From "Story of Corona" by Vincent Seyfried

With the exception of Forest Hills Gardens, the Rego Park Crescents, and Corona Park, most of Rego Park, Forest Hills, and Corona are divided into a rectangular street grid, imposed in the 1920s. Prior to the grid, the future Rego Park and Forest Hills were separated from Elmhurst and Corona by Horse Brook, a stream originating near Codwise Place and Grand Avenue in Elmhurst, running towards Justice Avenue and Broadway. From there, it followed Justice Avenue and the future Long Island Expressway towards Flushing Meadows, where the stream joined Flushing River. Today, large superblocks, street triangles, and a few alleys stand as reminders of this long-gone stream.

                                                                          www.forgotten-ny.com

                                               www.forgotten-ny.com

Horse Brook Island
Justice Avenue/56th Avenue

Under Parks Commissioner Henry J. Stern, two Greenstreets triangles in Elmhurst were dubbed Horsebrook Island, to keep the memory of the stream alive. The stream was used by the townsfolk to water their horses, hence the name. Justice Avenue is named for the Newtown Town Hall, which stood on the corner of Broadway and Justice Avenue until 1966. This street runs along the path of an ancient railway, the White Line, which diverged from the Flushing and North Shore Railroad at Winfield and reconnected to it in Flushing, passing through Newtown and Corona Park.  It was a short run, for the White Line opened in 1873 and went extinct in 1876. In 1897, Newtown was renamed Elmhurst to disassociate it from the foul-smelling Newtown Creek.
 

A lone Victorian-era home stands nearby that must have been here when horses watered in the brook, and trains rattled on long-vanished tracks. A block away, the massive Queens Center Mall provides a much different view. The expansion of the mall is atop a parking field built on the Horse Brook streambed.

This 1876 map of Newtown is from Nunziato Florist of Maspeth. The three Forgotten stars on this map are the LIRR White Line, Horse Brook, and the North Hempstead Plank Road, which all parallel each other, respectively listed north to south. At the time, the Flushing River could be crossed at only two places, Northern Boulevard and Strong's Causeway.

(Below: Strong's Causeway in 1905)

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Tributaries: this 1898 topographical map shows a tributary stream to the south of Horse Brook. Emerging from a steep and narrow valley, it was known as Whitepot, and eventually became Yellowstone Boulevard. The tributary to the north of Horse Brook between Newtown and Corona later became the site of Lefrak City.

The curvy road on the map's extreme left is Broadway, with Queens Boulevard and Justice Avenue hugging both sides of the stream. This is the heart of historic Newtown.

The road that parallels the stream to the south is the North Hempstead Plank Road

The "electric railroad" crossing Flushing Meadows is Strong's Causeway. Eventually, this streetcar line became the route of the Q58 bus, which connects Ridgewood to Flushing. Strong's Causeway was replaced with the Long Island Expressway in 1939.

Two decades later, Forest Hills was mapped out by Cord Meyer, on the bottom of the map. The sizable empty areas along Horse brook were wetlands, and as a result, they defied the grid for a few years longer. Eventually, the superblocks making up Lefrak City, Rego Park Estates, and the Queens Center Mall would be built atop the streambed.

Along the south bank of Horse Brook was North Hempstead Plank Road, later incorporated into today's 63rd road, and the other green-colored names on the map. The road began in Maspeth as 57th Street, running towards Queens Boulevard. It shares paths with the boulevard until 63rd Road, where it continued its run eastward.

The yellow paths are today's major roads, including Queens Boulevard, Corona Avenue, and 108th Street. The village grid of Corona Park is diagonal to the grids north and south of it.

Two street grids collide at Junction Boulevard and 62 Drive, creating potential for a Greenstreets park. The fortified brown structure belongs to AT&T and is mentioned in the AIA Guide to New York City. The city approved the telephone exchange in 1976, with the requirement that AT&T build a playground and maintain it for 10 years. Behind it is the Lost Batallion Playground, named after a group of WWI heroes. In the background is the main Lefrak City office building, which has DEP and IRS offices inside.

The Rego Park Mall expansion will include a Century 21, a Home Depot, and other well-known retailers. The project costs approximately $550 million. Because it is being built on the site of Horse Brook, the construction pit is inside a bathtub, similar to the World Trade Center.

                                                              www.forgotten-ny.com

                          www.forgotten-ny.com

Apex Place is a short lane in Forest Hills, just south of the LIE, connecting Yellowstone Boulevard with 62nd Drive near 108th Street.

It is a remnant of the ancient North Hempstead Plank Road. The 1853 map to the left shows Apex Place. At the time, only three families appear on the map, the Lott, Jarvis, and Rapelye families. The Rapelye name appears on Queens maps from the Dutch days to the early 20th century. Today, no Rapelyes are listed in the Queens phone book. They all moved on.

Coe’s Mill appears on the left, and the Coe’s Mill (William Geyer) Hotel appears on the right in this early 20th century view. The streambed is now covered by the Long Island Expressway. This photo is from “Story of Corona” by Vincent Seyfried

The same location is totally unrecognizable today. In 1930, Coe's farmhouse and hotel were unceremoniously demolished and by the end of the decade, the future Long Island Expressway was rammed through the site. Fill for the streambed was brought in from the nearby Queens Boulevard subway excavation.

                                                                   From the collection of Kevin Walsh

Coe’s Mill stands where North Hempstead Plank Road crosses Horse Brook. At the crossing is a small isle. This map was designed at the end of the 19th century. By then, the White Line right-of-way was being gradually gobbled up by developers. The village's main street, Broad Street kept its extra width and later renamed Saultell. On the left, an alley named Westside Avenue delineates the village's original western border. The one-lane alley still exists today. As for the isle, it's as wide as the highway that was built on top of it.

In 1898, Queens joined New York City, and planners had grand ambitions for the entire borough, blanketing the largely empty map into a uniform rectangular grid. This map ignores the presence of Horse Brook and dares to extend urbanization into Flushing Meadows. At the same time, while most colonial-period farm lanes were eliminated, there were two exceptions: Apex Place and Colonial Avenue, which were allowed to remain as remnants of the North Hempstead Plank Road, slight skewing off the grid.

108^th Street was proposed by the city’s Board of Estimate in 1916 as a route for a trunk sewer line. It would run as a straight line from the Corona to Forest Hills, cutting through some of the old Corona Park blocks. Residents were compensated and construction began in 1918. Initially dubbed Central Avenue, it crossed Horse Brook atop of 15 feet of landfill.

From 75^th Avenue to 63^rd Drive, Cord Meyer gave northern Forest Hills an alphabetical street grid ranging from Atom to Zuni. Unlike southern Forest Hills, which had purely British names such as Austin, Burns, Clyde, and Dartmouth, northern Forest Hills had diverse names such as Euclid, Meteor, Nome, and Pilgrim. The five blocks between Zuni and the future Long Island Expressway were also given names. The street following Zuni was named Omega, after the last Greek letter, signifying the edge of the neighborhood. The old North Hempstead Plank Road between Apex Place and Colonial Avenue was straightened and renamed. Some early maps call it Urania, while others say Urquhart. The latter is a Scottish last name and its namesake may be the map’s surveyor or someone connected to the developer of the neighborhood. By the late 1920s, the city decided to assign numbers to the street grid, and Urquhart became 62 Drive. Only Jewel Avenue remains from this whimsical naming sequence.

A sitting duck: The Coe House appears to be on the median of the future Long Island Expressway, at the time dubbed Nassau Boulevard. The streambed occupies a super-block where the Forest Hills Co-op Houses will stand.

Change arrived in 1929, when the Board of Estimate proposed a Flushing River Park for Flushing Meadows. In 1934, master builder Robert Moses decided to use the park as the site of the 1939-1940 World’s Fair. Previously used as a landfill, the area would be transformed into the largest park in Queens. To improve transportation to the site, Strong’s Causeway would be replaced with Nassau Boulevard, as the future Long Island Expressway was initially named. To build the highway over the Horse Brook wetlands, fill was brought in from the nearby Queens Boulevard subway excavations.  

To build the highway, Coe’s Mill and the William Geyer (Coe’s Mill) Hotel were unceremoniously demolished. Colonial Avenue was severed into two and eventually its northern half was absorbed into the service road, named after highway promoter Horace Harding.

Part of the plans for the World's Fair included the damming of Flushing River into two lakes. In this photo, Horse Brook drains into the 84-acre Meadow Lake. For the Fair, the lake was temporarily known as Liberty Lake and Fountain Lake. Within a decade, even this trace of the stream would disappear.

                                                  www.queenspix.com

The brook is drained as the cloverleaf interchange between the Grand Central Parkway and the Long Island Expressway approaches completion. For another decade, the last two blocks along the streambed remained undeveloped.

        Craig Bavaro collection, “The Fair from the Air,” http://www.nywf64.com./fair_air06.shtml

        Special thanks to David Victor for providing this photo.

The large front lawn shared by the residents was replaced with a paved cul-de-sac in order to compensate for the backyard parking spaces lost to Fairview. In addition, the apartments were turned into private homes and over the decades its owners altered the homes to their personal tastes. Today, some of these homes are painted beige, some white, and one pink. One of the homes features an enormous satellite dish, while another has a chimney.

(Below: the Central Gardens homes share the block with Fairview Apartments)

This traffic triangle on the corner of Colonial Avenue is only a block away from the site of Coe's Mill and Horse Brook. Maybe the Parks Department can rename it after the mill, or add a third Horsebrook Island to its collection.