Kings Highway (Brooklyn)

Kings Highway in the New York City borough of Brooklyn is a broad avenue that passes mostly through southern areas of the jurisdiction. Its west end is at Bay Parkway and 78th Street. East of Ocean Avenue, the street is largely residential. It tends generally east, then northeast, then north through Brooklyn and reaches East 98th Street in central Brooklyn. At that point, it flows into Howard Avenue to provide seamless access to Eastern Parkway, another major road in Brooklyn with side medians and service roads.

A Business Improvement District has been established along part of the road to support stores, restaurants and businesses in that area.

Although not entirely built in 1704, "King's Highway" was formed in colonial New York when the locals connected the many smaller established roads, cow paths, and Indian trails that passed through Kings County. They named the highway after the county, which was named in honor of King Charles II of England on November 1, 1683.

Originally, Kings Highway was much longer than it is now. It began at Brooklyn Ferry, now called Fulton Ferry, where Ferry Road, now called Old Fulton Street and Furman Street, and ran southeastward to the small Dutch town of New Amersfort, now known as Flatlands. It took a sharp westward turn at that point and passed into another of Brooklyn's original six towns, New Utrecht. It led to into Yellow Hook (Bay Ridge), ending at Denyse's Ferry, operated by a colonial-era landowner, about where Shore Road and 86th Street meet today. In southwest Brooklyn, the thoroughfare had other names, including: "State Road," "Road from Fort Hamilton to New Utrecht," and "Road from New Utrecht to Denyse's Ferry."

According to the Dyker Heights Historical Society, the Highway ended at the ferry landing in what is now Fort Hamilton, Brooklyn. In 1740 Denyse, a local New Utrecht resident, took over ferry operations in The Narrows, serving Brooklyn and Staten Island. Denyse’s Ferry was located at the base of the hill on which Fort Hamilton was built, near today’s Fort Hamilton Parkway and Shore Road. Kings Highway traveled northeast from Denyse’s Ferry to present-day 86th Street. This portion of the Highway is known today as Fort Hamilton Parkway.

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