Hammels

Hammels is an area within Rockaway Beach on the Rockaway Peninsula in the New York City borough of Queens. It is located west of Arverne and east of Seaside, and is centered on Beach 84th Street. Its main thoroughfare is Beach Channel Drive. The A train passes through the neighborhood. The Hammel Houses, a public housing project built in 1954, is located in the neighborhood. Hammels was named for a local landowner, Louis Hammel (1836-1904). It originated as a summer community based on a series of boardwalks that ran between the Bay and Ocean shores. This was followed by a hotel — the Eldert House — that was kept by Garret Eldert, and faced the bay on the east side of what today is Beach 85th Street. In August 1869, Louis Hammel leased...