Rockaway Beach Becomes a Village

In 1857 Michael P. Holland bought a stretch of Rockaway Peninsula land and named it after himself. Just east of him, German immigrant Louis Hammel acquired his own tract, and in 1878 gave part of it to the New York, Woodhaven and Rockaway Railroad to build a station, so the neighborhood that grew up around the tracks took his name too. On June 11, 1897, the two adjoining communities, Hammels and Holland, merged and incorporated as the Village of Rockaway Beach. The new village did not stay independent long: a year later it was folded into the City of Greater New York as part of the newly created borough of Queens.