Rockaway is a term applied to two types of carriage: a light, low, United States four-wheel carriage with a fixed top and open sides that may be covered by waterproof curtains, and a heavy carriage enclosed at sides and rear, with a door on each side. The name may be derived from the town of

Rockaway, New Jersey Rockaway is a borough in Morris County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the borough's population was 6,438,Herman Melville Herman Melville ( born Melvill; August 1, 1819 – September 28, 1891) was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance period. Among his best-known works are ''Moby-Dick'' (1851); ''Typee'' (1846), a rom ...

’s short story "

Bartleby "Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street" is a short story by the American writer Herman Melville, first serialized anonymously in two parts in the November and December 1853 issues of '' Putnam's Magazine'' and reprinted with minor tex ...

" as the narrator's mode of transport while avoiding the landlords and tenants looking for help in kicking Bartleby out. But the ''Long Island Museum of Art, American History and Carriages'', located in Stony Brook, New York, has a different explanation of the name. According to the Museum, the carriage was designed and built in

Jamaica Jamaica (; ) is an island country situated in the Caribbean Sea. Spanning in area, it is the third-largest island of the Greater Antilles and the Caribbean (after Cuba and Hispaniola). Jamaica lies about south of Cuba, and west of His ...

, Queens—a major hub for

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

residents traveling to Long Island for recreation—and was called the Rockaway because it was used to shuttle passengers between Jamaica and the

Atlantic Ocean The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 20% of Earth's surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the " Old World" of Africa, Europe ...

beaches of Long Island's

Rockaway Peninsula The Rockaway Peninsula, commonly referred to as The Rockaways or Rockaway, is a peninsula at the southern edge of the New York City borough of Queens on Long Island, New York. Relatively isolated from Manhattan and other more urban parts of the ...

References

External links

About Long Island Museum
Carriages {{vehicle-stub