Rockaway Beach Boulevard, opened in 1886, was the first major east-west thoroughfare on the

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 ...

in the Borough of

Queens Queens is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Queens County, in the U.S. state of New York. Located on Long Island, it is the largest New York City borough by area. It is bordered by the borough of Brooklyn at the western tip of Long ...

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 ...

. Much of its route parallels the

Rockaway Freeway The Rockaway Freeway is a road in the New York City borough of Queens that was created from the old right-of-way of the Long Island Rail Road Rockaway Division in 1941–1942 as part of the project to eliminate grade crossings within New York Ci ...

and the

IND Rockaway Line The IND Rockaway Line is a rapid transit line of the IND Division of the New York City Subway, operating in Queens. It branches from the IND Fulton Street Line at Rockaway Boulevard, extending over the Jamaica Bay, into the Rockaways. The ...

above the Freeway. The boulevard first forks off at its eastern end from

Beach Channel Drive Beach Channel Drive is the main thoroughfare of the Rockaway Peninsula in the New York City borough of Queens. It extends from the Nassau County border at Inwood westward, to the Marine Parkway–Gil Hodges Memorial Bridge at the end of Jacob ...

at Beach 35th Street in Edgemere and merges once again with Beach Channel Drive by

Jacob Riis Park Jacob Riis Park, also called Jacob A. Riis Park and Riis Park, is a seaside park on the southwestern portion of the Rockaway, Queens, Rockaway Peninsula in the New York City Boroughs of New York City, borough of Queens. It lies at the foot of ...

shortly before the

Marine Parkway–Gil Hodges Memorial Bridge The Marine Parkway–Gil Hodges Memorial Bridge (originally and often referred to as the Marine Parkway Bridge) is a vertical-lift bridge in New York City, New York, that crosses Rockaway Inlet. The bridge, which opened on July 3, 1937, con ...

. Rather curiously, the Boulevard runs north of the Freeway from its eastern end, while Edgemere Avenue runs exactly south of the Freeway, until Beach 56th Street in

Arverne Arverne is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Queens, on the Rockaway Peninsula. It was initially developed by Remington Vernam, whose signature "R. Vernam" inspired the name of the neighborhood. Arverne extends from Beach 54th Street ...

, where the northern flank becomes Arverne Boulevard and Edgemere Avenue abruptly turns into Rockaway Beach Boulevard for the remainder of its run. While the Boulevard served as the heart of a bustling business and entertainment district in the heart of the Rockaway Beach neighborhood, which included numerous hotels and amusement attractions, including the famous

Rockaways' Playland Rockaways' Playland was an amusement park that operated from 1902 to 1987 in Rockaway Beach in Queens, New York City. Bounded by Beach 97th and Beach 98th Streets between Rockaway Beach Boulevard and the Rockaway Beach and Boardwalk, Rockawa ...

, it was found that its original width could barely cope with the expanding traffic in its heyday. Much of the area in Arverne served by Rockaway Beach Boulevard was leveled through abortive

urban renewal Urban renewal (also called urban regeneration in the United Kingdom and urban redevelopment in the United States) is a program of land redevelopment often used to address urban decay in cities. Urban renewal involves the clearing out of blighte ...

efforts in the 1960s.

Transportation

The

parallels Rockaway Beach Boulevard east Beach 116th Street. The Q22 runs on Rockaway Beach Boulevard east of Beach 73rd Street. The Q52+ Select Bus Service and Q53+ Select Bus Service run on Rockaway Beach Boulevard between Cross Bay Parkway and Beach 73rd Street and Beach 116th Street, respectively. The QM16 and QM17 express bus between

and Midtown runs on Rockaway Beach Boulevard west of Cross Bay Parkway and Beach 73rd Street, respectively.

References

Sources

* Vincent Seyfried and William Asadorian, ''Old Rockaway, New York in Early Photographs'',

Dover Publications Dover Publications, also known as Dover Books, is an American book publisher founded in 1941 by Hayward and Blanche Cirker. It primarily reissues books that are out of print from their original publishers. These are often, but not always, book ...

, Mineola, NY, 2000. Streets in Queens, New York Transportation in Rockaway, Queens {{NYC-road-stub