is the other side, looking south toward the little cut-off from the LIE W/B service road (HHE) to the mall (un-named but perhaps equivalent to 256th Street), and then going to the western end of the triangle between the cut-off, the LIE service road (HHE), and NB, I shot the same sign as above but under slightly better light, looking SSW:
Crossing the HHE service road (risky business, that!), here is the opposite side of that sign in the Vee, looking due north and now you can really see the blue-on-what-was-once-white color. Going back across LNP easterly to the Queens/Nassau line, here is the first sign in Nassau County showing HHB, on the SE corner of NB and Soundview Road, looking ESE:
Then, backing off to stand exactly on the County Line, itself, here is the view towards Soundview (with the sign), looking E (there's that Neon), with Bates in the far left distance, and then turning 180°, this is the view back WSW to LNP, with the HHE/LIE and the western Vee in the far distance at left:
{Wow, what exciting pictures!}
The sign on the north side of NB at LNP, opposite 260th Street is in a highlighted box I added and the sign at the strip mall (far right) is on the modern steel light pole, hidden by the articulated bus, while the one in the Vee is on the pole whose head you can just make out at the left border. Now, continuing easterly around the bend at Bates and to the very end, I made a near-"U" turn onto the Fairway, W/B service road of the LIE, and here's is the view ENE at the eastern end of HHB; the road to the right is the W/B service road and HHB comes in at the far left and merges into it (the LIE is on the other side of the Connecticut wall and Lakeville Road is just around the bend):
Next, a view of the Fairway sign, looking N, and then continuing westerly along Fairway, the next sign is at Horizon Road, which connects with the south end of the Links loop (looking NW), and then several more, and finally we come full circle to 260th Street at the W/B service road and, as we are back in Queens County, we are on the HHE (looking NNW at the SE corner):
Running easterly along NB, I had noticed a Vanderbilt Drive to the south and I passed the southern end on the HHE; being a big-time LI Motor Parkway buff, I know that we are in Deepdale, just north of William K. Vanderbilt, Jr.'s home of that name, so, after looping back onto NB/HHB one last time, I stopped just because and shot that sign as well, facing SE:
(21 May 02 photos by and © 2002 S. Berliner, III - all rights reserved)
[These were all nice, hi-res photos but I cut them down to conserve memory.]
Finally, heading eastward on the south service road, I looked for any evidence of it being called "Nassau Boulevard Extension", especially between Shelter Rock Road (Exit 35) and Willis/Mineola Avenue (Exit 37); there aren't very many street signs at all, only this cross street sign at Searingtown Road (Exit 36, with no main road name) and lastly Powerhouse Road at Browers Lane, just west of Willis Avenue (thus flatly contradicting Hagstrom's)!
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