New York State Route 454
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| NY Route 454 |
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| Veterans Memorial Highway | |||||||||||||
| Length: | 13.67 mi[1] (22.00 km) | ||||||||||||
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| Formed: | 1972[2] | ||||||||||||
| West end: |  NY 25 in Commack |
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| Major junctions: |
 Sunken Meadow Pkwy in Commack I-495 in Islandia |
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| East end: |  NY 27 near Bayport |
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| Counties: | Suffolk | ||||||||||||
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New York State Route 454 (Veterans' Memorial Highway) is an east-west divided highway in Western and Central Suffolk County on Long Island, New York. It spans from NY 25 in Commack, to NY 27 north of Bayport. The route is better known to locals as Vets' Highway.
The road is best known for providing access to the Long Island MacArthur Airport, as well as New York State and Suffolk County Government Offices, and at one time the Long Island Arena.
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[edit] History
The Veterans Memorial Highway, one of Suffolk County's earliest attempts to build a major highway, was constructed in the late 1940s as an extension of both Suffolk County Road 78 and Suffolk County Road 76.[2] Suffolk CR 76 was eliminated west of NY 347 in March 1968, and that section became an extension of Suffolk CR 78. The original plan was to extend Veterans Memorial Highway southeast from Sunrise Highway to Montauk Highway in western Patchogue, a plan that was delayed and eventually discarded.[3] Segments between Connetquot River State Park Preserve and Islip MacArthur Airport were used as on-locations scenes for the 1970 Neil Simon comedy The Out-of-Towners, starring Jack Lemmon, and Sandy Dennis.
Veterans Memorial Highway was designated NY 454 on March 29, 1972. Like NY 347 six years earlier, ownership of the highway was transferred to the New York State Department of Transportation by Suffolk County with the expectation that NYSDOT would be able to upgrade the road into the limited-access highway that Suffolk County had originally planned it to be. Like NY 347, however, these plans were thwarted by the overwhelming anti-highway sentiment of the community as well as the commercial boom that occurred across Long Island in the 1980s.[2] While MacArthur Airport has been upgraded as much as possible, the road itself remains little more than an attraction for development, except within the Connetquot River State Park Preserve.
[edit] Concurrency with NY 347
With plans to extend NY 347 south to the Long Island Expressway at a standstill, NY 347 was overlapped with NY 454 between its temporary western terminus in Hauppauge and the Northern State Parkway in 1977.
[edit] Major intersections
| County | Location | Mile[1] | Roads intersected | Notes |
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| Suffolk | Commack | 0.00 | NY 25 (Jericho Turnpike) |
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| 0.53 | Sunken Meadow State Parkway |
Exit SM2 (Sunken Meadow Pkwy) | ||
| 2.19 |  Northern State Parkway NY 347 |
Exit 47 (Northern Pkwy); eastern terminus of the Northern State Parkway; western terminus of NY 347 and NY 347/NY 454 overlap | ||
| Hauppauge | 4.38 | NY 347 east |
Eastern terminus of overlap | |
| 4.62 |  NY 111 (Joshua's Path) |
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| Islandia |  CR 67 (Long Island Motor Parkway) |
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| 6.10 | I-495 (Long Island Expressway) |
Exit 57 (I-495) | ||
| 7.20 |  CR 100 (Suffolk Avenue) |
Eastern terminus of CR 100 | ||
| Northern State Parkway |
Unbuilt extension | |||
| Bohemia | 10.51 |  CR 93 (Lakeland Avenue) |
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| 11.32 |  CR 112 (Johnson Avenue) |
Entrance to  Long Island MacArthur Airport |
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| Patchogue | 13.67 | NY 27 |
Exit 51 (NY 27) |
[edit] References
- ^ a b Traffic Data Report - NY 427 to NY 908F (PDF). NYSDOT (2007-07-16). Retrieved on 2008-02-02.
- ^ a b c Veterans Memorial Highway (NY 454)
- ^ ["New County Road Opens Up Interesting Hinterlands" by Coletta Clayton, The Patchogue Advance (1/26/1950); Includes 1950 map showing proposed extension of Veterans Memorial Highway]
