Bridge of the Week #58: Little Neck Bridge

Continuing east on Northern Boulevard, this week's bridge is the Little Neck Bridge in Bayside, Queens. It carries Northern Boulevard over Alley Creek from the Cross-Island Parkway on the west to

The bridge carries six lanes of traffic, three in each direction, and a sidewalk on both sides. It is a fixed bridge, opened in 1931, and is at least the second bridge on that site, the first being a drawbridge built in 1822.

Northern Boulevard actually underwent a few name changes over the course of its history and over the course of its course. In some parts it was called Jackson Ave. (and still is on its far western end in Long Island City), and in some parts, including over Alley Creek, it was called Broadway. Little Neck is the piece of land in far northeastern Queens that kind of sticks out into the water (Little Neck Bay) and that includes the neighborhoods of Little Neck and Douglaston. This is as opposed to Greak Neck, a much larger piece of land that stick out into Long Island Sound just across the Nassau County line.

I don't know how much interest there is for runners in Douglaston (although it is a beautiful, very well-off part of town) or Little Neck (which I don't think I've ever visited). But on the western side of the bridge is a pathway along the Cross-Island Parkway that extends north to pass underneath the Throgs Neck Bridge (another neck!) and just to the south, south of the Long Island Expressway, is Alley Pond Park, and from there you can hit the Queens park corridor all the way to Flushing Meadows and even Forest Park with little traffic interruption.

Pics: 1. Little Neck Bridge; 2. View north; 3. View south