Queens Blvd. - 77th to 74th Sts. Woodside Photo Gallery: Queens Blvd

This short triangle of boulevard wedged between the Conrail and Long Island Railroad overpasses forms the borderline badlands between Woodside to the west and Elmhurst to the east. What little room does exist for business here is relegated to used car lots on both sides. The LIRR bridge above is similar in construction to a sister LIRR span several blocks west near 65th Place. Trains headed for Port Washington go over both, diverging eastbound from the main line just before passing beneath the Conrail tracks, which themselves cut a long swath south from the Hellgate Bridge in Astoria, down into East New York, Brooklyn, and then eastward to Bush Terminal between Bay Ridge, for which that section of track is named, and Sunset Park.

The Conrail viaducts are far grander than the pedestrian 1910-1920 era LIRR spans. With varying degrees of stonework, these arched vaults are pretty much de riguer for this railroad from here to the Hellgate. The bluish grey band discernible to the west is the other LIRR trestle, just past 69th Street.

This wedge of boulevard was the last stronghold for the original 1930's era cast iron twinlamp lampposts. They lasted,with their incandescent lamps on this oft neglected stretch into the 1970's, long after other sections went first mercury vapor, then HPS.

©2001, Jeff Saltzman. All right reserved.