New York State Route 22
New York State Route 22 is a north–south state highway that parallels the eastern border of the U.S. state of New York, from the outskirts of New York City to the hamlet of Mooers in Clinton County near the Canadian border. At, it is the state's longest north–south route and the third longest state route overall, after NY 5 and NY 17. Many of the state's major east–west roads intersect with, and often join, NY 22 just before crossing into the neighboring New England states, where U.S. Route 7, which originally partially followed NY 22's alignment, similarly parallels the New York state line.
Almost all of NY 22 is a two-lane rural road through small villages and hamlets. The exceptions are its southern end in the heavily populated Bronx and lower Westchester County, and a section that runs through the city of Plattsburgh near the northern end. The rural landscape that the road passes through varies from horse country and views of the reservoirs of the New York City watershed in the northern suburbs of the city, to dairy farms further upstate in the Taconic and Berkshire mountains, to the undeveloped, heavily forested Adirondack Park along the shores of Lake Champlain. An section from Fort Ann to Keeseville is part of the All-American Road known as the Lakes to Locks Passage.
The oldest portions of today's NY 22, in Westchester County and along the Lake Champlain shoreline, were Native American trails. Dutch, and after them English, settlers continued to use the road to get their farm products to market, with the southernmost portion eventually becoming the White Plains Post Road in the 18th and 19th centuries. In the early 20th century, as automobile use became widespread, the state paved the more heavily used sections and built new roads to create the current highway, first designated as NY 22 in 1930. In its early years the highway began in Manhattan; until 2008 its northern end was the Canadian border.
Route description
NY 22 starts as an urban surface road, passing through the most populous communities along its route within its first. After running northerly from its origin in the Bronx it veers slightly to the northeast in the vicinity of a traffic circle near Kensico Dam before heading northward for good as a mostly two-lane rural route all the way to the state's North Country.The majority of NY 22's routing is maintained by the New York State Department of Transportation ; however, several sections are maintained by other jurisdictions. The southernmost of these is in the Bronx, where the entirety of the highway within the borough is maintained by the New York City Department of Transportation. In Westchester County, NY 22 is mostly locally maintained within the city of Mount Vernon and is county-maintained within the city of White Plains. In Clinton County, the route is locally maintained within the city of Plattsburgh.
During its course, NY 22 intersects or runs concurrently with 46 other designated routes: one state parkway, five Interstate Highways, and seven U.S. Highways not counting its own termini. Of the surface road intersections, 18 terminate at NY 22 and 15 are concurrencies shared with the crossing routes, accounting for, or 21.5% of the highway's total length.
The Bronx to Kensico Dam
NY 22 starts as Provost Avenue at U.S. Route 1 in the Eastchester section of the Bronx, intersecting with East 233rd Street about to the north. It soon crosses the Westchester county line into Mount Vernon and becomes South Third Avenue, beginning a section in that county. Shortly after the county line, NY 22 makes a sharp turn to the east at the South Columbus Avenue intersection, soon passing St. Paul's Church National Historic Site on its north, then curving back to that direction. It parallels the nearby Hutchinson River Parkway as it passes through the suburbs of Bronxville and Tuckahoe. At Wilson Woods Lake, it crosses under a railroad bridge on the Metro-North New Haven Line and becomes North Columbus Avenue, then has its first interchange with a freeway at the Cross County Parkway.Country clubs on either side bracket NY 22's entry into Eastchester. It makes a turn to the northeast, passing the Vernon Hills Shopping Center to the right. After leaving Eastchester, NY 22 continues north into the village of Scarsdale. Paralleling the Bronx River Parkway, it enters Westchester's county seat, White Plains. NY 22 also intersects NY 125 and NY 119 in downtown White Plains, then bends to the northwest along North Broadway, eventually intersecting the Cross Westchester Expressway. The White Plains Rural Cemetery is visible to the west as NY 22 continues northward out of the city. In North White Plains, the surrounding area becomes less developed as NY 22 becomes a four-lane undivided expressway, and goes over a gentle rise from which a short connector runs downhill to the traffic circle where the BRP ends and the Taconic State Parkway begins, just south of Kensico Dam.
Kensico Reservoir to Brewster
While the Taconic State Parkway continues along the northwest heading NY 22 had been following, NY 22 itself veers to the northeast along the reservoir's south shore. After crossing a small bridge over one of the reservoir's bays, NY 22 begins a thousand-foot concurrency, the first of 15 along its length, with NY 120. The combined roads pass just west of IBM's Armonk headquarters and the "Duke's Trees angle", the westernmost point in Connecticut, after which NY 22 becomes a four-lane divided expressway. For the first time, NY 22 runs parallel to New York's eastern border, intersecting I-684 for the first of several times just north of the short portion of that highway in Connecticut. A short distance later, NY 22 becomes a two-lane surface road, and NY 433, one of the state's shortest highways, heads south from NY 22 into Greenwich.After that junction, NY 22 bends back to the north, paralleling I-684 through the Westchester countryside of large wooded lots and houses well-screened from the road. In downtown Bedford, the first settlement since White Plains, the highway overlaps with NY 172 for a mile, its first concurrency with an east–west route, then veers back to the northwest at the center of town. Just to the north, NY 121, the only north–south state highway whose route is entirely east of NY 22, forks off from its southern terminus. Another mile past that, NY 22 returns to a due-north heading, passing the John Jay Homestead State Historic Site a National Historic Landmark, where it turns west briefly, and Harvey School, where it curves to the northwest again. After the Katonah Museum of Art it widens briefly at a major intersection with NY 35. north of that junction, NY 22 becomes parallel with I-684 into the Town of Somers and the hamlet of Goldens Bridge. On the other side of the Interstate, accessible via NY 138, is the Goldens Bridge station on Metro-North Railroad's Harlem Line, which begins a long parallel alignment with NY 22 at this point.
The railroad's Purdy's station is a short distance west of the next junction, NY 116. At another traffic light to the north, NY 116 goes east to Titicus Reservoir at the northern intersection, the highway crosses under I-684, remaining between it and the railroad tracks. Just past the Interstate, NY 22 turns west onto Hardscrabble Road, which soon turns north again to follow the tracks to the next station, North Salem's hamlet of Croton Falls. Just north of the hamlet, NY 22 crosses under the tracks, and is joined by US 202. Immediately afterward, the road crosses back under the railroad again and enters Putnam County, following the Croton River north past the spillway of East Branch Reservoir.
After paralleling the reservoir for almost, a third route, US 6, joins the concurrency just east of the village of Brewster, forming the only three-route overlap along NY 22. The three routes cross under a high, long bridge carrying I-84, then veer east to an interchange with the north end of I-684. US 6 and 202 continue east for Danbury while NY 22 uses the northbound on-ramp of the I-684 roadway. NY 22 then briefly becomes a four-lane freeway before becoming a two-lane surface road after it cross the Croton's East Branch.
Harlem Valley, Taconics and Berkshires
NY 22 continues heading northeast along a narrow strip of land between the East Branch and Bog Brook reservoirs. It then resumes its northward heading, following a much straighter course than it had up to this point, on two lanes through wooded areas of the town of Patterson, where two local state highways, NY 312 and 164, come in from the west. The highway gradually expands to three and sometimes four lanes as it passes through built-up areas of strip development. Shortly after intersecting a third state highway, NY 311, and passing another strip plaza, NY 22 crosses into Dutchess County.After another supermarket strip to the east, a long, gentle divided bend in the road almost a mile long ends with an overpass where NY 55 comes in from the west. It joins NY 22 as the two routes, returning to two lanes, pass through the eastern fringe of the village of Pawling and then by Trinity-Pawling School. Past the village, the railroad tracks edge closer to the highway as NY 22 enters the scenic Harlem Valley, near the lower end of the Taconic Mountains. The road curves more gently and takes longer straightaways, with lower density of residential and commercial development. from Pawling, the Appalachian Trail crosses the road next to the line's similarly named station.
NY 22 and NY 55 continue their long curve into the town of Dover, past the Harlem Valley–Wingdale station next to the road across from the now-closed buildings of Harlem Valley Psychiatric Center. The NY 55 concurrency ends when that road forks off east towards Connecticut at the hamlet of Wingdale. The road continues through Dover Plains and into Amenia, where an overlap with NY 343 begins. The railroad line ends at Wassaic. NY 343 remains joined with NY 22 into the hamlet of Amenia, where it separates and heads towards Sharon, Connecticut. At the same junction, US 44 comes in from Millbrook to begin an overlap with NY 22. The valley opens up as the southern Taconics loom ahead. Shortly after crossing into the Town of North East, the highway passes by the large Coleman Station Historic District.
After intersecting with NY 199 at its eastern end, NY 22 and US 44 veer northeast into the small village of Millerton in the northern protrusion of Dutchess County's Oblong, an area once the subject of a boundary dispute between New York and Connecticut in the late 17th century. US 44 continues eastward towards Lakeville, Connecticut, only a mile east at this point, while NY 22 resumes its northward course into the shadow of the ridge ahead, where Brace Mountain, Dutchess County's highest peak, dominates the view. At another gentle curve, NY 22 slips into Columbia County and the town of Ancram. North of the county line, Massachusetts becomes the state behind Alander Mountain and the other peaks visible to the east. The southernmost route from New York to the Massachusetts state line, NY 344, leaves for Bashbish Falls State Park just west of the hamlet of Copake Falls.
The next major junction is at Hillsdale, where NY 23, the longest east–west state highway not to overlap with NY 22, intersects at a traffic light just east of downtown. At Green River, NY 71, the state's shortest two-digit route, begins it short eastward course into Massachusetts. NY 22 then crosses into Austerlitz, where the surrounding terrain becomes much more wooded and the valleys become narrower. In the center of town, the historic hamlet of Old Austerlitz, East Hill Road offers a short detour to Steepletop, the farm where Edna St. Vincent Millay lived, another National Historic Landmark. A short distance later, NY 22 intersects with NY 203 at its eastern end.
NY 22 then veers sharply to the northeast, resuming a northward direction within of the state line, the highway's closest approach to it along its entire length. It then rounds a mountain and heads west, paralleling the New York State Thruway's Berkshire section for a mile. NY 980D leaves to the east, where it becomes Massachusetts Route 102 at the state line. After Thruway exit B3, NY 22 resumes its northerly heading. From here it intersects NY 295, then passes Queechy Lake. NY 22 then straightens out to reach New Lebanon, where it intersects US 20. Ending a stretch with no concurrencies, the longest on NY 22, New York's longest east–west route overlaps with its longest north–south route for a mile before the former continues to Pittsfield and the latter returns to the border-paralleling course, which takes it into Rensselaer County.
As NY 22 continues north, it remains, at first, within a mile of Massachusetts, moving to the east to intersect with NY 43 in Stephentown. North of that junction, it begins to run through a deep, isolated, lightly populated valley in the New York section of the Berkshires. Wide curves take the road through the town of Berlin. NY 22 trends further west, then back east to where NY 2 crosses via an overpass at Petersburgh on its way to Petersburg Pass, the northernmost crossing of the New York–Massachusetts state line. The next road to head east from NY 22, NY 346 at North Petersburgh, enters Vermont.
Shortly afterward, the highway descends gently from the Berkshires to meet another major east–west state road, NY 7. After turning northeast to join it at a traffic light, NY 22 overlaps with Route 7 for, then forks off to the north just before crossing the Hoosic River. NY 22 follows the river for to Hoosick Falls, the first village it has passed through since Millerton. There are no other state routes here, but after another, at North Hoosick, NY 67 comes in from the east and the two roads overlap as they leave Rensselaer County.