Henry Parker
During the 1920s, Queens Boulevard began its transformation into the grand central roadway of the borough. The decade saw a massive civic project to widen the boulevard into a multi-lane highway, creating a thoroughfare that stretched from Long Island City deep into the heart of Queens. This expansion turned what was once a collection of smaller roads into a continuous, impressive artery designed to handle the coming age of the automobile.
The newly widened boulevard, with its service roads and central lanes, immediately became a path for development. In neighborhoods like Forest Hills and Kew Gardens, large and ornate apartment buildings began to rise. These six-story elevator buildings, often constructed in the Tudor or neo-Georgian style, were designed to attract middle-class families from Manhattan, offering more space and modern amenities. They were set back from the road with landscaped courts, creating an elegant, residential character along these stretches. A trolley line ran down the center of the boulevard, providing crucial public transit before the subway arrived.
The 1930s were defined by a different kind of construction. Beneath the surface of the street, workers blasted through earth and rock to build the Independent Subway System’s Queens Boulevard line. This enormous public works project, undertaken during the Great Depression, provided thousands of jobs. The subway line opened in stages throughout the decade, reaching Union Turnpike in 1936 and Jamaica in 1937.
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The arrival of the subway triggered an unprecedented construction boom. The promise of a fast, one-fare ride to Manhattan led to the development of entire neighborhoods. In areas like Rego Park and Elmhurst, developers quickly bought up the remaining farmland and open lots that lined the boulevard. They erected massive apartment complexes, some housing hundreds of families, directly along the roadway to be close to the new subway stations.
Alongside the residential growth, a new commercial landscape took shape. Storefronts appeared on the ground floors of the new apartment buildings. Movie palaces, such as the grand RKO Keith’s in Flushing and the Trylon in Rego Park, opened their doors, becoming major entertainment destinations. The combination of heavy automobile traffic and the new subway solidified the boulevard’s reputation as the “spine of Queens.” This heavy traffic also gave the boulevard a dangerous reputation, as the wide lanes encouraged high speeds, leading to numerous pedestrian accidents.
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