Imagine boarding the Long Island Railroad at Penn Station or Woodside and traveling east on the Port Washington
Branch.
After leaving the Shea Stadium platform, the train does not
go east past Main Street, Murray Hill, Broadway and the other stations of
the branch, but rather veers northeast along the Flushing River; northwest
near the old Flushing Airport; makes an abrupt turn northeast at 14th Avenue
and continues in a private right of way close to the back yards of private
homes (think of the port Washington Branch east of Great Neck, or the Oyster
Bay branch), finally arriving at a landing at 7th Avenue and 154th Street.
Hard to imagine? It happened, between 1869 and 1932. The Whitestone,
originally the Whitestone and Westchester (implying a connection to the
mainland that never happened) was the baby of Conrad
Poppenhusen, a wealthy German immigrant who was one of the many "rubber
barons" of College Point. The branch began construction in 1868 and
in just a couple of years had reached Whitestone Landing, where it ended.
Poppenhusen took over the LIRR president in 1875, but his stewardship
was not successful; Austin
Corbin succeeded him to much greater success.
(LEFT):1930 Van Nostrand map showing the Whitestone Branch. Service
ended two years later--just as the area was beginning to be greatly settled
and developed and filling in between the small towns of College Point and
Whitestone. At the time, many of these streets existed on paper only.
The Whitesone Branch had stations at Flushing Bridge Street (the
surviving Flushing Main Street station is so named to differentiate it from
its long-closed sister); College Point, at present-day 18th Avenue and 127th
Street; Malba, at 11th Avenue and 142nd Street; Whitestone, at what is today
150th Street and Cross Island Parkway (14th Road still curves to follow
the ROW) and finally, Whitestone Landing, at 7th Avenue and 154th Street. | 
