Shore Front Parkway is a beachfront road paralleling the

Rockaway Beach and Boardwalk The Rockaway Beach and Boardwalk is a public park in Rockaway, Queens, New York, composed of the Rockaway Beach and the adjacent Rockaway Boardwalk. The beach runs from Beach 9th Street in Far Rockaway to Beach 149th Street in Neponsit, a dis ...

in the

New York City borough New York City is composed of five boroughs: The Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island. Each borough is coextensive with a respective county of New York State, making New York City the largest U.S. municipality situated in mult ...

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 ...

, running between Beach 73rd Street and Beach 108th Street. The parkway opened in 1939 after parks commissioner

Robert Moses Robert Moses (December 18, 1888 – July 29, 1981) was an American urban planner and public official who worked in the New York metropolitan area during the early to mid 20th century. Despite never being elected to any office, Moses is regarded ...

cleared a strip of land north of the boardwalk. Moses demolished more than 700 buildings in the parkway's path and destroyed what he described as "catch-penny enterprises" along the boardwalk, replacing them with recreational fields. In the process, nearly half of the

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, Rockaways' ...

amusement park was destroyed. Often called the "road to nowhere" by Rockaway residents because its termini do not access any well-traveled locations, Shore Front Parkway was intended by Moses as a link in a never-completed grand shorefront drive extending from

Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

to the

Hamptons The Hamptons, part of the East End of Long Island, consist of the towns of Southampton and East Hampton, which together comprise the South Fork of Long Island, in Suffolk County, New York. The Hamptons are a popular seaside resort and one of ...

. This project of Moses' was permanently thwarted in the 1960s when the

National Park Service The National Park Service (NPS) is an agency of the United States federal government within the U.S. Department of the Interior that manages all national parks, most national monuments, and other natural, historical, and recreational propertie ...

gained control of the bulk of

Fire Island Fire Island is the large center island of the outer barrier islands parallel to the South Shore of Long Island, in the U.S. state of New York. Occasionally, the name is used to refer collectively to not only the central island, but also Long ...

in Suffolk County, an essential link in the proposed highway, and decreed that it remain a permanently roadless

National Seashore The United States has ten protected areas known as national seashores and three known as national lakeshores, which are public lands operated by the National Park Service (NPS), an agency of the Department of the Interior. National seashores an ...

. In July 2007, the

New York City Department of Transportation The New York City Department of Transportation (NYCDOT) is the agency of the government of New York City responsible for the management of much of New York City's transportation infrastructure. Ydanis Rodriguez is the Commissioner of the Departm ...

announced that it would extend Shore Front Parkway through Beach 67th Street, where it would intersect with

Rockaway Beach Boulevard Rockaway Beach Boulevard, opened in 1886, was the first major east-west thoroughfare on the Rockaway Peninsula in the Borough of Queens in New York City. Much of its route parallels the Rockaway Freeway and the IND Rockaway Line above the Freeway ...

. The extension, called Beach Front Road, was subsequently extended through to Beach 60th Street. The southernmost roadway of Shore Front Parkway accommodates a two-way protected bike path.

References

Transportation in Rockaway, Queens Parkways in New York City Robert Moses projects Streets in Queens, New York {{NYC-road-stub

See also

References