Rockaway Park is a neighborhood in the

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

borough A borough is an administrative division in various English-speaking countries. In principle, the term ''borough'' designates a self-governing walled town, although in practice, official use of the term varies widely. History In the Middle Ag ...

Queens Queens is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Queens County, in the U.S. state of New York. Located on Long Island, it is the largest New York City borough by area. It is bordered by the borough of Brooklyn at the western tip of Long ...

. The area is on the Rockaway Peninsula, nestled between

Jamaica Bay Jamaica Bay is an estuary on the southern portion of the western tip of Long Island, in the U.S. state of New York. The estuary is partially man-made, and partially natural. The bay connects with Lower New York Bay to the west, through Rockaw ...

to the north and the

Atlantic Ocean The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 20% of Earth's surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the " Old World" of Africa, Europe ...

to the south. The neighborhood of Rockaway Beach lies on its eastern border while the community of

Belle Harbor Belle Harbor is a small residential neighborhood in the New York City borough of Queens, located on the western half of the Rockaway Peninsula, the southernmost area of the borough. Belle Harbor commonly refers to the area from Beach 126th to B ...

is situated on its western side. The neighborhood is part of Queens Community Board 14.

Character

The heavily Irish Rockaway Park has been called the "Irish Riviera". The

2000 United States Census The United States census of 2000, conducted by the Census Bureau, determined the resident population of the United States on April 1, 2000, to be 281,421,906, an increase of 13.2 percent over the 248,709,873 people enumerated during the 1990 c ...

showed that 36.0% of the population were of Irish ancestry in the ZCTA for ZIP Code 11694. The

Saint Patrick's Day Saint Patrick's Day, or the Feast of Saint Patrick ( ga, Lá Fhéile Pádraig, lit=the Day of the Festival of Patrick), is a cultural and religious celebration held on 17 March, the traditional death date of Saint Patrick (), the foremost patr ...

parade in Rockaway is the second-largest

St. Patrick ST, St, or St. may refer to: Arts and entertainment * Stanza, in poetry * Suicidal Tendencies, an American heavy metal/hardcore punk band * Star Trek, a science-fiction media franchise * Summa Theologica, a compendium of Catholic philosophy an ...

's Day

Parade A parade is a procession of people, usually organized along a street, often in costume, and often accompanied by marching bands, floats, or sometimes large balloons. Parades are held for a wide range of reasons, but are usually celebrations of s ...

, second only to New York City's Saint Patrick's Day Parade up

Fifth Avenue Fifth Avenue is a major and prominent thoroughfare in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It stretches north from Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village to West 143rd Street in Harlem. It is one of the most expensive shopping ...

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

. The neighborhood is centered around Beach 116th Street, a two-block street that runs from Beach Channel Drive southward to Ocean Promenade. At the street's northern end is Tribute Park, which has a memorial to the 343 firefighters killed in the

September 11 terrorist attacks The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commerc ...

, and at its southern tip is a memorial to the 265 victims of

American Airlines Flight 587 American Airlines Flight 587 was a regularly scheduled international passenger flight from John F. Kennedy International Airport to Las Américas International Airport in Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic. On November 12, 200 ...

, which crashed nearby on November 12, 2001.

Transportation

is accessible to commuters via the at the Rockaway Park – Beach 116th Street station, the terminus of the IND Rockaway Line and its associated services. The area is served by bus routes operated by

MTA New York City Bus MTA Regional Bus Operations (RBO) is the surface transit division of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA). It was created in 2008 to consolidate all bus operations in New York City operated by the MTA. , MTA Regional Bus Operations ru ...

. The bus runs the length of the Rockaway Peninsula. The runs from Beach 54th Street in Arverne, over the

Cross Bay Bridge The Cross Bay Veterans Memorial Bridge (originally Cross Bay Bridge or Cross Bay Parkway Bridge) is a toll bridge that carries Cross Bay Boulevard across Jamaica Bay in Queens, New York City, between Broad Channel and the Rockaway Peninsula. ...

via

Cross Bay Boulevard Woodhaven Boulevard and Cross Bay Boulevard (formerly Jamaica Bay Boulevard) are two parts of a major boulevard in the New York City borough of Queens. Woodhaven Boulevard runs roughly north–south in the central portion of Queens. South o ...

to Woodhaven. The runs from Beach 116th Street, over the

via

Woodside Woodside may refer to: Places and buildings Australia * Woodside, South Australia, a town * Woodside, Victoria, a town Canada * Woodside National Historic Site, the boyhood home of William Lyon Mackenzie King *Woodside, Nova Scotia, a neighbo ...

, and

LIRR station and 61st Street subway station. The runs from Beach 116th Street to the Flatbush Avenue – Brooklyn College subway station, and the

Brooklyn College , mottoeng = Nothing without great effort , established = , parent = CUNY , type = Public university , endowment = $98.0 million (2019) , budget = $123.96 m ...

, in

Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

via the Marine Parkway-Gil Hodges Memorial Bridge and

Flatbush Avenue Flatbush Avenue is a major avenue in the New York City Borough of Brooklyn. It runs from the Manhattan Bridge south-southeastward to Jamaica Bay, where it joins the Marine Parkway–Gil Hodges Memorial Bridge, which connects Brooklyn to the R ...

. It goes through

, Neponsit, and Jacob Riis Park on the Rockaway Peninsula. In the aftermath of

Hurricane Sandy Hurricane Sandy (unofficially referred to as ''Superstorm Sandy'') was an extremely destructive and strong Atlantic hurricane, as well as the largest Atlantic hurricane on record as measured by diameter, with tropical-storm-force winds spann ...

on October 29, 2012, which caused massive infrastructure damage to the south of the station at Howard Beach – JFK Airport, ferry operator SeaStreak began running a city-subsidized ferry service between a makeshift ferry slip at Beach 108th Street and

Beach Channel Drive Beach Channel Drive is the main thoroughfare of the Rockaway Peninsula in the New York City borough of Queens. It extends from the Nassau County border at Inwood westward, to the Marine Parkway–Gil Hodges Memorial Bridge at the end of Jacob ...

in Rockaway Park and Pier 11/Wall Street in Manhattan's Financial District, then continuing on to the East 34th Street Ferry Landing. In August 2013, a stop was added at Brooklyn Army Terminal. The service was extended multiple times. finally ending on October 31, 2014. On May 1, 2017,

NYC Ferry NYC Ferry is a public network of ferry routes in New York City operated by Hornblower Cruises. , there are six routes, as well as one seasonal route, connecting 25 ferry piers across all five boroughs. NYC Ferry has the largest passenger fleet ...

's Rockaway route started operations between Pier 11/Wall Street in Manhattan's Financial District and Beach 108th Street in Rockaway Park, with a stop at Brooklyn Army Terminal.

References

{{authority control Irish-American neighborhoods Neighborhoods in Queens, New York Neighborhoods in Rockaway, Queens Populated coastal places in New York (state)