Route of today’s walk, courtesy Google Maps.
WHERE: Stair streets on Union Turnpike and Austin Street
SUBWAY AT START: Woodhaven Boulevard (J, Z)
SUBWAY AT FINISH: Union Turnpike (E, F; fully accessible)
DISTANCE: 3.0 miles (4.8 kilometers)
Photographs by Michael Cairl
On this sparkling, cool day before Easter Sunday, I chose yet another far-off-the-tourist-trail itinerary. On the City’s list there are two stair streets in Queens that are a good walk from each other. Both are parallel to active streets, not in place of them. And it might seem this would be a ho-hum walk, but it was just the opposite.
Profile of today’s walk, courtesy Google Maps.
I started by taking the elevated J subway train to Woodhaven Boulevard and Jamaica Avenue. Woodhaven is an old neighborhood that has become quite diverse. Woodhaven Boulevard is a major artery running north-south and is wide enough that it took two traffic signal cycles for me to cross it. The subway station is not very far from the site of the old Union Race Course, a racetrack for thoroughbreds and, later, trotters, from 1821 to 1872. Read all about it at https://qns.com/2020/03/looking-back-at-the-history-of-the-union-course-racetrack-in-woodhaven-our-neighborhood-the-way-it-was/ and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_Course. The Select Bus Service (New York City’s sort-of-Bus Rapid Transit) stop at Woodhaven Boulevard and Jamaica Avenue includes images of race horses, pictured below, perhaps as homage to Union Course.
Clockwise from top left: images of race horses in the fence at the Jamaica Avenue bus stop on Woodhaven Boulevard; the great width of Woodhaven Boulevard, with a main road and side road in either direction; quiet Margaret Street, 1 block east of Woodhaven Boulevard; the march uphill on Woodhaven Boulevard begins.
Running the length of Long Island, from Bay Ridge in Brooklyn east to Montauk, is the moraine, a ridge that marks the southernmost advance of the Wisconsin Glacier in the last Ice Age. The ridge consists of boulders and gravel that the glacier pushed forward. North of the moraine the terrain is generally hilly, while south of it the terrain is flat and the soil is marshy or sandy. Woodhaven Boulevard climbs up the moraine from just north of Jamaica Avenue. An almost unbroken green belt of parks and cemeteries runs along or near the moraine from eastern Brooklyn to eastern Queens.
At the top of the moraine is the Jackie Robinson Parkway, formerly the Interborough Parkway, built in the 1930s from East New York in Brooklyn to Kew Gardens in Queens. This is a treacherous road with a 25 mph (40 kph) curve going past the Union Turnpike subway station, about which more later, and a serpentine, 25 mph run through cemeteries farther west. One thing that was crystal-clear along this walk is how much of the cityscape is given over to travel by private vehicles and how ill-designed much of it is. Just suppose the parkway were to be closed to motor vehicles. This road does few favors. And why should a great baseball player and great American, Jackie Robinson, be memorialized by a dangerous old road?
Much of the rest of my walk either paralleled or crossed the Jackie Robinson Parkway. From Woodhaven Boulevard I cut through a residential area to get to Union Turnpike and the first of today’s two stair streets, actually sets of stairs paralleling Union Turnpike and crossing over the right-of-way of the abandoned Rockaway Beach Branch of the Long Island Rail Road. This branch sent trains to Pennsylvania Station in Manhattan and to the LIRR’s Flatbush Avenue terminal in Brooklyn. The LIRR discontinued service on the southern portion in 1952 and it was acquired by the city for subway service that began in 1956 and continues today. The northern portion, which I crossed today, was abandoned in 1962.
Clockwise from top left: first set of 5 shallow steps on the Union Turnpike stair street; second set of 17 shallow steps; third set of 27 steps; view of the abandoned Rockaway Beach Branch with rails still visible,
I continued along Union Turnpike, paralleling Forest Park, then turned southeast on Metropolitan Avenue and east on Park Lane South through the eastern end of Forest Park. The Queens headquarters of the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation is in The Overlook, a building in Forest Park that might well be the highest point in Queens.
Left to right: Union Turnpike near the LIRR overpass (I included this to show the very low median, the same type that made the Interborough Parkway even more dangerous years ago than it is now, with no end of head-on collisions); Forest Park bridle path as it ducks under the parkway; me near The Overlook.
The last leg of the walk included the second stair street, along Austin Street, accompanying the duck-under for cars at the parkway. This took me from Kew Gardens to Forest Hills, which if I saw nothing else of either would be almost indistinguishable. Both were built up in the early 20th century, first with easy access by the LIRR and then gaining subway service in 1936. The walk ended along Queens Boulevard, which is even wider than Woodhaven Boulevard and has excellent subway service along much of its length. The subway station entrances from Grand Avenue to Briarwood could be made into attractive, accessible, safe crossings of this super-wide road.
Clockwise from top left: bioswale on 80 Road in Kew Gardens; semi-suburbia just a couple of blocks from the subway; stairs down at Austin Street (2 flights, total 25 steps); Austin Street underpass, beyond which are 2 flights of a total of 24 steps up; a delightful place where I got a light, tasty lunch (I’ll go there again for certain); unusual layout at the Union Turnpike subway station, where the mezzanine is bisected by Union Turnpike and the Jackie Robinson Parkway (to the left of the glass block wall).
Steps up: 29. Steps down: 68. Total steps: 97. Not as many steps as on some other walks but two taxing hill climbs (Woodhaven Boulevard and Forest Park Drive) and a lot of interesting things to see.