Named after 85th Street and Forest Parkway, one of the main roads of Forest Park.
The park was acquired between 1895 and 1898 and was first called Brooklyn Forest Park, as its owner was the then-independent city of Brooklyn. A local history walk described Forest Parkway as developed for Woodhaven’s upper classes. ‘85th Street’ was added to the station’s name in 1966; in the early 1920s Queens had adopted a plan to lay one numbered system over the whole borough.