GREENSTREET

The Oriental Boulevard Malls, like the thoroughfare itself, are named for the Oriental Hotel that once stood at the eastern point of Coney Island. Austin Corbin (1827-1896), president of the Long Island Rail Road, developed Manhattan Beach in 1877. Thanks to his nearby railroad line, thousands of New Yorkers were able to vacation at both the Oriental Hotel and the Manhattan Beach Hotel for more than 30 years.

For 19th century New Yorkers this section of Brooklyn was a remote vacation spot with hotels and three nearby racetracks. By 1910, however, amusement parks opened in West Brighton drawing business away from the hotels, whose business dwindled as the neighborhood transformed into a residential area. When the local racetracks closed, the hotels lost their last source of customers. Today when people come to the beach they travel by car or subway and stay for a few hours. Oriental Boulevard stands as a reminder of a time when visiting Manhattan Beach required taking a ferry, traveling on a steam train, and renting a hotel room.

Oriental Boulevard stretches from West End Avenue to Kingsborough College through the serene residential neighborhood of Manhattan Beach. The cross streets take their name from places in England and are arranged in alphabetical order from Amherst to Pembroke, with the continuation of Ocean Avenue between Exeter and Falmouth Streets. Oriental Boulevard originally began at the west line of the Long Island Rail Road and extended to Mackenzie Street. In 1940, it was extended to the US Pier and Bulkhead Line of Sheepshead Bay Channel, but during World War II, the US Coast Guard constructed a training center on the eastern tip of Coney Island forcing the eastern boundary of Oriental Boulevard back to its present location.

Today, Kingsborough Community College’s 67-acre campus stands on the site of the former coast guard base. The college had its first classes in 1964 and has grown steadily ever since. When enjoying the surf and sand of Kingsborough’s beachfront, students of “the college by the sea”—an appropriate nickname—retrace the steps of 19th century New Yorkers who enjoyed the summer at the Oriental Hotel.

The Oriental Malls are part of the Greenstreets program, a joint project of Parks and the Department of Transportation, begun in 1986 and revived in 1994. Its goal is to convert paved street properties, such as triangles and malls, into green spaces. In addition to the trees planted and maintained by the Greenstreets initiative, these malls also contain 31 planters, which are maintained by the Manhattan Beach Community Group.