Welcome to Broadway, in Queens, New York.
Though each of the five boroughs has a Broadway, this one, in the tiny nautical hamlet of Ramblersville, is about as far as one can imagine from the spinning lights and hot dog steam of Times Square. At the intersection of Broadway and Church Street, boats are parked alongside pickup trucks, and the air smells like tar paper, damp wood, and seaweed.
Ramblersville, also known as Hamilton Beach, is arguably the smallest neighborhood in New York City. It comprises three spits of land, wedged between Howard Beach and JFK International Airport, that reach into a hooked strip of water known as Hawtree Basin, which joins Bergen Basin and Shellbank Basin to flow out into Jamaica Bay.
Water is a way of life here. All Ramblersville streets dead-end in Hawtree Basin, and a bridges crosses the canal. On a weekend afternoon in early spring, the air fills with sounds that could be from another era: the cawing of seagulls; the hollow hammering of a men patching a wooden dock; dogs barking at front doors, leaving nose streaks on the storm glass; and mothers calling to their kids, who zizz past on on bikes, weaving between the cul-de-sacs.
Many of the houses are raised on pilings over the water, and ducks, swans, and geese drift just a few feet below living room floors.
Ramblersville is a neighborhood of rainbow whirligigs and patriotic flags, of Easter and Saint Patrick’s Day decorations and mailboxes shaped like churches, barns, lighthouses, or sometimes all three.
Though planes from JFK rumble close over rooftops and the A train rattles past just yards from the doorsteps (the gleaming Howard Beach AirTrain station is a short walk away across a marsh), this neighborhood feels out of step with urban life. One street, Bayview Avenue, is in part a wooden boardwalk flanked by picket fences.
Boats are ubiquitous: parked on trailers in driveways, bumping against docks, belly up by the sides of roads, and stashed in vacant lots surrounded by beach grass.
If the chickens in this yard were to take flight,
they’d see the sparkling waters of Jamaica Bay connecting this sleepy neighborhood to the world.
Beneath each of the Dead End signs along 104th Street—which is as close to a Main Street as Ramblersville has, despite its Broadway—some local children have tacked wooden stars painted with inspirational messages. Most have faded in the sea breeze, but one message is still visible: “You can do whatever you think you can.” This seems an apt reminder that there is always more to explore in New York, even when you think you’ve come to its end.
8 thoughts on “MULTISENSORY: Ramblersville, Queens: New York’s smallest neighborhood”
cool exploration!
You’re correct about the single bridge and the boardwalk on only part of Bayview Avenue–I just updated these things, and thanks fopr the corrections. Sorry you feel this way about the neighborhood. That was not my experience as a visitor, which is what this post reflects.
I grew up in Ramblersville starting in the 1950’s, it was a great place for children in the summer. We lived on Russell Street and for a few years, as an adult, II also lived in a small Ramblersville house with a boardwalk that connected the homes to high ground where you could catch a bus to Ozone Park. In the 1960’s Hawtree Creek and Jamaica Bay suffered from major pollution, including from residents and Kennedy Airport My grandmother and grandfather lived in South Aqueduct, a small town east of the Ramblersville railroad tracks that was taken by NYC’s eminent domain law to enlarge and rename Idlewild airport to JFK International Airport. My grandmother told me all about Ramblersville when she was a child. Her father was a Ramblersville fisherman who had immigrated from Germany. The creeks were so clean back then, and lined with white sand. Otters and other wild life thrived, lots of ducks, swans and seagulls were plentiful. The creeks froze heavy with ice in the winters and residents enjoyed skating on them If you google Ramblersville you can find some late 1800’s and early 1900 photos in B&W. It was a tiny town with homes built over the edge of the creeks on mud sills and wooden pilings holding them up. The fronts of the homes faced the creek. Wooden boardwalks built behind the homes over salt marshes connected the homes. Everyone had a boat! We all learned to swim. There was only water in the streets during hurricanes or bad storms. With global warming the tides now cover Russell Street on a regular basis. Sometimes during a hurricane, the tide would get so high that small wooden homes would float slightly off their pilings, and when the tide went down it would fall into the creek and mud below. It would take a house-raiser to bring the house back onto its pilings. A miraculous event to children. Storms could flood the homes also, we would all have jobs making sure there was nothing on the first floor that would get damaged. Stuffed furniture in the living room would be raised onto two wooden kitchen chairs (one on each side) to protect them in case the living room flooded. My father built a permanent base for the refrigerator and painted it white. This was normal life and we children had chores before and then after a flood. Cleanups were a big job, first the first floor, then the garage and the yard.. I don’t know how my mother did it all with five children. She just did it! She loved the area and lived there in the same house for well over 50 years. As children we learned how to do all kinds of chores, including scraping and painting window, gardening, wallpapering and other tasks. Our great, great grandfather owned a 60 acre farm that ran along Woodhaven Blvd in Queens and Elderts Lane in Brooklyn, all the way to Jamaica Bay. He volunteered to join the Union Army. He left his boats and fishing nets to one of his sons. His name was Samuel Doxsey and he was shot at the RailRoad cut on the Gettysburg battlefield on the first day of the battle. He survived and fought in Antitum and other battles during the civil war. I love going home once in a while to feel all of that history, and to take in the sweet saltwater air. Ramblers was built for wealthy Brooklyn residents, so they could leave the hot city for Ramblersville, its beaches, fishing and boating and cool summers.
What a wonderful comment and addendum to the post. Thank you so much for sharing!
Hi Ellen!
I interviewed your mother about the airport pollution impacting the neighborhood for a high school project back in the 1990s! My grandmother was Dorothy Morris, who lived a few doors down from your family. My uncle George raised the house on several occasions but they still got a ton of water during Hurricane Sandy and had to replace all of the kitchen appliances, even the refrigerator that was raised up on a high wooden box – sadly we also lost a lot of family history as the photo albums were stored on the first floor. I went back last year to visit my uncle and some of the neighboring houses had either been raised to extraordinary heights (a full story above the original height) or the land had been sold to the Jamaica Bay refuge and the house completely knocked down.
It is lovely to hear your description of the early days of Ramblersville – by the time I was regularly visiting my Grandma in the 1980s, the canal had been polluted for years and a lot of the houses were in need of serious repair. It was still a magical place to me even in that state. I would throw crab traps off the back dock or climb down on to my great-Uncle’s boat, and my aunt would chase me around with the tall swamp reeds that grew near the bus stop. I was always amazed by my family’s ability to look sagely out at the water and know exactly when we would be at high tide or low tide. A few times I got to go out on the rowboat with my Aunt to explore the canal, and when I was older, I was allowed to go out on a family ride in the motor boat to the Bay itself.
All of the pollution cleanup efforts and the restoration of Jamaica Bay have brought cleaner water and a lot of wildlife back to the area! My mother said that the amount and variety of birds she has seen in the canal in the past few years has been amazing.
Thank you for a lovely comment, and to the author for the original post.
Thank you for this wonderful comment! I love hearing these stories.
Hello James and Caitlin. Although Ramblersvill ground down in the 60’s, the area has always been a haven to the birds and children who enjoy living there. When we moved into our home on Russell St., every July 4th there was a celebration at the W Hamilton Beach Firehouse, as well as a large parade we called “The Baby Parade” where the small children of the area would be applauded by those lining the road. Free ice cream and soda was available to the parade participants, and all the kids wanted to be in it. Another event was the wonderful fireworks from Rockaway Beach that could be seen from the end of Russell St, where an old telephone pole was a natural bench for all of us to watch from. They were pretty small from our vantage point, but a weekly event none of us would miss. Also the grand party and distribution of fireworks for ma Policeman who would confiscate any fireworks he could while on the beat. Then he would give them freely to the kids on Russell Street. All day we would be using a firecracker to blow up a can or a pile of sand, and sometimes a bold lighting of a whole mat at once. Policeman Joe also hosted a big party on his dock, his guests arrived wearing captain’s hats and red, white and blue outfits. American flags few all over the street. He would take guests out to the bay on his big boat, beers in hand. Children on the Street were invited in for hotdogs and soda. At the end of the day, a traditional throwing of the guests into the creek at high tide would happen. We would hear the screams of laughter from our yard. Another tradition was the burning of Rat Island, where older kids would shoot their fireworks at the island from the big lot until it started a fire. The volunteers would come and put it out and high five the kids, as they enjoyed that same tradition when they were young. The Fidler crabs would run into the water, and return to Rat Island when the blaze was out. In the summer we just wore bathing suits and scampered from dock to rowboats to yards. I remember the Morris family and Georgie is still living there in the family home. He is a very sweet little boy, and hasn’t changed since then. The Doxsey houses have both been raised by FEMA. My mother’s home was also moved 25 feet closer to the road, but that big yard still shelters the house. James, the Morris crabapple tree still is a brilliant pink miracle every spring, and the swans, egrets and ducks are plentiful. The laughing gulls continue to fill the sky. Ellen Doxsey Stevenson
Thank you, Ellen, for these wonderful and visceral memories! They make Ramblersville come alive.