The Rockaway Beach and Boardwalk is a public park in Rockaway, Queens, New York, composed of the Rockaway Beach and the adjacent Rockaway Boardwalk. The beach runs from Beach 9th Street in Far Rockaway to Beach 149th Street in Neponsit, a distance of . The boardwalk, a concrete deck, runs from Beach 9th Street to Beach 126th Street in Rockaway Park, at the edge of Belle Harbor. There are also numerous recreational facilities within the park, parallel to the beach and boardwalk.
The beach became a popular resort area in the late 19th century, and several disconnected sections of the boardwalk were constructed by the end of the century. The first section of city-owned boardwalk between Beach 109th and 126th Street was completed in 1923, and the city announced plans for a massive boardwalk two years later, stretching across most of the Rockaway peninsula's southern shore. The city government completed the sections between Beach 19th and 109th Streets in three phases between 1928 and 1930. The concrete boardwalk from Beach 9th Street to Beach 19th Street was completed in 1963. After Hurricane Sandy destroyed much of the boardwalk in 2012, it was rebuilt in several phases through 2017.
The park has been maintained by the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation since 1938. It is nominally policed by the New York City Parks Enforcement Patrol.
Description
The Rockaway Beach and Boardwalk, operated by the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation (NYC Parks), run parallel on the Rockaway peninsula from Beach 9th Street in the east, within Far Rockaway, to Beach 126th Street in the west, within Rockaway Park. The beach and boardwalk are parallel to Beach Front Road from Beach 59th to Beach 73rd Street, and are parallel to Shore Front Parkway from Beach 73rd to Beach 108th Street. The beach continues west to Beach 149th Street in Neponsit, where it connects with the beach at Jacob Riis Park. The boardwalk is long while the beaches cover an area of over .
The beach and boardwalk run adjacent to a variety of neighborhoods, including public housing on the Beach 50- and 60-numbered streets in Edgemere and Arverne, and high-rise developments on the Beach 100-numbered streets in Rockaway Beach. Some sections of the boardwalk, such as the sections in Edgemere and Arverne, are next to mostly uncrowded beaches. Other sections, such as the segment in Rockaway Beach, include recreational facilities and bathroom facilities and tend to be crowded.
The bus runs close by for almost the entire route of the beach. The western part of the beach is also served by the bus, while the central part is also served by the buses. The Rockaway Beach and Boardwalk is also largely within walking distance to several stations on the New York City Subway's IND Rockaway Line. The central section of the park is served by the between the and stations, while the eastern section is served by the between the and stations.
Boardwalk The planks were originally made of several different woods such as "Angelique, teak, pine, ipe, Cumaru and greenheart", according to The New York Times. However, most of the wooden boardwalk was destroyed during Hurricane Sandy in 2012. The wooden boardwalk was ultimately entirely replaced with concrete.
When originally planned, the boardwalk was to extend almost from Beach 9th to Beach 169th Streets, connecting with the boardwalk in Jacob Riis Park. The boardwalk was intended to be wide and an average of above the beach. More than 12,000 yellow-pine deep foundations were to be used for the boardwalk, and more than of yellow pine planks were to be used for the bulkheads. As built, the boardwalk was supported by about 1,306 concrete "bents", supported by three or four wooden piles and spaced at intervals of about .
The present boardwalk, made largely of concrete, is supported on piles spaced apart and driven up to underground. A pair of piles support a concrete foundation or "bent". The concrete slabs of the boardwalk surface are secured to their foundations. A sand-retaining wall under the boardwalk is designed to prevent sand from drifting away from the beach. Most of the boardwalk is wide, and largely follows the path of the original boardwalk, with minor modifications to straighten out its route. "Bump-outs", which add between of width to the boardwalk, are installed at areas where there are stairs and ramps, as well as at areas with amenities such as benches. The present modular benches reused wood from the old boardwalk.
Beach
The beach was built with an average width of , using of sand. Parts of the beach in Arverne and Edgemere were filled to a width of up to due to strong currents in that area. To protect beach erosion, jetties were constructed at , extending from the boardwalk to the ocean. From 1977 to 2004, the United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) undertook a beach nourishment project between Beach 19th and 149th Streets, replenishing a wide strip of the beach. Ecologically, the beach contains maritime beach and maritime dunes communities, with vegetation present along the length of the beach. The section from Beach 38th to Beach 57th Street is a piping plover habitat and, since 1996, has been closed to the public from April to August of each year.
Rockaway Beach is the only one of New York City's beaches that sees significant surf, and all of the beach are patrolled. In 2005, The New York Times reported that of 1,000 lifeguards hired for the city's beaches, 500 of them worked on Rockaway Beach. The beaches are generally most utilized from Memorial Day in May to Labor Day in September. The city's only legal surfing beaches are also along Rockaway Beach, between Beach 67th and 69th Streets and between Beach 87th and 92nd Streets.
On the section between Beach 126th and 149th Streets, which does not have frontage on the boardwalk, the beach is accessed by stairs or ADA-accessible ramps at the ends of these streets. Along that section, baffle walls are installed to prevent sand migration. The segment between Beach 9th and 20th Streets has five areas where paths extend south of the boardwalk and cross the beach's dunes to the shoreline.
Park facilities
There are several recreational facilities along the beach and boardwalk, including basketball and handball courts, a roller hockey rink, skateparks, and playgrounds. In addition, there are food concessions at Beach 17th, 86th, 97th, and 106th Streets. "Comfort stations", or restrooms, also exist at Beach 9th, 17th, 32nd, 60th, 86th, 97th, 106th, and 115th Streets. The original comfort stations were destroyed in 2012 during Hurricane Sandy; these were replaced in 2013 by modular structures designed by Garrison Architects, which are installed in pairs. The modular structures contain double-layered stainless-steel facades and are powered by photovoltaic cells.
The section of the park within Far Rockaway contains three sets of recreational facilities. O'Donohue Park, near Beach 9th Street at the eastern end of the Rockaway Beach and Boardwalk, contains a playground, ten handball courts, three basketball courts, and restrooms, as well as the Far Rockaway Skate Park. Near Beach 17th Street is another playground, as well as a baseball field. The next recreational facilities are between Beach 27th and 32nd Streets, which contain the Beach 30th Street Playground and a football field. In Arverne, there is a playground and handball facilities at Beach 59th Street. Another playground, as well as one basketball and eight handball courts, are on the boardwalk's south side from Beach 74th to 77th Street. Within Hammels, there are eight handball and two basketball courts west of Beach 81st Street, and two playgrounds at Beach 84th Street. In the neighborhood of Rockaway Beach is the Rockaway Beach Skate Park at Beach 91st Street. There is an ice hockey rink at Beach 109th Street. In addition, there is an amphitheater at Beach 94th Street.
A gray-and-aquamarine stucco sculpture called "Whaleamena", formerly of the Central Park Children's Zoo, is situated at the Beach 95th Street entrance to the park. A seal sculpture from Central Park is also on the boardwalk. On Shore Front Drive, there are a series of decorative bus shelters designed for the 1939 New York World's Fair. The shelters contain aquatic-themed murals designed by Esther A. Grillo and installed in 1997.
At Beach 116th Street, there is also a memorial to the victims of American Airlines Flight 587, which crashed into the Rockaway peninsula in 2001 and killed 265 people. The memorial, designed by Dominican artist Freddy Rodríguez and Situ Studio, was completed in 2006. It consists of a wall, inscribed with the victims' names, with windows and a doorway looking toward the nearby Atlantic Ocean and angled toward the Dominican Republic, the origin country of many crash victims. Atop the memorial is a quotation, in both Spanish and English, from Dominican poet Pedro Mir, reading "", which translates to "Afterwards I want nothing more than peace."
History The Rockaway peninsula became a popular area for seaside hotels starting in the 1830s, with the first resort being founded at Far Rockaway in 1835. Many resorts were situated on Rockaway Beach along the southern side of the peninsula. The peninsula's popularity grew in the 1880s with the construction of the Long Island Rail Road's Rockaway Beach Branch to Long Island City and Flatbush Terminal (now Atlantic Terminal), which facilitated population growth.
Predecessors
Several disconnected sections of boardwalk were built along the beach in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, mostly clustered around resorts. These included a stretch in Arverne to the east, a stretch in Rockaway Park to the west, and shorter sections in Hammels and Hollands (now Rockaway Park) in the center. The peninsula became part of the City of Greater New York in the late 1890s. Amusement parks also opened along the beach, such as Rockaways' Playland in the first decade of the 20th century.
The initial boardwalk in Arverne was built in 1886, above the beach. A new boardwalk, stretching about , was built to the south in 1900–1901. Family houses, a hotel, and an 800-seat theater were built around the Arverne boardwalk, though the boardwalk was often damaged by hurricanes and high tides. Each property owner on the boardwalk was to be charged $1 for each bedroom in their property, although several owners and tenants initially refused to pay the tax.
A separate boardwalk was built in the communities of Hollands and Seaside in 1893. That boardwalk had been built after the resorts in these communities were wrecked in an 1892 fire. The boardwalk contained several theaters, hotels, and roller coasters. Yet another boardwalk, located at Rockaway Park, was also overlooked by resorts.
Expanded beach and boardwalk
Planning and first section By the 1910s, the Arverne Boardwalk Committee and the Arverne Hotel Owners' Association were advocating for the construction of a boardwalk from Beach 58th or 59th Street to Beach 109th Street. The Edgemere Taxpayers' Association supported building a boardwalk both westward to Beach 109th Street and eastward to Beach 24th Street. Residents of Rockaway Park wanted a boardwalk as well, connecting Jacob Riis Park at Beach 148th Street to Edgemere. Several groups collaborated to acquire land on the waterfront, and by 1923, the civic groups had acquired almost all waterfront land in Arverne between Beach 59th and 75th Streets. The city planned an "experimental boardwalk" between these streets, following the model of the Riegelmann Boardwalk at Coney Island. Queens borough engineers considered three options: a boardwalk without a road, one with a wide parkway, and one with a narrow parkway. The city government also sent engineers around the world to look at other boardwalks' designs, as it intended to build the world's longest boardwalk along the Rockaway shore.