Ely Around in Queens
The 23rd St./Ely Ave. (pronounced “Eli” as in Manning) station serving E and M trains has increased in importance in recent years, as Greenpoint has gotten hotter—Queens residents needing access can change trains to the G line here. Many subway amateurs think this is the place where 23rd St. crosses Ely Ave. This is a fallacy, as Ely Ave. is the former name of 23rd St. It carried the name until the 1920s, as the then-NYC Topographical Bureau decided to put Queens under one numerical street system in 1915, and the streets were numbered gradually from neighborhood to neighborhood, completing the process by 1930.
However, some anachronisms remain on subway station signs. The best-known are along the #7 line, where Rawson, Bliss, and Lowery Sts., as well as Lincoln Ave., are still on the station signs for 33rd, 40th, 46th and 52nd Sts. Names also persist on the A in Ozone Park and the Rockaway peninsula.
Ely Ave. also appears on this building under the #7 tracks at 23rd St. and 45th Ave. (which under a previous numbering scheme was called 12th St.).
65th St. hasn’t been called Rowan St. since the 1920s. When the Independent Subway was routed under Broadway in Woodside in the 1930s, apparently one or more of the numeraries in the office thought it’d be helpful if some of the old names made it onto the signs for the benefit of area old-timers, such as 65th St.’s old name.
Only the subway signs at the Woodhaven Blvd. IND station refer to its junction with Queens Blvd. as Slattery Plaza. (Most Queens-ites these days call it Queens Center.) Here, Woodhaven Blvd., once called Trotting Course La., roars south, ultimately crossing Jamaica Bay to the Rockaway peninsula. Why does the IND call this Slattery Plaza? He was a well-regarded engineer in New York State in the early part of the 20th century.
From the West Point website:
“John Rodolph Slattery graduated 5th in the USMA Class of 1900. Born in Athens, OH, on 31 Jan 1877, he was appointed to the Academy by Charles P. Taft, brother of President William Howard Taft.
“After graduation, Slattery was assigned to the Philippines to work on bridges and roads—a typical beginning for an engineer. The next few years found him living in Honolulu, HI; Jacksonville, FL; and Vicksburg, MS, in charge of flood control. He remained in Vicksburg for several years and worked on the Flood of 1916. He then served in France as the Chief Engineer of the Seventh Army Corps until 1919.
“One of his contributions was the development of a project on the upper Hudson River known as the Port of Albany. After it was completed, oceangoing vessels could travel 150 miles inland from New York City. While working on the project, Slattery was noticed by John Delaney, Dock Commissioner of New York City, who was impressed with Slattery’s work and wanted him to serve as one of Delaney’s chief aids on the new system of transportation in New York, the subway system. In an unusual move, the Army granted Slattery a year’s leave of absence so he could work on the subway system. At the end of that year, Slattery had served 25 years and wanted to retire, but the Secretary of War would not allow it. Dissatisfied with the decision, Slattery resigned in 1925 and became the Deputy Chief Engineer of the Board of Transportation, in charge of such projects as the tunnels to Queens and Staten Island and the New York Central Railroad.
“Slattery earned a master of arts from Ohio University. He was a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers and past president of the Society’s New York section, American Military Engineers and the Municipal Engineers. He also received accolades from the mayor of New York for his work. The intersection of Queens and Woodhaven Boulevards in Queens, NY, is named Slattery Plaza in his honor.
“He suffered a heart attack while working in 1932 and died several days later in Jackson Heights, NY, at the age of 55.”
Photo: NYCSubway.org
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). The streets had had names for only a couple of decades before the “Beach” system was imposed. Many of Rockaway Beach’s side streets, like Frank Ave. (now Beach 44th) were originally built as planks across the sand dunes, leading to the now-vanished seaside mansions and later, bungalows. Though the Frank Ave. name hasn’t been in use for perhaps a century, the MTA keeps making new signs with the name.
—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)