I remember it clearly. It was in October, 1975 and it was the first time I’d ridden my bicycle across Jamaica Bay on the Marine Parkway, since sub-named the Gil Hodges Bridge. Arriving at Fort Tilden, I headed east through Riis Park (marveling at its huge parking lot) through Rockaway Park, Hammels (where things got a bit dicey, in 1970s New York) into Far Rockaway and back. I traveled mostly on Rockaway Beach Blvd. and Beach Channel Dr., but also did a short stretch under an extremely lengthy concrete-clad elevated train, where there was a roadway called Rockaway Freeway. A freeway in New York City? I thought “freeways” were only found in pedal-to-the-metal car Southern California. But in NYC, we have one, too, though it’s somewhat of an anomaly.
The story of Rockaway Freeway begins with the New York, Woodhaven and Rockaway RR, which extended to Far Rockaway in 1872, Rockaway Park in 1882, and went out of business with its operations taken over for the Long Island Rail Road, with original stops shown here. Jamaica Bay was first bridged in 1879 when a state assemblyman, William Wainwright, persuaded investors such as hoteliers Michael Holland and Louis Hammel to donate land for stations, which would be named for them. Wainwright leased the Sea Side House hotel from James Remsen, who took him as a partner in 1876, and he managed and expanded the hotel after Remsen’s death in 1887. After he took on another partner, the name “Wainwright and Smith” was emblazoned on several amusement pavilions in Rockaway Beach.
For its first decades, the railroad ran at grade; the Hammel’s station (the name stuck as a neighborhood name, with the s but without the apostrophe) located at today’s Beach Channel Dr. and Beach 83rd St. is shown here. As the Peninsula became more populated the railroad wanted to eliminate grade crossings (as had been done decades earlier on many LIRR lines elsewhere in Brooklyn and Queens) and so, between 1939 and 1942, the entire stretch from Rockaway Park through Far Rockaway was placed on a concrete-clad iron trestle.
The city’s Independent Subway, built mostly in the 1930s, never produced many elevated stations—only two originals exist, at Smith-9th St. and 4th Ave. Before that, the IRT (Interborough Rapid Transit) and BMT (Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit) produced some concrete-clad stations at the ones deemed important such as Ocean Parkway, Bay Parkway, Bronx Park, and Hugh Grant Circle/Parkchester, and the entire Queens Boulevard Viaduct in Sunnyside, supporting the #7 train, is concrete-clad.
It’s interesting to speculate, but had the IND Second System been produced, some of it would’ve been elevated—and it’s possible the el would’ve been concrete-clad, as the Rockaway LIRR elevated was. The LIRR got tired of replacing a Jamaica Bay trestle that burned on numerous occasions, so the railroad sold it to the Transit Authority in the early-1950s for a bargain rate and the LIRR tracks, with slight modifications, became the province of the A (as well as other) trains in 1956.
When the concrete and steel trestle was constructed, a new roadway running for miles, mostly under the tracks, was created. It was “free” of many cross streets, meaning that cars could go for lengthy stretches without seeing a stoplight, and so, the road was known as Rockaway Freeway; it was not named in contrast to toll roads (which are nonexistent in NYC except for crossings like bridges and tunnels).
Rockaway Freeway begins and ends at Beach Channel Dr., albeit with several miles in between. On older maps, the curved stretch between BC Drive and Beach 108th St. is labeled Wainwright Court, named for the 18th-century developer, and Google Street View adheres to this view, although the NYC Department of Transportation calls it the west end of Rockaway Freeway. This is mostly a no-man’s land peppered with gas stations and an electric generator.
Beach 108th St. is bridged by the concrete-clad iron elevated train structure. Seen from Rockaway Beach Blvd., the seemingly unending, rhythmically positioned el stanchions make an impressive sight. North of us is a sewage treatment plant, while south on Beach 108th is the Surfside Park apartment complex.
Rockaway Freeway ducks under the overhead trestle of the A train just east of Beach 108th St., and will be overshadowed by the elevated for the majority of its several-mile length until it reaches Far Rockaway. Above it is the Beach 105th/Seaside station. You might think the appellation “Seaside” is an arbitrary designation, but the Seaside House was one of Rockaway’s earliest resorts, opened in 1856, when it was attainable only by boat or from carriage from Far Rockaway, and finally closing in 1941. It was so popular that the general area became known as Seaside, and there’s still a Seaside Ave. in place of Beach 103rd St.
Rockaway Playland, the peninsula’s answer to Coney Island, was in business between 1928 (as an amusement park in the classic sense; various amusement parks had operated at Rockaway Beach Boulevard, the boardwalk and Beach 98th St. since 1902) and the early-1980s. The roller coaster, named the Atom Smasher after World War II, was featured in the movie This Is Cinerama in 1952. Today? Only the station signs indicate there ever was an amusement park right here; tract housing now occupies the space.
Rockaway Freeway at Beach 84th St.. The Hammels Wye is an interesting railroad configuration that’s been a part of the Rockaway peninsula since the earliest days of steam railroading. It allows the tracks bridged across Jamaica Bay to travel west to Rockaway Park or east to Far Rockaway. In addition there is separate trackage that connects the two forks of the “Y.”
When the RR was elevated in 1939-1942 it was built on multiple arched concrete trestles that make interesting viewing when traveling on Beach Channel Dr.
A number of stations on the Rockaway Branch line have old names appended to the Beach numbers (Rockaway has a Beach numbering system, beginning at Beach 2nd and running west to Beach 200-something in Breezy Point). The streets had had names for a couple of decades before the “Beach” system was imposed. Many of Rockaway Beach’s side streets, like Gaston Ave. (now Beach 67th) were originally built as planks across the sand dunes, leading to the now-vanished seaside mansions and later, bungalows.
The concrete trestle and Rockaway Freeway pass the empty blocks between the boardwalk and the railroad in Edgemere. New York City’s only freeway finally ends at Beach Channel Dr. and Regina Ave., a short block away from the A train Far Rockaway terminus at Mott Ave.
—Kevin Walsh is the webmaster of the award-winning website Forgotten NY, and the author of the books Forgotten New York (HarperCollins, 2006) and also, with the Greater Astoria Historical Society, Forgotten Queens (Arcadia, 2013).