Morning Mug: A Road Honoring Necks? Not Quite.

I always thought “Neck Road” was a funny name. Forgotten New York’s Kevin Walsh gives us the lowdown on Neck Road’s reason for being, well… Neck Road.

Though street signs always note its proper name, Gravesend Neck Road, street signs and neighborhood residents have always called it by the much shorter Neck Road. It’s a farm road that predates the local street grid  by perhaps a couple of centuries and today runs from Van Sicklen Street in Gravesend (not to be confused with Van Siclen Avenue, without the k, in East New York) east and northeast to Avenue U and Nostrand Avenue. It used to extend further into “Gravesend Neck” which was then a peninsula, hence the “neck” in what is now the Marine Park area.

Photo by Allan Shweky