Tell Me Why…

Cherry Valley Avenue



 

 

By John Ellis Kordes
Village Historian

I know Garden City is a well planned community with mostly a grid street layout. However, I always wondered about Cherry Valley Ave. It is cut up by the pool and by the Middle School and off Old Country Road near the Cherry Valley Apartments. Could you tell me why?


Yes, Cherry Valley Avenue is one of the most oddly cut up streets in the Village. From time to time a street is changed or changes course. However, none are more cut up than Cherry Valley Avenue.

The reason is that Cherry Valley Avenue is one of only a few roads that existed before A.T. Stewart bought the barren Hempstead Plains in 1869 (also Rockaway Avenue and Edgemere/Tannerspond Road). That is why there is a railroad trestle over them. When Stewart built his railroad in 1871 he had to go over Cherry Valley Avenue and Edgemere / Tannerspond Road. Both bridge supports remain the oldest structures in Garden City dating back to 1871. But how did Cherry Valley Avenue get chopped up?

The Cherry Valley Golf Course was originally named Salisbury when it was public before reorganizing as a private club called Cherry Valley in 1916. Ironically, it was named for the avenue, but now it has a Rockaway Avenue address. Cherry Valley Avenue bisected the course but eventually it was cut off at the west end of First Street by the pool. Where Cherry Valley intersected with Rockaway Avenue (behind the Cathedral) Cherry Valley Avenue picks up again and goes under the railroad trestle and north to the waterworks and gets cut off again by the Garden City Golf Club. On the other side at the western end of 14th Street it picks up again and ends at Old Country Road by the Cherry Valley Apartments. As for Rockaway Avenue, it heads from behind the Cathedral toward South Avenue and gets cut off by the railroad (which it at one time crossed) and is interrupted by the Middle School parking lot but picks up again by St. Paul’s where it formerly ran straight to Herricks Road but its course was bowed out when the Garden City Golf Club was laid out. That is why it curves on the way to the High School. Rockaway and Cherry Valley are two of the oldest roads still with us but are greatly altered from the large “X” they once formed.



Leave a Reply