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for larger version       Historical Views of the Rockaways
Next, at the foot of Beach 103 Street (Seaside Avenue) is the massive seaside house hotel dock, and the dock Café. The giant seaside hotel was located where the number 30 appears to the right of Beach 103 Street. The seaside dock here was the first built after the close of the Civil War, and steadily enlarged and improved. Also built in the early 1900s, as steamer traffic increased from all points to Seaside, was another long angled steamer dock out into Jamaica Bay at Beach 104 Street. There was talk of another at Beach 105 Street, but that one was never realized. As early as 1923, the bay front from old Beach 88 Street westward to Beach 116 Street was bulkheaded and filled, and Crossbay Bridge to Broad Channel was almost complete for the opening of Crossbay Road, and a new Bay Road portion between Hammels and Rockaway Park was shaping up. During this time of bayfront change, steamer traffic waned, and railroad traffic took up the slack. When Crossbay Road opened in 1926 the steamers stopped coming altogether, as automobile traffic snarled up the roads and streets in the Rockaways. So to make a long story short, a new and wider Beach Channel Drive was built in the 1930s, and runs across the top portion of today's map, Beach Channel High School is at top right built out to the new pierhead line set long ago… and the "Honeyboat Dock" is at top left, on the new bulkhead line set at the same time… that is before the sewage disposal.
The Rockaways' Playland dock was refurbished in the late 1950s to accept modern diesel excursion boats that brought patrons to the amusement park and the beach. The last boat dock was located between Beach 96 Street and Beach 99 Street along Beach Channel Drive, where an exit ramp from Crossbay Bridge and the east end of Beach Channel High School now stand.
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