Rockaway Beach saw major development after WWII as part of a city-wide project to alleviate a housing shortage.

In 1915 and 1917, a bill approving the secession passed in the legislature but was vetoed by the mayor at the time, John Purroy Mitchel.

[6] In the early 1900s, the newly built railroad station opened up the community and the rest of the peninsula to a broad range of the population.

The wealthy no longer had a monopoly on the peninsula, as various amusement parks, stores, and resort hotels attracted people from all over the city to spend a day or a whole summer there.

With its growing popularity, concern over swimming etiquette became a problem and early in 1904, the Captain of the NYPD, Louis Kreuscher, issued rules for those using the beach, censoring the bathing suits to be worn, where photographs could be taken, and specifying that women in bathing suits were not allowed to leave the beachfront.

One of its most popular attractions, the Atom Smasher roller coaster, would be featured in the beginning of This is Cinerama, a pre-IMAX type movie, in 1952.

[8] An Olympic-size swimming pool and a million-dollar midway also were built within the amusement park; they would serve the community for over eighty years.

[10] In the 1930s, Robert Moses came to power as New York City's Parks Commissioner and his extensive road and transportation projects were both a benefit and disaster for the neighborhood.

The Marine Parkway Bridge was built further west on the peninsula between Jacob Riis Park and Breezy Point linking the isolated communities to Brooklyn.

[11] The new bridge made the community the peninsula's gateway to Queens as it provided the only direct car access to the borough.

The construction of the two bridges started to transform the neighborhood and the rest of the peninsula into a more year-round residential area or commuter town, as people had a more convenient way to travel to and from work.

Wanting to connect Staten Island to the Hamptons, Moses focused on making a highway through the Rockaway Peninsula.

[13] Robert Moses' construction of other recreational areas and facilities, such as the New York Aquarium and Jones Beach State Park, indirectly impacted the neighborhood as well.

This social housing project would be one of the many so-called urban renewal efforts that dominated the community and much of its eastern neighbors in the last half of the 20th century.

The area appears in New York magazine's 2007 spring travel issue as a place for "Surfing" and to "scuba dive for sunken ships".

[19][20] Based on data from the 2010 United States Census, the population of the combined area of Breezy Point/Belle Harbor/Rockaway Park/Broad Channel was 28,018, an increase of 1,307 (4.9%) from the 26,711 counted in 2000.

Although there is no high school within the community's boundaries, there are four nearby in the same building, all part of the Beach Channel Educational Campus.