Atlantic Avenue is an important street in the New York City boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens. It stretches from the Brooklyn waterfront on the East River all the way to Jamaica, Queens. Atlantic Avenue runs parallel to Fulton Street for much of its course through Brooklyn, where it serves as a border between the neighborhoods of Prospect Heights and Fort Greene and between Bedford-Stuyvesant and Crown Heights.
Atlantic Avenue is the sole east–west through truck route across Brooklyn,[1] serving the purpose of the canceled Bushwick Expressway (I-78) and Cross Brooklyn Expressway (I-878).
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In Brooklyn, the area of Atlantic nearest the South Ferry waterfront has long been known for its antique shops and its notable Arab community, including mosques, specialty shops and restaurants specializing in Middle Eastern cuisine. As it stretches east toward Flatbush Avenue, Atlantic separates the neighborhoods of Brooklyn Heights and Cobble Hill and passes through Boerum Hill near Downtown Brooklyn. This section of Atlantic Avenue is the site of the Atlantic Antic, an annual street fair involving local and visiting merchants and artists, held in early October.
At Flatbush avenue and Fourth Avenue the crossing of the 3 major thoroughfares form a triangular intersection historically known as Times Plaza. Here the smaller shops, restaurants, churches and boutiques give way to the Atlantic Terminal, where nine subway lines of the MTA converge with the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR). The area is dominated by massive buildings, formerly factories, now used by storage companies, and by the Atlantic Center mall (opened in 1996, with tenants including P.C. Richard & Son and Modell's) and Atlantic Terminal Mall (opened in 2004, with tenants including Target). Both malls are products of developer Forest City Ratner.
The rail yard area is currently the focus of controversy surrounding plans for development of the Brooklyn Atlantic Yards complex. It would provide a sports arena, office and retail space, residential apartments and parks, replacing the existing landscape of bombed-out low-rises and trash-strewn railroad tracks.
The face of Atlantic Avenue east of Flatbush Avenue, the site designated for the Brooklyn Atlantic Yards, is defined by the LIRR tracks that run beneath (from Flatbush Avenue to Bedford Avenue), above (from Bedford to near Ralph Avenue), and beneath again (in East New York). The elevated portion of the LIRR tracks greatly limits the viability of the businesses and residences along Atlantic Avenue; many shops are derelict or defunct, a trend that continues on into Queens.
The Atlantic Avenue Railroad (now LIRR) originally ran along Atlantic Avenue as streetcars pulled by horses. With electrification, other traffic was eliminated from the roadway and Atlantic Avenue became discontinuous. When railway sections west of Jamaica station were put underground in the late 1940s, that portion of Atlantic Avenue became continuous again. East of Jamaica, the railway is still at (or above) ground level. A continuous stretch of Atlantic Avenue just under one mile long runs just south of the railway through Floral Park in Nassau County. Just north of the Merillon Avenue train station in Garden City is another section still called Atlantic Avenue. Remnants of the continuous roadway (that existed before electrification) which are still called Atlantic Avenue, extend as far east as Carle Place in Nassau County. Remnants no longer called Atlantic Avenue can be found as far east as Hicksville.
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