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Looking South & East Photo Gallery: Queens Blvd |
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  Looking east across
the boulevard, where stands a 1939-1940 vintage row of stores,
topped by offices. The great anchor of that row was the Trylon
Theater, now shuttered. At its closing a couple of years ago,
I believe it was the only single-screen theater left in the city.
I saw many movies there, including Saturday Night Fever. The
earliest one I remember catching there was either I Never Sang
for My Father, which I believe starred Gene Hackman, or Bullitt,
with Steve McQueen. That Bullitt car chase scene is still the
best of that genre ever made. The former bank turned Tower Diner
follows at the corner of 99th Street. One of the greatest plagues
along Death Boulevard are the incessant interruptions by avenues
and streets alike hitting it from odd angles. Many times, such
intersections involve both an avenue and a street, either converging
or diverging together at the same point, making crossings already
complicated by the width of the boulevard all the more confusing
and hazardous. |
| To the south, we find a truncated 66th Avenue, formerly White Pot Road going all the way back to pre-colonial days. It crosses 4 local streets before getting dead ended by the Long Island Railroad's main line. The apartment house that appears to sit smack in the middle of it is actually on the other side of the tracks, facing Burns Street. A few blocks past that is another 66th Avenue segment, which takes over from the Fleet Street made famous by its little league fields, after said Fleet Street passes beneath the Dead Tracks. Ironic, given 66th Avenue's relationship to the name Fleet, only a block east at the corner of 99th Street is a branch of Fleet Bank, no relation itself to Fleet Street. |
© 2001, Jeff Saltzman.
