Tuesday, December 24, 2024
Year : 2, Issue: 17
Gothamist: At first glance, there’s nothing particularly special about the intersection of Queens Boulevard and 58th Street in Woodside.
But embedded in a traffic median near the northeast corner is an enduring mystery: a modest plaque resembling a compass rose that claims to be “the geographic center of NYC.”
According to geographers and city officials, the claim is false. New York City’s geographic center is more or less accepted as being in Bushwick, Brooklyn — on Broadway between Lawton and Dodworth streets — a little more than 4 miles southwest of the plaque.
I was born and raised in Queens, not far from Woodside. So when I became aware of this mystery, I was determined to find out who put this plaque there and why. A weekslong inquiry into the marker’s provenance and the reasons behind its installation turned up more questions than answers. My investigation began with contacting representatives of various city agencies who would know about any official city markers. It soon became apparent that they knew as much as I did.
Courtney Clark Metakis, the spokesperson for the city’s Landmark Preservation Commission, said the marker is “very interesting” but wasn’t sanctioned by her agency.
“[It’s] not one of LPC’s markers, nor is it under LPC’s jurisdiction (it’s not located on a landmark site or in a historic district),” she said in an email. “I don’t have any information about it.” Parks department spokesperson Judd Faulkner told me that “this is not NYC Parks property and we have no records of the marker.”
Joe Marvilli, a spokesperson for the Department of City Planning, said “DCP does not have any information about the origins of this plaque.”
Michael Scholl, a spokesperson for the Queens borough president, directed my inquiry to the city’s Department of Transportation. But DOT spokesperson Mona Bruno said her agency didn’t install the plaque, either. “It is by far one of the strangest anomalies in Queens,” said Jason Antos, head of the Queens Historical Society.
