Midtown(s)

On Monday, we focused in on the historic Big Six development in Woodside, found nearby 58th Street at Queens Boulevard. While I was in the neighborhood, I couldn’t help but get a few shots of the (so called) Geographic Center of the City of Greater New York.

It’s not everyday that I find myself in Midtown, at the purported Geographic Center of New York City.

From the nytimes:

Q. Where is the geographic center of New York? I did a Google search of the phrase and came up with claims to the title from Woodside, Long Island City, East Williamsburg and Shea Stadium. For that matter, where is the population center? The Mets’ Web site claims that’s Shea Stadium, too.

A. There are two kinds of centers that demographers and city planners use. Imagine a flat plate in the shape of the city’s boundaries, placed on a needle at the spot where the plate balances. That’s the geographic center. Now pretend the plate is weightless but still flat and rigid. Put about eight million tiny equal weights on the plate representing where each resident lives, and find the point of balance again. That’s the population center. Neither of them is Shea Stadium.

According to the Department of City Planning, the population center lies in Maspeth, Queens, near the intersection of Galasso Place and 48th Street, near Maspeth Creek. The geographic center is in Bushwick, Brooklyn, on Stockholm Street between Wyckoff Avenue and St. Nicholas Avenue.

Looking west, along Queens Boulevard, the scenery is somewhat less “whelming” than you’d expect for the geographic center of New York City. Part of Calvary Cemetery lies along the hill that leads up toward Maspeth. Continuing along this decidedly high speed section of the so called Boulevard of Death will bring you to Thomson Avenue.

Q’Stoners own Kevin Walsh, at his amazing Forgotten-NY site, offers that this is not the actual geographic center and opines:

“according to the Department of City Planning, the geographic center is in Bushwick, Brooklyn, on Stockholm Street between Wyckoff Avenue and St. Nicholas Avenue.”

Northwards, 58th Street carries onwards towards Newtown Creek, and will take you directly to the Clinton or Goodfellas Diner.

The same hill carries a descending 58th Street towards Roosevelt Avenue, towards the 7 train and the LIRR station, and the shallow salt meadows that Northern Boulevard and the Sunnyside Yards were built into.

East towards the Big Six and Elmhurst, or as it was once known, Newtown.

Now, for the population center of New York City, that NY Times piece quoted above offered “Galasso Place and 48th Street, near Maspeth Creek.”

This, Queensicans, is 49th and what would be Galasso Place, if such a spot existed.

It’s the Haberman siding of the LIRR, an iron road used by both the Long Island Rail Road and the NY and Atlantic Companies.

For most, the spot is memorable if only for being where a United Parcel Service (UPS) shipping and customer pickup center is found.

Restaurant Depot is next door to the spot as indicated in the Times peice, which will be a familiar spot to anybody in the hospitality industry. Galasso Place is the short road that runs along the lot after crossing the rail tracks at 43rd street, a pathway which Google Maps has recently labeled as being “57th Avenue.” Hmm.

That’s the corner of 48th Street at Rust, or Review, or 58th Avenue… the street changes its name something like three or four times between Greenpoint and Grand avenues.

This is as close as I could get to the spot indicated as the population center of New York City, at what “would be” 48th and Galasso Place, should such a place have ever existed at all. It would be the cream-colored factory building with the blue roof.

Newtown Creek Alliance Historian Mitch Waxman lives in Astoria and blogs at Newtown Pentacle.