Photo Gallery: Sidestreet Scenes
| Not that there's much to see here, but I thought it deserves mention, given the general nature and perception of venerable Metropolitan Avenue. Metropolitan is well known as a central artery connecting Brooklyn and Queens, and it has a long run, practically from the shores of the East River, all the way from Greenpoint, through Williamsburgh, Bushwick, Maspeth, Ridgewood, Glendale, Rego Park, Forest Hills and Kew Gardens, before finally being laid to rest just a scant few feet away from the Van Wyck Expressway. In the absence of a Cross-Brooklyn Expressway, it is a major east-west commercial truck route, but you'd never know it here. Jamaica Avenue is a half block to the left and this little park plaza holds one of the entrances to the Jamaica/Van Wyck subway station hosting the E train. The station opened in the early 1980's when the eastern terminus of the E was shifted to Archer Avenue, where it shares two stops with Jamaica Avenue's Z and J trains. This station, serving mostly Jamaica Hospital, also unseen to the left, is the only station where the E is alone, between its Archer partnerships and the Queens Boulevard line, where it joins up with the F. |