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Flushing is a community located about centrally in the northern section of Queens, east of the Van Wyck Expressway and west of Bayside. It is one of Long Island's, and New York City's, oldest settled towns, with a history stretching back to the early 1600s. Flushing is also home to New York City's longest, and commercially most potent, Main Streets.
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Today, Main Street in Queens is a mighty throughfare indeed, arising at Northern Boulevard and plunging south to the confluence of Queens Boulevard and the Van Wyck Expressway. However, through most of its history it wasn't nealy as long. A look at this Beers Atlas from the late 1800s shows it extending only as far south as today's Franklin Avenue, and the section below today's Kissena Boulevard (then called Jamaica Road) was then named Jaggar Street (no relation, we can safely assume, to the Rolling Stones' head lip-flapper.) Main Street's length has gradually lengthened over the years. By the mid-1920s it extended about as far south as Cedar Grove Cemetery. South of that, though, there were several country clubs and golf links that impeded its southern extension. |
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The above excerpts from a 1940 H.M. Gousha map show that by then, Main Street had attained almost its full length, at least on paper. But prewar Queens was still a vastly different place than it is now, and south of Cedar Grove Cemetery, Main Street stretched through acre after acre of emptiness before reaching its southern limit at the then-new Grand Central Parkway.
Can any Forgotten Fans give me a definite date on when Main Street was cut through to its full length?
If you look at pictures in books of Main Street in Flushing over the years (none of which, for copyright reasons, I'm allowed to show you here) you'll see that it has undergone more changes than Madonna...from a rural dirt track overhung with spreading trees, to a bustling, small-town main street with mom-and-pop shops and movie theatres, to what it is today...the epicenter of Asian immigrant culture in Queens.
St. George's Church remained the tallest building in Flushing until the late 1980s. |
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One thing, though, is a constant in all pictures of Main Street in whatever decade you choose to peruse. St. George's Episcopal Church's benevolent steeple and churchyard have stood in this spot since 1854.
It's the third church, actually, to occupy this space, testifying to Flushing's antiquity. The first church, built in 1746, received a charter from George II. The second church was built in 1821, and this one replaced it 33 years after that, though the second church was used for services until 1930.
Francis Lewis, Declaration signer and namesake of a certain boulevard, served as verstryman in the first church from 1769 to 1790.
Main Street in Brooklyn is a tiny two-block stretch in the shadow of the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges between Front and Plymouth Streets. Even at its lengthiest, it was only a four-block street between York Street on the south to John Street on the north. It's a mystery why it was named Main Street, since it was insignificant even in its salad days.
This 1853 painting, Winter Scene in Brooklyn, by Louisa Ann Coleman, depicts Brooklyn as it was in the mid-1820s. Front Street, then a fashionable street lined with upper-class residences, is in the foreground. We are looking south with Main Street on the left and Fulton Street on the right. Until the mid-1800s Front Streeet was indeed the waterfront, before landfill extended Brooklyn into the East River a couple of blocks. Picture from the Museum of the City of New York. |
Now, if we were to be standing in the snow in the scene above, cross Front Street, jump into H.G. Wells' Time Machine and set the controls about 180 years in the future, this is the Main Street we would see. The mighty Manhattan Bridge was completed in 1909. |
This is the old Sweeney Manufacturing Company Building on Water St. and Main Street. Directly across the street is Gold's Gym. 2002: David Walentas has taken down the 'Sweeney Mfg. Co" sign, intending to install windows as he converts this building for luxury residential use. A far cry from the tidy townhouses of the 1820s, Brooklyn between the bridges is now almost totally devoted to industry, although developer David Walentas, who owns One Main Street, is trying to once again bring upscale housing into this area in a plan fraught with controversy. |
Main and Plymouth Streets |
New York's obscurest Main Street is located in the private Bronx neighborhood of Edgewater Park, which is wedged north of the Throgs Neck Expressway and south of Eastchester Bay. Edgewater Park is so obscure, in fact, that it wasn't even represented correctly on maps until the 1980s.
This Hagstrom from the late 1980s is still inaccurate in some ways but it does depict Edgewater Park's two main streets, Main and Edge. |
Edgewater Park has its own rather confusing set of street signage, not the green and white signs seen elsewhere. |
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Bucolic Main Street ambles northeast toward Eastchester Bay. Note the absence of sidewalks. |
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LEFT: Main Street meets First Avenue at water's edge. Across the
bay is Great Neck, Long Island.
RIGHT: First Avenue winds southeast from Main Street. Houses abut the roadway with no sidewalks. Only a couple of roads connect Edgewater Park to its surrounding Throgs Neck neighborhood; First Avenue continues around and into the Alden Park section of Edgewater.
The newest of New York City's Main Streets, the Main Street that forms the spine of Roosevelt Island came into being in 1975, when the city-within-a city Roosevelt Island Development was hatched; soon after, dense, rather drab multistory housing was constructed for an initial 5000 families.
Main Street is one of only a couple named streets on Roosevelt Island (River Road along the East River is the other) and its beginning and end is not well-defined. It winds around the now-abandoned Goldwater Memorial Hospital at the south end, then meanders north past the parking lot and then winds around Bird S. Coler Memorial Hospital at the north end. |
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The 1888 Good Shepherd Episcopal Church, now an ecumenical center, is dwarfed by the 1970s apartment buildings constructed around it. |
Main Street opposite the church. |
There's not a lot of green in the downtown section of Roosevelt Island, and even Main Street's lone park faces the monolithic parking garage. RIGHT: looking south along Main Street.
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LEFT: I believe that part of the reason Main Street looks rather drab is because all storefronts are obscured behind concrete partitions, and the high rise apartments press close to Main Street, permitting little light to shine. All is not drab on Roosevelt Island, however; its pedestrian and bike trails that surround the island provide plenty of air and sun, and great views, especially on the Manhattan side. See this page for more on Roosevelt Island! |
Tottenville is the southern limit of both New York City and New York State. It's also the southernmost station on the Staten Island Railway, and a ferry (whose slip pilings are still visible) ran from the RR station to Perth Amboy, New Jersey until 1963 (the ferry connecting St. George to Bay Ridge, Brooklyn was similarly discontinued the next year. Till 1964 it was possible to travel from Bay Ridge to Perth Amboy by boat, train and boat! Tottenville is one of many small towns, each still with its own personality and town center, along Staten Island's south shore, and it still retains its own Main Street--complete with several ancient relics.
No movie theatres remain in Tottenville today (residents have
to drive to a mall multiplex these days) but the remains of the old Stadium
Theater still stand near Amboy Road.
Main Street's southern limit is at Billop Avenue and the undeveloped Conference House Park. |
Downtown Tottenville is where Main meets Amboy. Main Street runs north and south while Amboy Road ambles along for mile after mile until it meets Richmond Road in New Dorp. Main Street these days retains the exact same small-town flavor it must have had before the construction of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge in 1964; old ways are reluctant to change this far out.
Sources: AIA Guide to New York City, White & Willensky, 2000 Three
Rivers Press New York: A Guide to the Metropolis, Gerard R. Wolfe, 1993 McGraw-Hill HOME | LAMPS | SUBWAYS & TRAINS | ADS | TROLLEYS | SIGNS | COBBLESTONES | STREET SCENES | YOU'D NEVER BELIEVE YOU'RE IN NYC | LINKS | ALLEYS | NECROLOGY | CEMETERIES | FORGOTTENSTUFF E me at erpietri@earthlink.net | ||||||||||||||||||
