Lefferts Boulevard - Ozone Park
Photo Gallery: Belt Pkwy
| 18B is a multi-purpose exit, providing access to Aqueduct Racetrack, the long term parking fields of JFK Airport and the long winding Lefferts Boulevard. Aqueduct serves as Belmont Park's winter alter ego for NYC thoroughbred racing. Though appearing to be little more than a two lane side street for much of its run, Lefferts carves out just about as long a north-south route as does the far wider Cross Bay/Woodhaven Boulevard to the west, at least if one doesn't count Broad Channel, which I suppose it is not fair not to. Along the way, Lefferts cuts across some major southern and middle Queens crossroads, such as Liberty, 101st, Atlantic, Jamaica, Hillside and Metropolitan Avenues, up through Kew Gardens, past Austin Street and the infamous LIRR station site where nearly 100 cowards listened in silence without so much as one call to the cops, as a screaming young woman, Kitty Genovese, was repeatedly stabbed until she bled to death in an apartment house vestibule in 1963. Northbound Lefferts never quite recovers from that blow, surrendering within a few blocks to Kew Gardens Road, merely one block short of reaching the Holy Grail for northbound Queens arteries, Queens Boulevard. |
| Taken in mid June 2001. |