History
Ozone Park station was opened by the New York, Woodhaven and Rockaway Railroad in 1884, and closed on June 8, 1962 when passenger service between Rego Park and Ozone Park ended. The station and right-of-way was never abandoned by the railroad; instead, it was later sold to the City of New York with the expectation that the New York City Transit Authority would eventually operate service north of Liberty Avenue. Nothing advanced beyond the planning stages for this proposal.
Since the closing of the line, many businesses in the area have set up shop in the portion of trestle below the station. In the late 1980s the F.B.I. used the abandoned platforms to set up a sting operation to monitor the activities of John Gotti and the Gambino crime family, whose social club was down the street from the station.
As of 2011, Ozone Park station exists in ruins. Electric utility poles and Pennsylvania Railroad-era signal bridges also adorn the right of way.
Read more about this topic: Ozone Park (LIRR Station)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Most events recorded in history are more remarkable than important, like eclipses of the sun and moon, by which all are attracted, but whose effects no one takes the trouble to calculate.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“There is nothing truer than myth: history, in its attempt to “realize” myth, distorts it, stops halfway; when history claims to have “succeeded” this is nothing but humbug and mystification. Everything we dream is “realizable.” Reality does not have to be: it is simply what it is.”
—Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)
“As History stands, it is a sort of Chinese Play, without end and without lesson.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)