History
The portion of NY 37 from Redwood to Malone was originally part of the Theodore Roosevelt International Highway, an international auto trail connecting Portland, Maine, on the Atlantic Ocean coast to Portland, Oregon, east of the Pacific Ocean. When the first set of posted routes in New York were assigned in 1924, the entirety of the Roosevelt Highway in New York was designated NY 3. In the 1930 renumbering of state highways in New York, NY 3 was rerouted to follow its current routing between Watertown and Plattsburgh. The former routing of NY 3 along the St. Lawrence River became part of the new NY 37, which utilized a previously unnumbered highway between Watertown and Redwood via Theresa. Initially, NY 37 directly served Theresa by way of modern CR 136, CR 46, and CR 193; however, it was realigned c. 1934 to bypass the village to the west.
When NY 37 was first assigned, it entered Ogdensburg on Main Street (modern NY 68) and exited the city on Ford Street and Proctor Avenue. East of the city, NY 37 used less than 1 mile (1.6 km) of its modern alignment before turning south to follow Van Rensselaer Road to Waddington. The modern, riverside alignment of NY 37 between Ogdensburg and Waddington was designated as NY 37A as part of the 1930 renumbering. In the late 1950s, the alignments of NY 37 and NY 37A were flipped, placing NY 37 on its current routing and NY 37A on Van Rensselaer Road. During the same time period, NY 37 was rerouted to follow a new bypass around the southern edge of Ogdensburg.
In the Massena area, NY 37 originally broke from its modern alignment west of the village and followed what is now NY 37B east to Main Street. Here, it turned south onto Main Street to traverse the Grasse River before continuing east on Orvis Street (and meeting modern NY 37B at Center Street) to reconnect to its current alignment east of the village. Lastly, from modern NY 131 adjacent to the Massena International Airport to Rooseveltown, NY 37 was initially routed on Trippany Road, NY 37C, and Roosevelt Road. In the mid-1950s, construction began on a new southern bypass of Massena that connected to NY 37 at the modern termini of NY 37B. It was completed and opened to traffic by 1958. Work on an eastward, divided highway extension of the bypass to Rooseveltown began c. 1961. The final section, from the hamlet of Raquette River to Rooseveltown, opened to traffic later that year.
Read more about this topic: New York State Route 37
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