New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east. The state has a maritime border with Rhode Island east of Long Island, as well as an international border with the Canadian provinces of Ontario to the north and west, and Quebec to the north. The state of New York is often referred to as New York State to distinguish it from the city of New York.
New York City, with a population of over 8.1 million, is the most populous city in the United States. It is known for its status as a financial, cultural, transportation, and manufacturing center, and for its history as a gateway for immigration to the United States. According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, it is also a destination of choice for many foreign visitors. Both the state and city were named for the 17th century Duke of York, James Stuart, future James II and VII of England and Scotland.
New York covers 54,556 square miles (141,300 km2) and ranks as the 27th largest state by size. The Great Appalachian Valley dominates eastern New York, while Lake Champlain is the chief northern feature of the valley, which also includes the Hudson River flowing southward to the Atlantic Ocean. The rugged Adirondack Mountains, with vast tracts of wilderness, lie west of the valley.
Most of the southern part of the state is on the Allegheny Plateau, which rises from the southeast to the Catskill Mountains. The western section of the state is drained by the Allegheny River and rivers of the Susquehanna and Delaware systems. The Delaware River Basin Compact, signed in 1961 by New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and the federal government, regulates the utilization of water of the Delaware system. The highest elevation in New York is Mount Marcy in the Adirondacks.
New York's borders touch (clockwise from the west) two Great Lakes (Erie and Ontario, which are connected by the Niagara River); the provinces of Ontario and Quebec in Canada; Lake Champlain; three New England states (Vermont, Massachusetts, and Connecticut); the Atlantic Ocean, and two Mid-Atlantic States, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. In addition, Rhode Island shares a water border with New York. New York is the only state that touches both the Great Lakes and the Atlantic Ocean, and is the second-largest of the original Thirteen Colonies.
In contrast with New York City's urban atmosphere, the vast majority of the state is dominated by farms, forests, rivers, mountains, and lakes. New York's Adirondack Park is the largest state park in the United States. It is larger than the Yellowstone, Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Glacier and Olympic National Parks combined. New York established the first state park in the United States at Niagara Falls in 1885. Niagara Falls, on the Niagara River as it flows from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario, is a popular attraction.
The Hudson River begins at Lake Tear of the Clouds and flows south through the eastern part of the state without draining Lakes George or Champlain. Lake George empties at its north end into Lake Champlain, whose northern end extends into Canada, where it drains into the Richelieu and then the St. Lawrence Rivers. Four of New York City's five boroughs are on three islands at the mouth of the Hudson River: Manhattan Island; Staten Island; and Long Island, which contains Brooklyn and Queens on its western end.
Upstate and downstate are often used informally to distinguish New York City or its greater metropolitan area from the rest of New York state. The placement of a boundary between the two is a matter of great contention. Unofficial and loosely defined regions of Upstate New York include the Southern Tier, which often includes the counties along the border with Pennsylvania, and the North Country, which can mean anything from the strip along the Canadian border to everything north of the Mohawk River.
New York has many state parks and two major forest preserves. Adirondack Park, roughly the size of the state of Vermont and the largest state park in the United States, was established in 1892 and given state constitutional protection to remain "forever wild" in 1894. The thinking that led to the creation of the Park first appeared in George Perkins Marsh's Man and Nature, published in 1864. Marsh argued that deforestation could lead to desertification; referring to the clearing of once-lush lands surrounding the Mediterranean, he asserted "the operation of causes set in action by man has brought the face of the earth to a desolation almost as complete as that of the moon."
The Catskill Park was protected in legislation passed in 1885, which declared that its land was to be conserved and never put up for sale or lease. Consisting of 700,000 acres (2,800 km2) of land, the park is a habitat for bobcats, minks and fishers. There are some 400 black bears living in the region. The state operates numerous campgrounds and there are over 300 miles (480 km) of multi-use trails in the Park.
The Montauk Point State Park boasts the 1797 Montauk Lighthouse, commissioned under President George Washington, which is a major tourist attraction on the easternmost tip of Long Island. Hither Hills park offers camping and is a popular destination with surfcasting sport fishermen.
There are 62 cities in New York. The largest city in the state and the most populous city in the United States is New York City, which comprises five counties, the Bronx, New York (Manhattan), Queens, Kings (Brooklyn), and Richmond (Staten Island). New York City is home to more than two-fifths of the state's population. The smallest city is Sherrill, New York, located just west of the Town of Vernon in Oneida County. Albany is the state capital, and the Town of Hempstead is the civil township with the largest population. If it were a city, it would be the second largest in the state with over 700,000 residents.
The southern tip of New York State—New York City, its suburbs including Long Island, the southern portion of the Hudson Valley, and most of northern New Jersey—can be considered to form the central core of the Northeast megalopolis", a super-city stretching from the northern suburbs of Boston south to the Virginia suburbs of Washington D.C..
History:
During the 17th century, Dutch trading posts established for the trade of pelts from the Lenape, Iroquois and other indigenous peoples expanded into the colony of New Netherland. The first of these trading posts were Fort Nassau (1614, near present-day Albany); Fort Orange (1624, on the Hudson River just south of the current city of Albany and created to replace Fort Nassau), developing into settlement Beverwijck (1647), and into what became Albany; Fort Amsterdam (1625, to develop into the town New Amsterdam which is present-day New York City); and Esopus, (1653, now Kingston). The success of the patroonship of Rensselaerswyck (1630), which surrounded Albany and lasted until the mid 19th century, was also a key factor in the early success of the colony. The British captured the colony during the Second Anglo-Dutch War and governed it as the Province of New York.
The Sons of Liberty were organized in New York City during the 1760s, largely in response to the oppressive Stamp Act passed by the British Parliament in 1765. The Stamp Act Congress met in the city on October 19 of that year: a gathering of representatives from across the Thirteen Colonies that set the stage for the Continental Congress to follow. The Stamp Act Congress resulted in the Declaration of Rights and Grievances, which was the first written expression by representatives of the Americans of many of the rights and complaints later expressed in the United States Declaration of Independence, including the right to representative government.
The Capture of Fort Ticonderoga provided the cannon and gunpowder necessary to force a British withdrawal from the Siege of Boston in 1775. New York endorsed the Declaration of Independence on July 9, 1776. The New York state constitution was framed by a convention which assembled at White Plains, New York on July 10, 1776, and after repeated adjournments and changes of location, terminated its labors at Kingston, New York on Sunday evening, April 20, 1777, when the new constitution drafted by John Jay was adopted with but one dissenting vote. It was not submitted to the people for ratification. On July 30, 1777, George Clinton was inaugurated as the first Governor of New York at Kingston.
The first major battle of the American Revolutionary War after independence was declared—and the largest battle of the entire war—was fought in New York at the Battle of Long Island (a.k.a Battle of Brooklyn) in August of 1776. British victory made New York City their military and political base of operations in North America for the duration of the conflict, and consequently the center of attention for General George Washington's intelligence network.
The notorious British prison ships of Wallabout Bay saw more American combatants die of intentional neglect than were killed in combat in every battle of the war, combined. The first of two major British armies were captured by the Continental Army at the Battle of Saratoga in 1777, influencing France to ally with the revolutionaries.
In an attempt to retain their sovereignty and remain an independent nation positioned between the new United States and British North America, four of the Iroquois nations fought on the side of the British; only the Oneidas and their dependents the Tuscaroras allied themselves to the Americans. The Sullivan Expedition of 1778 and 1779 destroyed nearly 50 Iroquois villages and adjacent croplands, forcing many refugees to British-held Niagara. As allies of the British, the Iroquois were resettled in Canada after the war. In the treaty settlement, the British ceded most Indian lands to the new United States. Because New York made treaty with the Iroquois without getting Congressional approval, some of the land purchases are the subject of modern-day claims by the individual tribes. More than 5 million acres (20,000 km2) of former Iroquois territory was put up for sale in the years after the Revolutionary War, leading to rapid development in upstate New York. As per the Treaty of Paris, the last vestige of British authority in the former Thirteen Colonies—their troops in New York City—departed in 1783, which was long afterwards celebrated as Evacuation Day.
Following heated debate, which included the publication of the now quintessential constitutional interpretation—the Federalist Papers—as a series of installments in New York City newspapers, New York was the 11th state to ratify the United States Constitution, on July 26, 1788.
Transportation in western New York was difficult before canals were built in the early part of the 19th century. The Hudson and Mohawk Rivers could be navigated only as far as Central New York. While the St. Lawrence River could be navigated to Lake Ontario, the way westward to the other Great Lakes was blocked by Niagara Falls, and so the only route to western New York was over land.
Governor DeWitt Clinton strongly advocated building a canal to connect the Hudson River with Lake Erie, and thus all the Great Lakes. Work commenced in 1817, and the Erie Canal was finished in 1825. It was considered an engineering marvel. Packet boats traveled up and down the canal with sightseers and visitors on board. The canal opened up vast areas of New York to commerce and settlement. It enabled Great Lakes port cities such as Buffalo and Rochester to grow and prosper. It also connected the burgeoning agricultural production of the Midwest and shipping on the Great Lakes, with the port of New York City. Improving transportation, it enabled additional population migration to territories west of New York.
Ellis Island was the main facility for immigrants, entering the United States in the late 19th century to the mid 20th century. The facility operated from January 1, 1892, until November 12, 1954. It is owned by the Federal government and is now part of the Statue of Liberty National Monument, under the jurisdiction of the National Park Service. It is situated in New York Harbor, between two states and cities, Jersey City, New Jersey and New York City, New York.
More than 12 million immigrants passed through Ellis Island, between 1892 and 1954. After 1924, when the National Origins Act was passed, the only immigrants to pass through there were displaced persons or war refugees. Today, over 100 million Americans can trace their ancestry to the immigrants, who first arrived in America through the island, before dispersing to points all over the country. Ellis Island was the subject of a border dispute between New York State and New Jersey.
The Statue of Liberty was a gift from France to the United States to mark the Centennial of the American Declaration of Independence. The idea of giving a colossal representation of republican virtues to a "sister" republic, across the sea, served as a focus for the republican cause against other politicians. The Statue of Liberty was dedicated in New York Harbor on October 28, 1886.
Liberty Island closed on September 11, 2001; the island reopened in December, the monument reopened on August 3, 2004, but the statue remained closed until the summer of 2009. The National Park Service claims that the statue is not shut because of a terrorist threat, but principally because of a long list of fire regulation contraventions, including inadequate evacuation procedures. The museum and ten-story pedestal are open for visitors, but are only accessible if visitors have a "Monument Access Pass", which is a reservation that visitors must make in advance of their visit and pick up before boarding the ferry. There are a maximum of 3000 passes available each day, with a total of 15,000 visitors to the island daily. The interior of the statue remains closed, although a glass ceiling in the pedestal allows for views of Gustave Eiffel's iron framework of Lady Liberty.
Government:
Under its present constitution (adopted in 1938), New York is governed by the same three branches that govern all fifty states of the United States: the executive branch, consisting of the Governor of New York and the other independently elected constitutional officers; the legislative branch, consisting of the bicameral New York State Legislature (senate and assembly); and the judicial branch, consisting of the state's highest court, the New York Court of Appeals, and lower courts. The state has two U.S. senators, 29 members in the United States House of Representatives, and 31 electoral votes in national presidential elections (a drop from its 47 votes during the 1940s).
New York's capital is Albany. The state's subordinate political units are its 62 counties. Other officially incorporated governmental units are towns, cities, and villages. New York has more than 4,200 local governments that take one of these forms. About 52% of all revenue raised by local governments in the state is raised solely by the government of New York City, which is the largest municipal government in the United States, whereas New York City houses only 42% of the state population.
The state has a strong imbalance of payments with the federal government. New York State receives 82 cents in services for every $1 it sends in taxes to the federal government in Washington. The state ranks near the bottom, in 42nd place, in federal spending per tax dollar.
Many of New York's public services are carried out by public benefit corporations, frequently called authorities or development corporations. Well known public benefit corporations in New York include the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which oversees New York City's public transportation system, and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, a bi-state transportation infrastructure agency. New York's legal system is explicitly based upon English common Law.
As of the 2000 census and the redistricting for the 2002 elections, the state has 29 members in the United States House of Representatives, and two U.S. senators. Two seats in the House will be lost in 2013 due to a decline in the state's rate of population growth. New York has 31 electoral votes in national presidential elections (a drop from its 47 votes during the 1940s).
New York is represented by Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand in the United States Senate and has 29 representatives to the United States House of Representatives, behind California's 53 congressional districts and Texas' 32 congressional districts.
Capital punishment was reintroduced in 1995 under the Pataki administration but the statute was declared unconstitutional in 2004, when the New York Court of Appeals ruled in People v. LaValle that it violated the state constitution. The remaining death sentence was commuted by the court to life imprisonment in 2007, in People v. John Taylor, and the death row was disestablished in 2008, under executive order from Governor Paterson. No execution has taken place in New York since 1963. Legislative efforts to amend the statute have failed, and death sentences are no longer sought at the state level, though certain crimes that fall under the jurisdiction of the federal government are subject to the federal death penalty.
In the last few decades, New York State has generally supported candidates belonging to the Democratic Party in national elections. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama won New York State by 25 percentage points in 2008, a bigger margin than John Kerry in 2004. New York City is a major Democratic stronghold with liberal politics. Many of the state's other urban areas, such as Albany, Buffalo, Rochester, and Syracuse are also Democratic. Rural upstate New York, however, is generally more conservative than the cities and tends to favor Republicans. Heavily populated Suburban areas such as Westchester County and Long Island have swung between the major parties over the past 25 years, but more often than not support Democrats.
Same-sex marriages in New York were legalized on June 24, 2011 and were authorized to take place beginning 30 days thereafter. New York City is the most important source of political fund-raising in the United States for both major parties. Four of the top five zip codes in the nation for political contributions are in Manhattan. The top zip code, 10021 on the Upper East Side, generated the most money for the 2000 presidential campaigns of both George W. Bush and Al Gore.
Education:
The University of the State of New York oversees all public primary, middle-level, and secondary education in the state, while the New York City Department of Education manages the public school system in New York City. In 1894, reflecting general racial discrimination, the state passed a law that allowed communities to set up schools for children of African-American descent. In 1900, the state passed another law requiring integrated schools.
In addition there are many notable private universities, including the oldest Catholic institution in the Northeast, Fordham University. New York is home to both Columbia University in New York City and Cornell University in Ithaca, making it the only state to contain more than one Ivy League school. West Point, the service academy of the U.S. Army is located just south of Newburgh, on the banks of the Hudson River. During the 2007–2008 school year, New York spent more per pupil on public education than any other state.
Religion:
Catholics comprise more than 40% of the population in New York. Protestants are 30% of the population, Jews 8.4%, Muslims 3.5%, Buddhists 1%, and 13% claim no religious affiliation. The largest Protestant denominations are the United Methodist Church with 403,362; the American Baptist Churches USA with 203,297; and the Episcopal Church with 201,797 adherents.
Sports:
New York hosted the 1980 Winter Olympics at Lake Placid, the Games known for the USA–USSR hockey game dubbed the "Miracle on Ice" in which a group of American college students and amateurs defeated the heavily favored Soviet national ice hockey team 4–3 and went on to win the gold medal against Finland. Lake Placid also hosted the 1932 Winter Olympics. Along with St. Moritz, Switzerland and Innsbruck, Austria, it is one of the three places to have twice hosted the Winter Olympic Games.
New York is the home of one National Football League team, the Buffalo Bills (based in the suburb of Orchard Park). Although the New York Giants and New York Jets represent the New York metropolitan area and were previously located in New York City, they play in New Meadowlands Stadium, located in East Rutherford, New Jersey. The Meadowlands stadium will host Super Bowl XLVIII in 2014. There has been much controversy over several proposals for a new New York Jets football stadium. The owners of the New York Jets were willing to split the $1.5 billion cost of building a new football stadium over Manhattan's West Side rail yards, but the proposal never came to fruition.
In terms of revenue generated, New York's top five agricultural products are dairy products, greenhouse and nursery products, apples, cattle and calves, and hay.
Livestock and livestock products account for about 2/3 of New York's agricultural income. Leading the way in this sector is the production of milk. New York is a leading producer (#3) of dairy products. Beef cattle and retired dairy cattle are also important. Other livestock products are eggs, poultry, hogs and sheep.
New York is a leading fruit and vegetable producer in the eastern part of the country. Vegetable farms produce cabbages, cucumbers, green peas, onions, snap beans, squash, sweet corn and tomatoes. The state's leading fruit crops are apples, followed by grapes. New York is a leading (#2) apple producing state. Other important fruit crops are cherries and peaches. The big field crops are hay and corn, used as feed for New York's livestock. The important greenhouse products of the state are flowers. Other agricultural products are maple syrup, oats, potatoes, soybeans and wheat.
Manufacturing:
Manufacturers add value to raw products by creating manufactured items. For example, cotton cloth becomes more valuable than a boll of cotton through manufacturing processes.
New York is a leading manufacturing state producing a variety of goods from pharmaceuticals to machinery to computer chips. Ranking first is the manufacture of chemicals (Pharmaceuticals, photographic chemicals, film and paper), though the popularity of digital photography is taking its toll. Other important chemical products are industrial chemicals, soaps, paint, plastics and agricultural pesticides and fertilizer.
Second, behind production of chemicals, is the manufacture of machinery including industrial equipment, photographic and photocopying equipment and refrigeration equipment.
Computer and electronic products rank third in the manufacturing industry. The important products in this sector are computer components and microchips, communications equipment, surveillance equipment and navigation equipment.
Mining:
New York's most valuable mined products are stone (limestone crushed for road construction), salt and sand and gravel. New York is the only state that produces wollastonite, used in heat-resistent ceramics and as filler for paints. New York ranks among the leading producers of garnets and zinc in the country. Other mined products include clays, lead, natural gas, peat, silver and talc.
Economy:
New York's gross state product in 2010 was $1.16 trillion, ranking third in size behind the larger states of California and Texas. If New York were an independent nation, it would rank as the 16th largest economy in the world behind Turkey. Its 2007 per capita personal income was $46,364, placing it sixth in the nation behind Maryland, and eighth in the world behind Ireland. New York's agricultural outputs are dairy products, cattle and other livestock, vegetables, nursery stock, and apples. Its industrial outputs are printing and publishing, scientific instruments, electric equipment, machinery, chemical products, and tourism.
A recent review by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found 13 states, including several of the nation's largest, face budget shortfalls for FY2009. New York faces a deficit that could be as large as $4.3 billion. New York exports a wide variety of goods such as foodstuffs, commodities, minerals, computers and electronics, cut diamonds, and automobile parts. In 2007, the state exported a total of $71.1 billion worth of goods, with the five largest foreign export markets being Canada ($15 billion), United Kingdom ($6 billion), Switzerland ($5.9 billion), Israel ($4.9 billion), and Hong Kong ($3.4 billion). New York's largest imports are oil, gold, aluminum, natural gas, electricity, rough diamonds, and lumber.
Canada is a very important economic partner for the state. 21% of the state's total worldwide exports went to Canada in 2007. Tourism from the north is also a large part of the economy. Canadians spent US$487 million in 2004 while visiting the state. New York City is the leading center of banking, finance and communication in the United States and is the location of the New York Stock Exchange, the largest stock exchange in the world by dollar volume. Many of the world's largest corporations are based in the city.
The state also has a large manufacturing sector that includes printing and the production of garments, furs, railroad equipment and bus line vehicles. Many of these industries are concentrated in upstate regions. Albany and the Hudson Valley are major centers of nanotechnology and microchip manufacturing, while the Rochester area is important in photographic equipment and imaging.
New York is a major agricultural producer, ranking among the top five states for agricultural products such as dairy, apples, cherries, cabbage, potatoes, onions, maple syrup and many others. The state is the largest producer of cabbage in the U.S. The state has about a quarter of its land in farms and produced US$3.4 billion in agricultural products in 2001. The south shore of Lake Ontario provides the right mix of soils and microclimate for many apple, cherry, plum, pear and peach orchards. Apples are also grown in the Hudson Valley and near Lake Champlain.
New York is the nation's third-largest grape-producing state, behind California, and second-largest wine producer by volume. The south shore of Lake Erie and the southern Finger Lakes hillsides have many vineyards. In addition, the North Fork of Long Island developed vineyards, production and visitors' facilities in the last three decades of the 20th century. In 2004, New York's wine and grape industry brought US$6 billion into the state economy.
The state has 30,000 acres (120 km2) of vineyards, 212 wineries, and produced 200 million bottles of wine in 2004. A moderately sized saltwater commercial fishery is located along the Atlantic side of Long Island. The principal catches by value are clams, lobsters, squid, and flounder. These areas of the economy have been increasing as environmental protection has led to an increase in ocean wildlife. As of January 2010, the state's unemployment rate was 8.8%.
Transportation:
New York has one of the most extensive and one of the oldest transportation infrastructures in the country. Engineering difficulties because of the terrain of the state and the unique issues of the city brought on by urban crowding have had to be overcome since the state was young. Population expansion of the state generally followed the path of the early waterways, first the Hudson River and then the Erie Canal. Today, railroad lines and the New York State Thruway follow the same general route. The New York State Department of Transportation is often criticized for how they maintain the roads of the state in certain areas and for the fact that the tolls collected along the roadway have long passed their original purpose. Until 2006, tolls were collected on the Thruway within The City of Buffalo. They were dropped late in 2006 during the campaign for Governor (both candidates called for their removal).
In addition to New York City's famous mass transit subway, four suburban commuter railroad systems enter and leave the city: the Long Island Rail Road, Metro-North Railroad, Port Authority Trans-Hudson, and five of New Jersey Transit's rail lines. Many other cities have urban and regional public transportation. In Buffalo, the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority runs the Buffalo Metro Rail light-rail system; in Rochester, the Rochester Subway operated from 1927 until 1956 but has fallen into disuse.
The New York State Department of Motor Vehicles (NYSDMV or DMV) is the governmental agency responsible for registering and inspecting automobiles and other motor vehicles as well as licensing drivers in the State of New York. As of 2008, the NYSDMV has 11,284,546 drivers licenses on file and 10,697,644 vehicle registrations in force. All gasoline powered vehicles registered in New York State must get an emissions inspection every 12 months. Diesel powered vehicles with a Gross Weight Rating over 8 500 lb that are registered in the NY Metropolitan Area must get an annual emissions inspection. All vehicles registered in NYS must get an annual safety inspection.
Portions of the transportation system are intermodal, allowing travelers to easily switch from one mode of transportation to another. One of the most notable examples is AirTrain JFK which allows rail passengers to travel directly to terminals at John F. Kennedy International Airport.
In May 2009 the New York City Department of Transportation under the control of Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan banned cars from Times Square. The move designed to reduce pollution and pedestrian accidents looks likely to be implemented permantly, and will last at least until the end of the year.
Weather:
In general, New York has a humid continental climate, though under the Köppen climate classification, New York City has a humid subtropical climate. Weather in New York is heavily influenced by two continental air masses: a warm, humid one from the southwest and a cold, dry one from the northwest.
The winters are long and cold in the Plateau Divisions of the state. In the majority of winter seasons, a temperature of −13 °F (−25 °C) or lower can be expected in the northern highlands (Northern Plateau) and 5 °F (−15 °C) or colder in the southwestern and east-central highlands (Southern Plateau). The summer climate is cool in the Adirondacks, Catskills and higher elevations of the Southern Plateau.
The New York City/Long Island area and lower portions of the Hudson Valley have rather warm summers by comparison, with some periods of high, uncomfortable humidity. The remainder of New York State enjoys pleasantly warm summers, marred by only occasional, brief intervals of sultry conditions. Summer daytime temperatures usually range from the upper 70s to mid 80s °F (25 to 30 °C), over much of the state.
New York ranks 46th among the 50 states in the amount of greenhouse gases generated per person. This relative efficiency is primarily due to the state's higher rate of mass transit use.
Visiting in New York:
If you are planning to visit in New York, winter is the most difficult driving season. Not only do you have snow and ice to deal with, but there are fewer hours of daylight as well. Before winter weather arrives, make sure your vehicle is in good condition, especially the tires. Make sure you've got good snow tires, and put them on early. Try not to get caught without them in the first snowfall. Never combine radial and non-radial tires on the same vehicle. On front-wheel drive cars, it's best to put snow tires or "all-season" tires on all four wheels, not just the front.
If you must drive, clear the ice and snow from your vehicle, all windows and windshield wipers. Be sure the windshield washer reservoir is adequately filled with a freeze-resistant cleaning solution. Drive slowly. Even if your vehicle has good traction in ice and snow, other drivers will be traveling cautiously. Don't disrupt the flow of traffic by driving faster than everyone else. In a rear-wheel drive vehicle, you can usually feel a loss of traction or the beginning of a skid. There may be no such warning in a front-wheel drive, however. Front-wheel drives do handle better in ice and snow, but they do not have flawless traction, and skids can occur unexpectedly. Don't let the better feel and handling of a front-wheel drive car cause you to drive faster than you should.
Despite a popular misconception, the best approach to recovering from a skid is the same for front and rear-wheel drive vehicles. If your rear wheels start to skid: Turn the steering wheel in the direction you want the front wheels to go. If your rear wheels are sliding left, steer left. If they're sliding right, steer right. If your rear wheels start sliding the other way as you recover, ease the steering wheel toward that side. You might have to steer left and right a few times to get your vehicle completely under control. If your car has an anti-lock braking system (ABS), keep your foot on the pedal. If not, pump the pedal gently, pumping more rapidly as your car slows down. Braking hard with non-anti-lock brakes will make the skid worse.
If your front wheels skid: Take your foot off the gas and shift to neutral, but don't try to steer immediately. As the wheels skid sideways, they will slow the vehicle and traction will return. As it does, steer in the direction you want to go. Then put the transmission in "drive" or release the clutch, and accelerate gently.
To avoid skids, brake carefully and gently on snow or ice. "Squeeze" your brakes in slow, steady strokes. Allow the wheels to keep rolling. If they start to lock up, ease off the brake pedal. As you slow down, you may also want to shift into a lower gear. When sleet, freezing rain or snow start to fall, remember that bridges, ramps, and overpasses are likely to freeze first. Also be aware that slippery spots may still remain after road crews have cleared the highways.
If you get stuck: Do not spin your wheels. This will only dig you in deeper. Turn your wheels from side to side a few times to push snow out of the way. Use a light touch on the gas, to ease your car out. Use a shovel to clear snow away from the wheels and the underside of the car. Pour sand, kitty litter, gravel or salt in the path of the wheels, to help get traction. Try rocking the vehicle. (Check your owner's manual first — it can damage the transmission on some vehicles.) Shift from forward to reverse, and back again. Each time you're in gear, give a light touch on the gas until the vehicle gets going.
If You Become Stranded: Do not leave your car unless you know exactly where you are, how far it is to possible help, and are certain you will improve your situation. To attract attention, light two flares and place one at each end of the car a safe distance away. Hang a brightly colored cloth from your antenna. If you are sure the car's exhaust pipe is not blocked, run the engine and heater for about 10 minutes every hour or so depending upon the amount of gas in the tank. To protect yourself from frostbite and hypothermia use the woolen items and blankets to keep warm. Keep at least one window open slightly. Heavy snow and ice can seal a car shut. Eat a hard candy to keep your mouth moist.
In New York, drivers may not use a portable electronic device while operating a vehicle in motion. Portable electronic devices include hand-held cell phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), laptop computers, pagers, personal messaging devices, or electronic games. Drivers may not take, view, or transmit images; play games; or compose, send, read, view, access, browse, transmit, save, or retrieve email messages, text messages, or other electronic data.
A driver who holds an electronic device "in a conspicuous manner" while driving will be presumed to be using it. However, the driver can rebut this presumption if he or she has evidence that the device was not in use at the time. The law includes an exception for use of a portable electronic device in an emergency. Violations of the law are punishable by a fine of $150.
This is currently a "secondary enforcement" law, which means it can be enforced only if the driver has committed another moving violation. The New York legislature is currently considering a bill (Senate Bill 998) that would make texting while driving a primary enforcement law, for which officers could stop drivers even if they hadn't broken any other traffic rules.
New York also prohibits drivers from using hand-held cell phones while driving. Drivers may use hands-free devices, however. The cell phone law presumes that a driver who holds a phone near his or her ear while driving is "using" the phone. Like the texting ban, this law allows the driver to present evidence that he or she was not actually using the phone at the time.
The cell phone law includes an exception for emergency calls. The penalty for violating this provision is a fine of $100. Unlike the texting ban, this is a primary enforcement law, which means officers can pull drivers over and cite them for using a cell phone, even if the driver hasn't committed another moving violation.
If you have a plan to visit in New York City, it is advisable not to drive in New York City if possible. If you cannot avoid to drive in New York City, please drive carefully as much as you can. The following tips for driving in New York City will help you save on parking, avoid getting tickets and make driving easier and safer if you're unfamiliar with driving in New York City.
Don't Drive in New York City. Most visitors to New York City will be better served by taking a train, bus or plane into New York City. Once you're in New York City, most people find that they don't need a car, because you can easily take taxis or the subway to get where you're going. The cost of parking your car adds up quickly, especially if you'll be visiting for several days, and driving your own car around New York City rarely makes sense.
No Turn on Red. If you have still decided to drive in New York City, you should be aware that unlike nearly every other place in the U.S., you cannot make a right on red (except in the rare instances where there is a sign indicating you can).
Pay Attention to Signs. There are many major avenues where you can't make a left turn during certain hours, so keep an eye out for signs. These rules are designed to limit congestion at busy intersections, and the police will ticket you if you get caught making an illegal turn.
Watch out for Pedestrians. People are everywhere in New York City. While it might be illegal to jaywalk, people still do it, so keep your eyes out for people wherever you are driving, whether you're near a crosswalk or not.
Bring Quarters. If you ever want to park at a meter, you'll be very glad to have a (large) stash of quarters in your car with you. Some meters charge 25 cents/10 minutes, so it can add up quickly. Most ordinary parking meters around New York City will only accept quarters (though some muni-meters are starting to accept credit cards and New York City Parking Cards. In most cases if you want to get quarters from a store nearby, you're going to have to buy something -- and even then they might only be willing to give you an extra dollar or so in quarters. You can also often go to a bank or grocery store (try the customer service desk) in New York City to stock up on quarters.
Plan for Parking. It's amazing how one parking garage can charge one rate and across the street the price will be entirely different. The best way to plan for parking in New York City is to go to http://nyc.bestparking.com. You can put in the arrival and departure date and times, as well as location. The website gives many options for parking with prices. Be sure to write down the street address of the lot you pick, because there are often lots right next to each other and the prices can differ wildly.
Don't Be Tricked by Parking Garage Signs. At many parking garages they'll have a sign that says something like "$5 All Day" but in tiny print, it says "up to half an hour." Depending on where you are, you'll find that rates often "top out" after just a few hours, so parking somewhere for 3 hours costs the same as parking there for 8 hours. Don't be afraid to ask the parking attendant about rates and whether they accept credit cards for payment (some parking lots are cash-only).
Pay Attention to Street Signs. When you see an empty block, there is often a good reason that people aren't parked there. Whether it's street cleaning or a loading zone, street parking in Manhattan is at a premium, so it's rare to see many spots available and that should tip you off to pay special attention to the parking rules posted on street signs. There are even meters where you can't park for several hours a day (often during rush hour) so even parking at (& paying) a meter doesn't give you a free pass.
Stay Away from Fire Hydrants and Cross Walks. You need to stay 15 feet away from fire hydrants when you park on the street. And they will ticket (or tow you) if you're parked within 15 feet of the fire hydrant. For crosswalks, make sure your tires are located entirely outside of the crosswalk markings or you run the risk of getting a ticket.
Don't Get Towed. It's way cheaper to pay for (often overpriced) parking in a lot than to risk getting your car towed. Not only are the lots where they tow your car inconveniently located (sometimes they'll even tow your car to Brooklyn even though it's parked in Manhattan), they charge more than $100/day to "store" your car on top of whatever the ticket you got that caused you to be towed in the first place, so it gets expensive really quickly. Also, they're often not open on weekends and in the evening, so it can really mess up your plans if you've got to spend another night in New York City so you can get your car back.
Parking Tickets Happen 24/7. Whether it's the middle of the night or a Sunday afternoon, if you park illegally, you are very likely to get a ticket. If you are running late and your parking meter runs out, there's also a strong likelihood you'll get a ticket, so give yourself plenty of time on the meter and be sure to make it back to your car before your meter runs out.
Remember Where You Parked Your Car. If you park in a garage, the claim ticket should have the address of the garage on it, but if you're parked on the street, it can be tough to remember exactly where you parked after a long day in New York City. Write down the address and cross streets where you've parked, send yourself a text message or leave yourself a voice mail to help you remember where your car is parked. What should you do if you can't find your car in New York City and think it's been towed? Call 311. With your license plate, the operator can quickly check the database to let you know where your car has been towed.
Arverne, New York:
Arverne is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Queens, on the Rockaway Peninsula. It was initially developed by Remington Vernam, whose signature "R. Vernam" inspired the name of the neighborhood. Arverne extends from Beach 56th Street to Beach 73rd Street, along its main thoroughfare Beach Channel Drive, alternatively known as Rev. Joseph H. May Drive. The neighborhood is part of Queens Community Board 14.
Vernam's original plan was to name the neighborhood Arverne-by-the-Sea, and one grandiose plan, influenced by his wife, Florence, included a canal running through the neighborhood, reminiscent of the Amstel canal in Amsterdam, Holland. When this plan fell through, the canal right-of-way was converted into a thoroughfare, Amstel Boulevard, which, except for a stub west of Beach 71st Street, was later incorporated into Beach Channel Drive.
While Arverne became well-known as a beachfront community with inexpensive summer bungalows, and hotels of varying levels of expense and luxury as well as amusements and boardwalk concessions, it also attracted a year-round residential community. On January 3, 1914, a violent storm devastated the neighborhood as well as other neighborhoods on the peninsula, and completely swept the Arverne Pier Theater, which was capable of seating 1,200 people, away to sea. On June 15, 1922, a large part of Arverne was leveled by a disastrous fire which left about 10,000 people homeless, although the neighborhood was quick to rebuild.
During the 1950s and 1960s, the advent of commercial jet air travel encouraged people to travel to distant destinations during the summer, rather than to utilize local beaches and resorts. As a result, many of Arverne's summer bungalows became vacant.
New York City's urban renewal projects of the 1960s leveled to the ground most of the summer resorts and some of the residences, many of which had been abandoned. The process eventually transformed most of Arverne, from Rockaway Beach Boulevard southward to the beachfront, into vacant land used as a dumping ground. Since the 1980s, but particularly since the Bloomberg administration, New York City has tried, albeit with only partial success, to improve the area, most notably via Arverne East Development's "Arverne-by-the-Sea".
Astoria, New York:
Astoria is a neighborhood in the northwestern corner of the borough of Queens in New York City. Located in Community Board 1, Astoria is bounded by the East River and is adjacent to three other Queens neighborhoods: Long Island City, Sunnyside (bordering at Northern Boulevard), and Woodside (bordering at 50th Street).
The area now known as Astoria was originally called Hallet's Cove, after its first landowner William Hallet, who settled there in 1659 with his wife Elizabeth Fones. Beginning in the early 19th century, affluent New Yorkers constructed large residences around 12th and 14th streets, an area that later became known as Astoria Village (now Old Astoria). Hallet's Cove, founded in 1839 by fur merchant Steven Halsey, was a noted recreational destination and resort for Manhattan's wealthy.
The area was renamed after John Jacob Astor, then the wealthiest man in America, with a net worth of over $40 million, in order to persuade him to invest just $2,000 in the neighborhood. He only invested $500, but the name stayed nonetheless, as a bitter battle over naming the village was finally won by Astor's supporters and friends. From Astor's summer home in Hell Gate, Manhattan – on what is now East 87th Street near York Avenue – he could see across the East River the new Long Island village named in his honor; however, Astor never actually set foot in Astoria.
During the second half of the 19th century, economic and commercial growth brought increased immigration from German settlers, mostly furniture and cabinet makers. One such settler was Heinrich Engelhard Steinweg, patriarch of the Steinway family who founded the piano company Steinway & Sons in 1853, which today is a worldwide piano company. Afterwards, the Steinways built a sawmill and foundry, as well as a streetcar line. The family eventually established Steinway Village for their workers, a company town that provided school instruction in German as well as English.
In 1870, Astoria and several other surrounding villages, including Steinway, were incorporated into Long Island City. Long Island City remained an independent municipality until it was incorporated into New York City in 1898. The area's farms were turned into housing tracts and street grids to accommodate the growing number of residents. Astoria also figured prominently in early American filmmaking as one of its initial centers, a heritage preserved today by the Museum of the Moving Image and Kaufmann Studios.
Astoria was first settled by the Dutch and Germans in the 17th century. Many Irish settled in the area during the waves of Irish immigration into New York City during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Italians were the next significant immigrants in Astoria. Numerous Italian restaurants, delis, bakeries and pizza shops are found throughout Astoria, particularly in the Ditmars Boulevard area. Jews were also a significant ethnic and religious group. The Astoria Center of Israel, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places was built in 1925 after outgrowing the former Congregation Mishkan Israel, which was built in 1904.
The 1960s saw a large number of ethnic Greeks from Greece, and in 1974 Cyprus, giving Astoria the largest Greek population outside of Greece itself. The Greek cultural imprint can be seen in the numerous Greek restaurants, bakeries, tavernas and cafes, as well as several Greek Orthodox churches. While the population of Greeks in Astoria was 22,579 in 1980, it dropped to 18,127 by 1990 due to decreased immigration and lower birth rates. Greek organizations in the area include the Hellenic American Action Committee (HANAC) and the Federation of Hellenic Societies of Greater New York.
Beginning in the mid-1970s, the neighborhood's Arab population grew from earlier immigrants from Lebanon to also include people from Egypt, Syria, Yemen, Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria. In the 1990s, Steinway Street between 28th Avenue and Astoria Boulevard saw the establishment of many Arabic shops, restaurants and cafes. Astoria's South American and white European population has seen significant growth since the early 1990s, including a large population of Brazilians, who reside in the 36th avenue area. Albanians, Bulgarians, and Bosnians have also shown a rise in numbers.
There is some debate as to what constitutes the geographic boundaries of Astoria. The neighborhood was part of Long Island City (LIC) prior to the latter's incorporation into the City of New York in 1898, and much of it is still classified as LIC by the USPS.
The area south of Astoria was called Ravenswood, and traditionally, Broadway was considered the border between the two. Today, however, many residents and businesses south of Broadway identify themselves as Astorians for convenience or status, since Long Island City has historically been considered an industrial area, and Ravenswood is now mostly a low-income neighborhood. Some of the thoroughfares have lent their names to unofficial terms for the areas they serve. For instance, the eastern end of Astoria, with Steinway Street as its main thoroughfare, is sometimes referred to simply as "Steinway", and the northern end around Ditmars Boulevard is sometimes referred to as "Ditmars". Banners displayed on lamp posts along 30th Avenue refer to it as "the Heart of Astoria".
Astoria is served by the E M R New York City Subway trains that stop at Steinway Street and 46th Street stations on the underground IND Queens Boulevard Line as well as the N Q trains which run along the elevated BMT Astoria Line above 31st Street.
Subway stops on the Astoria line are located at several east-west avenues, with the terminus at Ditmars Boulevard, which extends roughly eastward from Astoria Park to the Marine Air Terminal at LaGuardia Airport. The next major avenue south of Ditmars with a subway stop is Astoria Boulevard, which flanks the Grand Central Parkway and the Triborough Bridge. Below that is the 30th Avenue stop, then Broadway. Farthest south is 36th Avenue or Dutch Kills, a low-density commercial area that features traditional Bangladeshi restaurants and shops.
The primary streets running north-south are Vernon Boulevard along the East River; 21st Street, a major traffic artery with a mix of residential, commercial and industrial areas; 31st Street; and Steinway Street (named for Heinrich Engelhard Steinweg (later Henry E. Steinway), founder of the piano company Steinway & Sons), a major commercial street with many retail stores, and a very prominent Middle Eastern section between Astoria Boulevard and 28th Avenue, the area is full of Middle Eastern food restaurants which present some local types of food from Lebanon, Egypt and Morocco, most food in these restaurants is Halal to suit the Muslim residents who are main customers in this neighborhood.
Attractions in Astoria include the Kaufman Astoria Studios' Museum of the Moving Image, Isamu Noguchi Museum, and Socrates Sculpture Park. Astoria Park, along the East River, is Astoria's largest park and also contains the largest of New York City's public pools which was also the former site of the 1936 and 1964 U.S. Olympic trials. The Hell Gate Bridge and New York Connecting Railroad viaduct rise high above Astoria. The oldest beer garden in New York City, Bohemian Hall, was founded in 1910 when Astoria was largely Irish, Italian, Bohemian (Czech), and Slovak. The Greater Astoria Historical Society in the historic Quinn Memorial Building on the corner of Broadway and 36th Street serves as a valuable historical resource as well as providing tourist information. St. Michael's Cemetery on Astoria Boulevard is the burial place of composer and pianist Scott Joplin. Steinway & Sons piano factory located at 1 Steinway Place (not to be confused with Steinway Street) has been in operation in Astoria since the late 19th century and represents a legacy of award-winning craftsmanship, arts patronage, and the once vibrant, stand-alone Steinway Village. Limited tours of the factory are available.
Bicycle lanes added to Astoria's roadways include marked space along 20th Ave., 21st Street, 35th & 36th Avenues, and access to protected paths crossing the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge (formerly Triboro Bridge) onto Ward's/Randall's Island. Riders may also engage in more scenic biking along short, unmarked sections of 19th Street bordering both Astoria Park and Ralph DeMarco Park, a span that is occasionally closed to motor vehicle traffic during events.
The neighborhood has often been featured in television and film, either as Astoria or as a setting for another location in New York City. The 1991 movie Queens Logic was filmed all around Astoria and features an Astoria landmark- The Hell Gate Bridge. One of the screenwriters, Tony Spiridakis, has roots in Astoria. The block of 37th Street between Ditmars Boulevard and 23rd Avenue is sometimes referred to as "the Seinfeld Street." In the Seinfeld television show, this street is occasionally seen in external establishing shots as the block where George Costanza's parents live.
The television series Cosby, starring Bill Cosby, Phylicia Rashad and Madeleine Kahn (not to be confused with the earlier series The Cosby Show) was set in Astoria and was filmed there, at the Kaufman Astoria Studios on 35th Avenue. Kaufman Astoria Studios has further been long time host the PBS series Sesame Street and has been credited with local shoots on films like The Stepford Wives, the 2009 remake of The Taking of Pelham 123, and the Golden Globe winning Angels in America. In the 1970 film Joe, Peter Boyle's character lives in Astoria. The 1970s situation comedy All in the Family was set in Astoria, although the address given for Archie Bunker's home (704 Hauser Street) is fictional.
Two notable Robert De Niro films were filmed on location in Astoria – Goodfellas and A Bronx Tale. While the latter was set in the Bronx, most of the exterior scenes were filmed in Astoria as well as the nearby neighborhood of Woodside. The high school featured in the film is William Cullen Bryant High School on 31st Avenue, and the church used in the film is St. Joseph's on 30th Avenue, and the funeral parlor scenes were shot from a funeral home on 30th Ave, a block away from St. Joseph's Church. Other films shot in Astoria include Five Corners (1987), starring Jodie Foster, and the 1950s Serpico (1973) with Al Pacino had several scenes filmed in Astoria. The elevated train stop at Ditmars Boulevard was the location for a chase scene and Serpico has a clandestine meeting in Astoria Park under the Hellgate Bridge.
The 1973 film adaptation of the John-Michael Tebelak stage musical Godspell includes multiple images of characters beneath the supports for The Hell Gate Bridge, or East River Arch Bridge, as seen from Randall's Island, both while the plot unfolds as well as during visual montages that take place in such numbers as Day by Day and We Beseech Thee. The view of the bridge is similar to those found in Astoria Park and Astoria can occasionally be viewed in the background of shots facing east.
The 1982 film version of Tempest starring John Cassavetes had scenes shot at the cafes on 23rd Ave off 31st St. The 1996 independent film Girls Town shows scenes shot in Astoria Park. Woody Allen's 2002 film Hollywood Ending had scenes shot in the neighborhood surrounding the Kaufman Astoria stages.
The 2011 remake of the comedy film Arthur depicts at least one scene showing Astoria, Queens, using a Batmobile visual shown from 34th Street and 34th Avenue in the neighborhood. King Kong (1976) had a scene in Astoria, at Astoria Boulevard and 31st Street, where the two main characters board the RR train at the Astoria Boulevard station on the BMT Astoria Line. The Accidental Husband (2008), Directed by Griffin Dunne; with Uma Thurman, Colin Firth and Jeffrey Dean Morgan was filmed in Astoria on 33rd Street and 23rd Avenue.
Astoria was the setting for the book, A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, later made into a film starring Robert Downey Jr. and Shia LaBeouf, about the filmmaker's experiences growing up in the neighborhood during the 1980s. The 2006 movie was filmed at various locations around Astoria.
Astoria was the setting for the novel Autobiography/Masquerade, also released in 2006. It was written to honor the memory of Antonio "Nino" Pellegrino, an Astoria native who appeared briefly in A Bronx Tale.
Astoria is also the final resting place of New York City mobster Frank Costello as well as ragtime composer and musician Scott Joplin. Both Costello and Joplin are interred at St. Michael's Cemetery. The cemetery hosts annual public events and concerts to celebrate Joplin's musical legacy, including a Joplin retrospective. The Greek television program Stous 31 Dromous ("On 31st Street") was filmed in Astoria in 2007.
The video game "Grand Theft Auto IV" – which takes place in a mock New York City named Liberty City – has a neighborhood named Steinway in the borough of Dukes, the counterpart of Queens in the game. The game features a Bohemian Hall-inspired "Steinway Beer Garden", but as an Irish-and-German themed bar instead of Czech. (A mock TV commercial for the Steinway Beer Garden viewable at the Rockstar website includes the voice-over remarking that the Garden is "ethnically confused".) Steinway Park is modeled after Astoria Park, with its famous outdoor pool (including the diving platforms) and scenic water's-edge pathway. Numerous signs and awnings of real local Astoria businesses appear in the game, although the names have been altered (e.g. "ASTORIA Medical Dental" becomes "ROSARIA Medical Dental"). The video game The Godfather II depicts Astoria in its version of New York City.
A Guinness World Record was set in Astoria on July 18, 2009, for the 'Largest Musical Saw Ensemble'. The record, part of the annual NYC Musical Saw Festival (in Astoria since 2002) was organized by Natalia Paruz at Trinity Lutheran Church, with the participation of 53 people playing the musical saw together. In The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby is pulled over by a policeman on a "motor cycle" in Astoria while driving with the narrator into the city. Sufjan Stevens' recorded a majority of Illinois at The Buddy Project Recording Studio in Astoria. Paul Volponi's award-winning novel "Black and White" is set in Astoria.
The New York City Department of Education operates Astoria's public schools. Astoria also has several private schools, many of which offer parochial education: Frank Sinatra School of the Arts (9-12) (35-12 35th Avenue); Immaculate Conception School (21-63 29th Street); Les Enfants Montessori School (29-21 Newton Avenue); Our Lady of Mt. Carmel School (23-15 Newtown Avenue); Queens Lutheran School (31-20 37th Street); St. Catherine and St. George School (22-30 33rd Street); St. Demetrios Astoria School (30-03 30th Drive); St. Francis of Assisi School (21-18 46 Street); St. John's Preparatory School (21-21 Crescent Street); St. Joseph's School (k-8) (28-46 44th Street); Most Precious Blood School (Pre-K - 8th) (32-52 37th Street); and El-Ber Islamic School (25-42 49th Street).
Queens Borough Public Library operates three branches within Astoria's ZIP codes: Astoria (14-01 Astoria Boulevard); Broadway (40-20 Broadway); and Steinway (21-45 31st Street)
Atlantic Beach, New York:
Atlantic Beach is an affluent village off the South Shore of Long Island in the Town of Hempstead, Nassau County, New York. It is located on one of the outer barrier islands which it shares with Long Beach, East Atlantic Beach, Atlantic Beach Estates, Lido Beach and Point Lookout. As of the 2010 United States Census, the village population was 1,891.
Atlantic Beach has many beach clubs along the Atlantic Ocean shore, including Lawrence Beach Club, Sunny Atlantic Beach Club, The Sands, Catalina Beach Club, Silver Point Beach Club and Sun and Surf Beach Club. Cabanas or lockers can be rented at these clubs, often costing thousands per season. During the summer months, the population swells by thousands as people flood the beaches. There are no publicly accessible beaches, but Atlantic Beach residents may obtain season passes and access the beaches though nine entrances.
Atlantic Beach is home to the character Sonny Corleone in The Godfather. (Sonny's father, Don Vito Corleone, lives in neighboring Long Beach). The 1984 Garry Marshall film The Flamingo Kid centers on a fictional beach club set in Atlantic Beach. The film was shot on location at an actual beach club in Breezy Point on the Rockaway Peninsula. Scenes from the HBO series The Sopranos have been shot here. A scene from Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas was shot at a beach club here. Scenes from Ed Burns' She's the One were shot at Sun and Surf Beach Club. Scenes from the USA series Royal Pains were taped at Catalina Beach Club. Scenes from HBO's Boardwalk Empire were to be filmed summer 2011.
Politically, Atlantic Beach leans Republican but only very slightly. In the 2008 presidential election Republican John McCain won Atlantic Beach over Democrat Barack Obama 52%-47%.
The Atlantic Beach Fire District is responsible for providing fire and emergency ambulance services for the majority of the village. Atlantic Beach does not have its own fire department, and contracts out fire protection to the Long Beach Fire Department, except for the Silver Point Beach Club and Sun and Surf Beach Club, which are protected by the Inwood Fire Department.
Emergency ambulance services are provided by a combination of Atlantic Beach Rescue Squad and the Long Beach Fire Department, again except for Silver Point and Sun and Surf, which are covered by the Inwood Fire Department.
Police protection is provided by the 4th Precinct of the Nassau County Police Department. The village also maintains its own small civilian security patrol.
Bayside, New York:
Bayside is a suburban neighborhood in the borough of Queens in New York, New York in the United States. Bayside is known as one of the most expensive areas to live in Queens, with well kept homes and landscaping. The neighborhood is part of Queens Community Board 11. Bayside has been included in CNN Money's list of Most Expensive Housing Markets, and was also a contender for CNN Money's ranking of Best Places to Live 2005, and Best Places to Retire 2005.
Bayside's history dates back to 2000 B.C., when the Matinecock Native American tribe first settled there. In the late 17th century, the area was settled by English colonists. By the middle of the 18th century, early settlers left their homes in Flushing and developed a farming community, Bay Side. During the Revolutionary War, the Bayside-Little Neck area suffered from raids by whaleboatmen from the Connecticut shores. In one of the raids, the Talman house was attacked and the miller was killed. In the 19th century Bayside was still mostly farmland. Middle 20th century urban sprawl, with the help of better roads, suburbanized it. During the 1920s, many actors and actresses, such as Rudolph Valentino, lived in Bayside. It was known as the "it" spot, outside of the city. These wealthy residents had large waterfront estates and mansions, many of which still exist today.
Bayside was the site of a murder by Peter Hains, a prominent army officer, abetted by his brother, sea novelist Thornton Jenkins Hains, who gunned down prominent editor William Annis at his yacht club. The so-called "Regatta Murder" led to a widely-publicized trial at the Flushing County Courthouse. Peter Hains was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to eight years at Sing Sing, while Thornton Hains was acquitted.
Bayside is located in northeastern Queens, on the North Shore, and is part of Queens Community Board 11. Its geographical boundaries are: Francis Lewis Boulevard to the west, 233rd Street to the east, Grand Central Parkway to the south, and Cross Island Parkway/Little Neck Bay to the north. Bayside is bordered by neighboring communities Douglaston/Little Neck to the east, the much larger neighborhoods of Flushing, Queens and Whitestone, Queens to the west, and Oakland Gardens to the south. The neighborhood of Bayside Hills is itself a newer subdivision within Bayside.
Bay Terrace is a garden apartment community located in the north section of the neighborhood; an adjacent open-air shopping center was named after the community. The northern section of Bay Terrace also has a view of the Throgs Neck Bridge, which leads to The Bronx.
Bayside's major highways include the Long Island Expressway, Clearview Expressway, and the Cross Island Parkway. Bayside is also connected to Penn Station in Midtown Manhattan and Long Island by the Long Island Rail Road's Port Washington Branch at the Bayside station.
The north end of the Brooklyn-Queens Greenway is in Little Bay Park, under the Throgs Neck Bridge approaches, with convenient connection to the Utopia Parkway bicycle lane. It lies between Cross Island Parkway and Little Neck Bay, connecting Bayside to Douglaston, Queens and Alley Pond Park, and eventually to central Queens and Coney Island.
Francis Lewis Boulevard is a major street formerly notorious for drag racing, which resulted in several fatalities to drivers and pedestrians over the years. Bell Boulevard is a popular strip complete with numerous bars and restaurants which has transformed Bayside into a nightlife destination. The boulevard has attracted many people throughout Queens and even commuters from Long Island via the Bayside LIRR station, who enjoy the small-town vibe and the close proximity of bars, lounges and restaurants to each other.
An article in The Village Voice called Bayside one of the safest neighborhoods in New York City. The New York Police Department includes the portion of Bayside south of 26th Avenue in the 111th precinct; areas north of 26th Avenue are in the 109th precinct.
Bayside is part of the New York City Department of Education's district 26, the highest performing school district for grades K-9 in all of New York City. The district includes 20 elementary schools and 5 middle schools.
Bayside is home to a number of New York City high schools: Bayside High School, and Benjamin Cardozo High School as well as a number of parochial schools: Sacred Heart School Catholic School; St. Francis Prep Catholic School; The Lutheran School of Flushing & Bayside Lutheran school; St. Robert Bellarmine School Catholic School; Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament School Catholic School; and Bell Academy Public Middle School. Bayside is also home to Queensborough Community College, a branch of the City University of New York (CUNY) system. Queens Borough Public Library operates the Bayside and Bay Terrace Branches.
Belle Harbor, New York:
Belle Harbor is an upscale neighborhood in the New York City borough of Queens. It is a tightly-knit, upper class community located on the western half of the Rockaway Peninsula, the southernmost area of the borough. While there are no formal boundaries for the area, Belle Harbor is often used to refer to the area between Beach 126th and Beach 142nd Streets. According to a map from 1909, Belle Harbor is located in the area between Beach 125th (west side) and Beach 141st Streets. The neighborhood is part of Queens Community Board 14. Belle Harbor is the site of the fatal 2001 crash of American Airlines Flight 587.
The opening of passenger railroad service in 1880 to Rockaway Park from Long Island City and from Flatbush Terminal (now Atlantic Terminal) in downtown Brooklyn, via the Long Island Railroad's Rockaway Beach Branch, facilitated population growth on the Rockaways Peninsula. Belle Harbor was developed in 1907 by Frederick J. Lancaster, who had earlier developed the Edgemere neighborhood.
Belle Harbor is a suburban enclave on the Rockaway Peninsula, on a narrow barrier peninsula sandwiched between the Atlantic Ocean to the south and Jamaica Bay to the north. Expansive views of the Manhattan skyline can be seen across the bay. Broad, white sandy beaches have drawn residents to the area. Although the beach is ostensibly open to the public, rigorously enforced street parking restrictions in effect on weekends and holidays from May 15 to September 30, combined with limited direct access to the insular area via public transportation, limits access for non-residents. West of Belle Harbor is the Neponsit neighborhood.
On November 12, 2001, American Airlines Flight 587, bound for Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, crashed in the center of Belle Harbor, killing all 260 passengers and crew on board the plane as well as five people on the ground. Many of the passengers on the plane were from the Dominican community in Washington Heights. After consultation with the families in the Belle Harbor and Washington Heights communities, a memorial was erected at Beach 116th Street in Rockaway Park, a major shopping district and transportation hub in the area, accessible to all. Although a temporary memorial was developed at the actual site of the disaster, on Newport Avenue, many still annually gravitate towards that area for commemoration.
Belle Harbor is primarily made up of single-family homes with a majority of third and fourth generation Irish Catholic upper class residents. Due to the high concentration of single-family homes and private estates, residences tend to be mansion-like and well exceed over $1 million. The community also has Italian-American and Jewish American populations, and is home to a large number of New York City police officers and firefighters, both active and retired.
In 2001, a resident stated to The Guardian: "It's impossible to understand unless you live here ... Father Michael Geraghty, a priest quoted in the same article, said that it was common for people to live in the houses that their parents lived in and that many families lived in the same houses for generations. The neighborhood suffered heavy losses from the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks."
A commercial center is located on Beach 129th Street. A larger shopping area used by some residents of Belle Harbor is located on Beach 116th Street in the neighborhood of Rockaway Park, east of Belle Harbor on the Rockaway Peninsula.
Passenger car access to the area is available via the Marine Parkway-Gil Hodges Memorial Bridge providing access to Brooklyn and the Cross Bay Veterans Memorial Bridge heading to Broad Channel and mainland Queens.
The A and Rockaway Park Shuttle of the New York City Subway is available at the Rockaway Park–Beach 116th Street station. MTA Bus lines Q22 and Q35 also serve this neighborhood. The QM16 line provides express service between Belle Harbor and Manhattan, and the Q53 is available between the Rockaway Park–Beach 116th Street station and Queens.
Belle Harbor residents are zoned for schools in the New York City Department of Education. Residents are zoned to P.S. 114 for grades K-8. A middle school, Scholars' Academy, opened on Beach 104th Street. In September 2007, Scholars' added a high school division. Priority will go to continuing 8th graders, but there will be a limited number of seats for students from other schools.
Boerum Hill, New York:
Boerum Hill is a small neighborhood in the northwestern portion of the New York City borough of Brooklyn that occupies 36 blocks bounded by State Street to the north, 4th Avenue to the east, Smith Street to the west, and Warren Street to the south. Commercial strips line Smith Street and Atlantic Avenue. The neighborhood is part of Brooklyn Community District 2, served by Brooklyn Community Board 2. The Brooklyn High School of the Arts is located in the neighborhood on Dean Street and 3rd Avenue. The neighborhood is served by the NYPD's 84th Precinct.
Boerum Hill is named for the colonial farm of the Boerum family, which occupied most of the area during early European-American settlement. Most of the housing consists of three-story row houses built between 1840 and 1870. In the early twentieth century, many of the buildings were run as boarding houses. Nearby was the union hall for ironworkers, attracted to the city to work on bridges and skyscrapers. The population today is middle and upper-middle class. Despite the name, this area, formerly "North Gowanus" and built on landfill in the former Gowanus Swamp, is of lower elevation than most nearby land.
In the 1950s, all the neighborhoods south of Atlantic Avenue and west of Hoyt Street were called South Brooklyn. The area derived its name from being south of the original town of Brooklyn (now Brooklyn Heights) settled by the Dutch. The north end of Smith Street was the center of New York City's Mohawk community, who came mostly from Akwesasne and Kahnawake, Mohawk reserves in Quebec, Canada. (Akewesasne straddles the boundary of New York and Canada.) Many of the Mohawk men were ironworkers. The women worked at a variety of jobs and created the community for their families. For 50 years, the Mohawk families called their neighborhood "Little Caughnawaga," after the homeland of Kahnawake.
The Brooklyn House of Detention for Men is located at Boerum Place (Adams Street and Atlantic Avenue). Constructed in 1957, it was closed in 2003 and used only as a holding area, because of the need for renovations of the outdated facility, a city effort to revitalize retail and other uses in the area, and community concerns. In 2008 the city re-opened the facility amid controversy over future uses, to allow the beginning of work to upgrade it. The city plans expansion and renovation of the facility to allow the demolition of outdated facilities at Riker's Island.
The neighborhood also includes NYCHA-run housing, the Gowanus Houses, constructed in 1949, and Wyckoff Gardens, completed in 1966. Gowanus Houses includes 14 buildings, of 4-, 6-, 9-, 13 and 14-stories high. Wyckoff Gardens has three tall, multi-story buildings. During the early twentieth century, some of the Boerum Hill area was developed into light-industrial spaces. With increasing gentrification, a variety of retail stores and restaurants have opened in the area along the commercial streets.
The neighborhood has been featured in several contemporary creative works. It is the setting of Spike Lee's movie, Clockers (1995), which was filmed in the Gowanus Houses. It is also featured in two of Jonathan Lethem's books: Motherless Brooklyn (1999), a crime mystery set on Bergen Street between Smith and Hoyt streets, and The Fortress of Solitude (2002), set primarily on one block in Boerum Hill (Dean Street between Nevins and Bond streets). In the latter novel, Lethem suggests that the neighborhood was renamed from North Gowanus in the wake of gentrification beginning in the early 1970s, the period for his lead characters' childhoods.
It is unclear whether this is accurate; a 2003 profile of the community The Village Voice confirms it, but a 2005 article in the "Close Up On" column disputes the renaming story. The Boerum Hill Historic District was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983.
Boerum Hill is known for its independent boutiques, restaurants and rows of brownstones. Boerum Hill is considered to be the home of many "hipsters" and artists, who own art galleries in the neighborhood, including the "invisible dog" exhibition. Boerum Hill is home to many young families, and biking is popular in the neighborhood and nearby Prospect Park.
Breezy Point, New York:
Breezy Point is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Queens, located on the western end of the Rockaway peninsula, between Rockaway Inlet and Jamaica Bay on the landward side, and the Atlantic Ocean. The neighborhood is governed by Queens Community Board 14. The community is run by the Breezy Point Cooperative, in which all residents pay the maintenance, security, and community-oriented costs involved with keeping the community private. The cooperative owns the entire 500-acre (2 km2) community; residents own their homes and hold shares in the cooperative.
Breezy Point and the Rockaway Peninsula in general are unlike the rest of the city of New York, with the latter being very urbanized, developed and noisy, with Breezy Point being a quiet beach community, having more in common with nearby Long Island and even the Hamptons.
According to the United States Census Bureau, the community's ZIP code (11697) is 99.2% white and has the nation's 2nd highest concentration of Irish-Americans, at 60.3% as of the United States Census, 2000 (Squantum, in Quincy, Massachusetts, is #1, at 65%). It functions mainly as a summer get-away for many residents of New York. Estimates put summer residency at 12,000, while year-round residency was 4337 in the most recent Census.
Due to its large concentration of Irish-Americans, Breezy Point has been called the "Irish Riviera." Others within the community refer to it as Cois Farraige, Gaelic for "By The Sea."
Breezy Point was sold to the Atlantic Improvement State Corporation for $17 million dollars in 1960. The residents of the community purchased half of the land for approximately $11 million and formed the Breezy Point Cooperative. Today, it consists of about 3,500 homes. Breezy Point is patrolled by its own private security force that restricts access to owners, renters and their guests. It also features three of New York City's ten remaining volunteer fire departments.
According the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, beaches on the Breezy Point peninsula are home to one of the most diverse breeding shorebird areas in the Metropolitan area. Shorebirds that breed here include: The federally threatened Piping Plover; The New York State threatened Common Tern; The New York State threatened Least Tern; The NY State Species of Special Concern Black Skimmer; and The Migratory Bird Treaty Act-protected American Oystercatcher. The Beaches are owned by the cooperative and are federally and state-protected areas in which development is extremely limited.
Breezy Point residents are zoned for schools in the New York City Department of Education. The school is P.S. 114 Belle Harbor for grades Kindergarten through 8.
Breezy Point Shopping Center has a grocery store called Deirdre Maeve's, a Ridgewood Savings Bank, a hardware store, Henley's Hanger, an independent gift shop, "Blarney's," a pub, a liquor store, a coffee shop, and an auto repair shop. The main office of the Cooperative is also located here. Elsewhere in the community are a travel agency, a surf shop, a beauty salon, a beach bar, and two restaurants. The Dug Out, a walk-up bar-style candy shop, also provides ice cream, pizza and occasionally hot dogs. It only operates during the summer and is a popular hangout among the teenaged community.
Brighton Beach, New York:
Brighton Beach is an oceanside neighborhood in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. As of 2000, it has a population of 75,692 with a total of 31,228 households. Brighton Beach is bounded by Coney Island at Ocean Parkway to the west, Manhattan Beach at Corbin Place to the east, Gravesend at the Belt Parkway to the north, and the Atlantic Ocean to the south (at the Riegelmann Boardwalk/beachfront). It is patrolled by the NYPD's 60th Precinct.
Brighton Beach was developed by William A. Engeman as a beach resort in 1868, and was named by Henry C. Murphy and a group of businessmen in an 1878 contest; the winning name evoked the resort of Brighton, England. The centerpiece of the resort was the large Hotel Brighton (or Brighton Beach Hotel), placed on the beach at what is now the foot of Coney Island Avenue and accessed by the Brooklyn, Flatbush, and Coney Island Railway, which opened on July 2, 1878. After a series of winter storms threatened to swamp the hotel, an audacious plan was developed to move it in one piece 520 feet further inland by placing railroad track and 112 railroad flat cars under the raised 460 ft. by 130 ft. building and using six steam locomotives to pull it away from the sea. Engineered by B.C. Miller, the move was begun on April 2, 1888 and continued for the next nine days, being the largest building move of the 19th century.
Adjacent to the hotel, Engeman built the Brighton Beach Race Course for Thoroughbred horse racing. The village was annexed into the 31st Ward of the City of Brooklyn in 1894. Brighton Beach was re-developed as a fairly dense residential community with the final rebuilding of the Brighton Beach railway into a modern rapid transit line, known as the BMT Brighton Line of the New York City Subway c. 1920. The subway system in the neighborhood is above ground on an elevated structure.
The years just before and following The Great Depression brought with them a neighborhood consisting mostly of first and second generation Jewish-Americans and, later, a number of concentration camp survivors. Notable establishments included Diamond's (a small clothing store owned by the parents of Neil Diamond), Irving's Deli, Mrs. Stahl's Knishes and The Famous, a kosher restaurant. The summer would bring the crowds, and many world renowned celebrities, to the Brighton Beach Baths (Private Beach Club) and surrounding public beaches.
Today, the area has a large community of Jewish immigrants who left the Former Soviet Union since 1970. Some non-Jewish immigrants, such as Armenians and Georgians, have also settled in Brighton Beach and the surrounding neighborhoods, taking advantage of the already established Russian-speaking community. Among the charitable organizations serving the Russian-speaking community is the Russian Community Life Center, which provides a variety of classes and programs.
Brighton Beach was dubbed "Little Odessa" by the local populace due to many of its residents having come from Odessa, a city of Ukraine. In 2006, Alec Brook-Krasny was elected for the 46th District of the New York State Assembly, the first elected Soviet-born Jewish politician from Brighton Beach.
Brighton Beach is home to many other ethnic groups. On Brighton 7th Street and Neptune Avenue, there is a mosque where Muslims (mostly from Pakistan and Bangladesh) pray, and another between Brighton 8th Street and Banner Avenue known as Al-Arqam. Nearby areas are sometimes called "Pakistani Brighton". There are numerous Polish, Ukrainian, Russian, Armenian, Turkish and Georgian residents, but relatively few Italian-Americans or African-Americans. There are also some Korean markets, but for the most part their owners do not reside in the neighborhood. Notable past residents include former talk-show host Larry King and current General Bancorp President Adnan Mohammad.
Brighton Beach is replete with restaurants, food stores, cafes, boutiques, banks, etc., located primarily along Brighton Beach Avenue and its cross streets. The neighborhood has a distinctively ethnic feel. The proximity of Brighton Beach to the city's beaches (Brighton Beach Avenue runs parallel to the Coney Island beach and boardwalk) and the fact the neighborhood is directly served by a subway station makes it a popular summer weekend destination for New York City residents.
Major roadways in Brighton Beach are the Belt Parkway, Coney Island Avenue and Ocean Parkway. The BMT Brighton Line has two stations, Brighton Beach and Ocean Parkway, serving the neighborhood. Both are located on an elevated structure over Brighton Beach Avenue. The Q train provides local service north to Manhattan at all times while the B train provides express service weekdays only. Buses serving Brighton Beach include the B1, B36, B49, and B68.
Brighton Beach is served by the New York City Department of Education. Manhattan Beach is zoned to PS 225 The Eileen E. Zaglin School for grades K-8, as well as PS 100 The Coney Island School located on Brighton Beach and West 3rd Street for grades K-5 and P.S. 253 The Magnet School of Multicultural Humanities. Nearby high schools include: Rachel Carson High School of Coastal Studies; The Leon M. Goldstein High School for the Sciences; William E. Grady Vocational High School; and Abraham Lincoln High School.
Bronx, New York:
The Bronx is the northernmost of the five boroughs of New York City. It is also known as Bronx County, the last of the 62 counties of New York State to be incorporated. Located north of Manhattan and Queens, and south of Westchester County, the Bronx is the only borough that is located primarily on the mainland (a very small portion of Manhattan, the Marble Hill neighborhood, is physically located on the mainland, due to the rerouting of the Harlem River in 1897). The Bronx's population is 1,400,761 according to the 2010 United States Census. The borough has a land area of 42 square miles (109 km2), making it the fourth-largest in land area of the five boroughs, the fourth most populated, and the third-highest in density of population.
The Bronx is divided by the Bronx River into a hillier section in the west, closer to Manhattan, and the flatter East Bronx, closer to Long Island. The West Bronx was annexed to New York City (then largely confined to Manhattan) in 1874, and the areas east of the Bronx River in 1895. The Bronx first assumed a distinct legal identity when it became a borough of Greater New York in 1898. Bronx County, with the same boundaries as the borough, was separated from New York County (afterwards coextensive with the Borough of Manhattan) as of January 1, 1914. Although the Bronx is the third-most-densely-populated county in the U.S., about a quarter of its area is open space, including Woodlawn Cemetery, Van Cortlandt Park, Pelham Bay Park, the New York Botanical Garden and the Bronx Zoo in the borough's north and center, on land deliberately reserved in the late 19th century as urban development progressed northwards and eastwards from Manhattan with the building of roads, bridges and railways.
The Bronx River was named for Jonas Bronck, an early settler from Småland in Sweden whose land bordered the river on the east. The borough of the Bronx was named for the river that was "Bronck's River". The indigenous Lenape (Delaware) American Indians were progressively displaced after 1643 by settlers from the Netherlands and Great Britain. The Bronx received many Irish, German, Jewish and Italian immigrants as its once-rural population exploded between the mid-19th and mid-20th centuries. They were succeeded after 1945 by African Americans and Hispanic Americans from the Caribbean basin — especially Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, but also from Jamaica. In recent years, this cultural mix has made the Bronx a wellspring of both Latin music and hip hop.
The Bronx contains one of the five poorest Congressional Districts in the U.S., the 16th, but its wide variety of neighborhoods also includes the affluent Riverdale and Country Club. The Bronx, particularly the South Bronx, saw a sharp decline in population, livable housing, and the quality of life in the late 1960s and the 1970s, culminating in a wave of arson, but has shown some signs of revival in recent years.
For generations a rural area of small farms supplying the city markets, the Bronx grew into a railroad suburb in the late 19th century. Faster transportation allowed for rapid population growth in the late 19th century, involving the move from horse-drawn street cars to elevated railways to the subway system, which linked to Manhattan in 1904. The great majority lived in rented apartments. The demographic history of the Bronx in the 20th century may be divided into four periods: a boom during 1900–29, with a population growth by a factor of six from 200,000 in 1900 to 1.3 million in 1930. The Great Depression and war years saw a slowing of growth. The 1950s were hard times, as the Bronx decayed 1950–79 from a predominantly middle-class to a predominantly lower-class area with high rates of crime and poverty. Finally the Bronx has enjoyed economic and demographic stabilization since 1980.
The South Bronx was for many years a manufacturing center, and in the early part of the 20th Century was noted as a center of piano manufacturing. In 1919, the Bronx was the site of 63 piano factories employing more than 5,000 workers. At the end of World War I, the Bronx hosted the rather small 1918 World's Fair at 177th Street and DeVoe Avenue.
The Bronx underwent rapid growth after World War I. Extensions of the New York City Subway contributed to the increase in population as thousands of immigrants flooded The Bronx, resulting in a major boom in residential construction. Among these groups, many Irish Americans, Italian Americans and especially Jewish Americans settled here. In addition, French, German, and Polish immigrants moved into the borough. The Jewish population also increased notably during this time. In 1937, according to Jewish organizations, 592,185 Jews lived in The Bronx (43.9% of the borough's population), while only 45,000 Jews lived in the borough in 2002. Many synagogues still stand in the Bronx, but most have been converted to other uses. In Prohibition days (1920–33), bootleggers and gangs were active in the Bronx. Irish, Italian and Polish gangs smuggled in most of the illegal whiskey.
After the 1930s, Irish Americans started moving further north, and German Americans followed suit in the 1940s, as did many Italian Americans in the 1950s and Jews in the 1960s. As the older generation retired, many moved to Florida. The migration has left an African American and Hispanic (mostly Puerto Rican and Dominican) population, along with some Caucasian communities in the far southeastern and northwestern parts of the county.
In the 1970s, the South Bronx became iconic of America's urban crisis of unemployment and poverty, as arson in the city's public housing was a persistent symbol of the problem. However, led by aggressive community leaders, many burned-out tenements were replaced by single- and multifamily housing during the late 1970s to the present. Thus, Co-op City began in 1968 as a subsidized, high-rise, middle-class housing project, whose tenants bought shares in the corporation that operated it. It succeeded because it delivered on its promise of economic affordability and controlled racial integration. By 2000, the Bronx had a population of about 1.2 million, and its bridges, highways, and railroads were more heavily traveled than those of any other part of the United States.
Starting in the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s, the Bronx went into an era of sharp decline in the residents' quality of life. Historians and social scientists have put forward many factors. They include the theory (elaborated in Robert Caro's biography The Power Broker) that Robert Moses' Cross-Bronx Expressway destroyed existing residential neighborhoods. Another factor in the Bronx's decline may have been the development of high-rise housing projects. Yet another may have been a reduction in the real-estate listings and property-related financial services (such as mortgages or insurance policies) offered in some areas of the Bronx — a process known as redlining. Others have suggested a "planned shrinkage" of municipal services, such as fire-fighting. There was also much debate as to whether rent control laws had made it less profitable (or more costly) for landlords to maintain existing buildings with their existing tenants than to abandon or destroy those buildings.
In the 1970s, the Bronx was plagued by a wave of arson. The burning of buildings was mostly in the South Bronx and in West Farms. The most common explanation of what occurred was that landlords decided to burn their low property-value buildings and take the insurance money as profit. After the fiery destruction of many buildings in the borough, the arsons slowed by the turn of the decade, but the after-effects were still felt into the 1990s.
Since the mid-1980s, some residential development has occurred in the Bronx, stimulated by the city's "Ten-Year Housing Plan" and community members working to rebuild the social, economic and environmental infrastructure by creating affordable housing. Groups affiliated with churches in the South Bronx erected the Nehemiah Homes with about 1,000 units. The grass roots organization Nos Quedamos' endeavor known as Melrose Commons began to rebuild areas in the South Bronx. The ripple effects have been felt borough-wide. The IRT White Plains Road Line began to show an increase in riders. Chains such as Marshalls, Staples, and Target have opened stores in the Bronx. More bank branches have opened in the Bronx as a whole (rising from 106 in 1997 to 149 in 2007), although not primarily in poor or minority neighborhoods, while the Bronx still has fewer branches per person than other boroughs.
Although not actually a city, in 1997, the Bronx was designated an All America City by the National Civic League, signifying its comeback from the decline of the 1970s. In 2006, The New York Times reported that "construction cranes have become the borough's new visual metaphor, replacing the window decals of the 1980s in which pictures of potted plants and drawn curtains were placed in the windows of abandoned buildings." The borough has experienced substantial new building construction since 2002. Between 2002 and June 2007, 33,687 new units of housing were built or were under way and $4.8 billion has been invested in new housing. In the first six months of 2007 alone total investment in new residential development was $965 million and 5,187 residential units were scheduled to be completed. Much of the new development is springing up in formerly vacant lots across the South Bronx.
The Bronx is almost entirely situated on the North American mainland. The Hudson River separates the Bronx on the west from Alpine, Tenafly and Englewood Cliffs in Bergen County, New Jersey; the Harlem River separates it from the island of Manhattan to the southwest; the East River separates it from Queens to the southeast; and, to the east, Long Island Sound separates it from Nassau County in western Long Island. Directly north of the Bronx are (from west to east) the adjoining Westchester County communities of Yonkers, Mount Vernon, Pelham Manor and New Rochelle. The New York Public Library maintains a Map Rectifier facility that reconciles old maps of the Bronx (and elsewhere) with current cartography.
The Bronx River flows south from Westchester County through the borough, emptying into the East River; it is the only entirely freshwater river in New York City. A smaller river, the Hutchinson River (named after the religious leader Anne Hutchinson, killed along its banks in 1641), passes through the East Bronx and empties into Eastchester Bay.
The Bronx also includes several small islands in the East River and Long Island Sound, such as City Island and Hart Island. Although it is part of the Bronx, Rikers Island in the East River, home to the large jail complex for the entire City, can be reached only by water, by air, or—since 1966—over the Francis Buono Bridge from Queens.
The Bronx's highest elevation 280 feet (85 m), is in the northwest corner, west of Van Cortlandt Park and in the Chapel Farm area near the Riverdale Country School. The opposite (southeastern) side of the Bronx has four large low peninsulas or "necks" of low-lying land that jut into the waters of the East River and were once saltmarsh: Hunt's Point, Clason's Point, Screvin's Neck and Throg's Neck. Further up the coastline, Rodman's Neck lies between Pelham Bay Park in the northeast and City Island. Almost 27%,15.4 square miles (40 km2) of the Bronx's total area is water, and the irregular shoreline extends for 75 square miles (194 km2).
Although, in 2006, it was the third most densely populated county in the United States (after Manhattan and Brooklyn), about one-fifth of the Bronx's area, and one-quarter of its land area, is given over to park land: about 7,000 acres (28 km2).
Woodlawn Cemetery, one of the largest cemeteries in New York City, sits on the western bank of the Bronx River near Yonkers. It opened in 1863, at a time when the Bronx was still considered a rural area.
The northern side of the borough includes the largest park in New York City - Pelham Bay Park, which includes Orchard Beach - and the fourth largest, Van Cortlandt Park, which is west of Woodlawn Cemetery and borders Yonkers.
Nearer the borough's center, and along the Bronx River, is Bronx Park. Its northern end houses the New York Botanical Gardens, which preserve the last patch of the original hemlock forest that once covered the entire city, and its southern end the Bronx Zoo, the largest urban zoological gardens in the U.S.
Farther south is Crotona Park, home to a 3.3-acre (1.3 ha) lake, 28 species of trees and a large swimming pool. The land for these parks, and many others, was bought by New York City in 1888, while land was still open and inexpensive, in anticipation of future needs and future pressures for development.
Some of the acquired land was set aside for the Grand Concourse and Pelham Parkway, the first of a series of boulevards and parkways (thoroughfares lined with trees, vegetation and greenery). Later projects included the Bronx River Parkway, which developed a road while restoring the riverbank and reducing pollution, Mosholu Parkway and the Henry Hudson Parkway.
Just south of Van Cortlandt Park is the Jerome Park Reservoir, surrounded by 2 miles (3 km) of stone walls and bordering several small parks in the Bedford Park neighborhood. The reservoir was built in the 1890s on the site of the former Jerome Park Racetrack.
In 2006, a five-year, $220-million program of capital improvements and natural restoration in 70 Bronx parks was begun (financed by water and sewer revenues) as part of an agreement that allowed a water filtration plant under Van Cortlandt Park's golf course. One major focus is on opening more of the Bronx River's banks and restoring them to a natural state.
Wave Hill, the former estate of George W. Perkins — known for a historic house, gardens, changing site-specific art installations and concerts — overlooks the New Jersey Palisades from a promontory on the Hudson in Riverdale.
East of the Bronx River, the borough is relatively flat, and includes four large low peninsulas, or 'necks,' of low-lying land which jut into the waters of the East River and were once saltmarsh: Hunts Point, Clason's Point, Screvin's Neck (Castle Hill Point) and Throgs Neck. The East Bronx has older tenement buildings, low income public housing complexes, and multifamily homes, as well as smaller and larger single family homes. It includes New York City's largest park: Pelham Bay Park along the Westchester-Bronx border.
City Island is located east of Pelham Bay Park in Long Island Sound, and is known for its seafood restaurants and waterfront private homes. City Island's single shopping street, City Island Avenue, is reminiscent of a small New England town. It is connected to Rodman's Neck on the mainland by the City Island Bridge. East of City Island is Hart Island which is uninhabited and not open to the public. It once served as a prison and now houses New York City's Potter's Field or pauper's graveyard for unclaimed bodies.
The western parts of the Bronx are hillier and are dominated by a series of parallel ridges, running south to north. The West Bronx has older apartment buildings, low income public housing complexes, multifamily homes in its lower income areas as well as larger single family homes in more affluent areas such as Riverdale and Fieldston. It includes New York City's fourth largest park: Van Cortlandt Park along the Westchester-Bronx border. The Grand Concourse, a wide boulevard, runs through it, north to south.
Like other neighborhoods in New York City, the South Bronx has no official boundaries. The name has been used to represent poverty in the Bronx and applied to progressively more northern places so that by the 2000s Fordham Road was often used as a northern limit. The Bronx River more consistently forms an eastern boundary. The South Bronx has many high-density apartment buildings, low income public housing complexes, and multi-unit homes. The South Bronx is home to the Bronx County Courthouse, Borough Hall, and other government buildings, as well as Yankee Stadium. The Cross Bronx Expressway bisects it, east to west. The South Bronx has some of the poorest neighborhoods in the country, as well as very high crime areas.
Prominent shopping areas in the Bronx include Fordham Road, Bay Plaza (in Co-op City), The Hub, Riverdale/Kingsbridge Shopping center and Bruckner Boulevard. Shops are also concentrated on streets aligned underneath elevated railroad lines, including Westchester Avenue, White Plains Road, Jerome Avenue, Southern Boulevard and Broadway. The Gateway Center at Bronx Terminal Market contains several big-box stores, which opened in 2009 south of Yankee Stadium.
The Hub–Third Avenue Business Improvement District (B.I.D.) is the retail heart of the South Bronx, located where four roads converge: East 149th Street, Willis, Melrose and Third Avenues. It is primarily located inside the neighborhood of Melrose but also lines the northern border of Mott Haven. The Hub has been called "the Broadway of the Bronx." It is the site of both maximum traffic and architectural density. In configuration, it resembles a miniature Times Square, a spatial "bow-tie" created by the geometry of the street. The area is part of Bronx Community Board 1.
The Bronx street grid is irregular. Like the northernmost part of upper Manhattan, the West Bronx's hilly terrain leaves a relatively free-style street grid. Much of the West Bronx's street numbering carries over from upper Manhattan, but does not match it exactly; East 132nd Street is the lowest numbered street in the Bronx. This dates from the mid-19th century when the southwestern area of Westchester County west of the Bronx River, was incorporated into New York City and known as the Northside.
The East Bronx is considerably flatter, and the street layout tends to be more regular. Only the Wakefield neighborhood picks up the street numbering, albeit at a disalignment due to Tremont Avenue's layout. At the same diagonal latitude, West 262nd Street in Riverdale matches East 237th Street in Wakefield.
Three major north-south thoroughfares run between Manhattan and the Bronx: Third Avenue, Park Avenue, and Broadway. Other major north-south roads include the Grand Concourse, Jerome Avenue, Sedgwick Avenue, Webster Avenue, and White Plains Road. Major east-west thoroughfares include Mosholu Parkway, Gun Hill Road, Fordham Road, Pelham Parkway, and Tremont Avenue.
Most east-west streets are prefixed with either East or West, to indicate on which side of Jerome Avenue they lie (continuing the similar system in Manhattan, which uses Fifth Avenue as the dividing line). The historic Boston Post Road, part of the long pre-revolutionary road connecting Boston with other northeastern cities, runs east-west in some places, and sometimes northeast-southwest. Mosholu and Pelham Parkways, with Bronx Park between them, Van Cortlandt Park to the west and Pelham Bay Park to the east, are also linked by bridle paths. Approximately 61.6% of all Bronx households do not have access to a car. Citywide, the percentage of autoless households is 55%.
Several major limited access highways traverse the Bronx. These include: the Bronx River Parkway; the Bruckner Expressway (I-278/I-95); the Cross-Bronx Expressway (I-95/I-295); the New England Thruway (I-95); the Henry Hudson Parkway (NY-9A); the Hutchinson River Parkway; and the Major Deegan Expressway (New York Thruway) (I-87).
Many bridges and tunnels connect the Bronx to Manhattan and Queens (3). These include, from west to east: (1)To Manhattan: the Spuyten Duyvil Bridge, the Henry Hudson Bridge, the Broadway Bridge, the University Heights Bridge, the Washington Bridge, the Alexander Hamilton Bridge, the High Bridge, the Concourse Tunnel, the Macombs Dam Bridge, the 145th Street Bridge, the 149th Street Tunnel, the Madison Avenue Bridge, the Park Avenue Bridge, the Lexington Avenue Tunnel, the Third Avenue Bridge (southbound traffic only), and the Willis Avenue Bridge (northbound traffic only). (2)To Manhattan or Queens: the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge (which opened as the Triborough Bridge). (3)To Queens: the Bronx Whitestone Bridge and the Throgs Neck Bridge.
The Bronx is served by six lines of the New York City Subway with 70 stations in the Bronx: IND Concourse Line (B D trains); IRT Broadway – Seventh Avenue Line (1 train); IRT Dyre Avenue Line (5 train); IRT Jerome Avenue Line (4 train); IRT Pelham Line (6 <6> trains); and IRT White Plains Road Line (2 5 trains). Two Metro-North Railroad commuter rail lines (the Harlem Line and the Hudson Line) serve 11 stations in the Bronx. (Marble Hill, between the Spuyten Duyvil and University Heights stations, is actually in the only part of Manhattan connected to the mainland.) In addition, trains serving the New Haven Line stop at Fordham Road.
The United States Postal Service operates post offices in the Bronx. The Bronx General Post Office is located at 558 Grand Concourse.
At the 2010 Census, there were, 1,385,108 people living in Bronx, a 3.9% increase since 2000. As of the United States Census of 2000, there were 1,332,650 people, 463,212 households, and 314,984 families residing in the borough. The population density was 31,709.3 inhabitants per square mile (12,242.2/km²). There were 490,659 housing units at an average density of 11,674.8 per square mile (4,507.4/km²). There were 463,212 households out of which 38.1% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 31.4% were married couples living together, 30.4% had a female householder with no husband present, and 32.0% were non-families. 27.4% of all households were made up of individuals and 9.4% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.78 and the average family size was 3.37.
The age distribution of the population in the Bronx was as follows: 29.8% under the age of 18, 10.6% from 18 to 24, 30.7% from 25 to 44, 18.8% from 45 to 64, and 10.1% 65 years of age or older. The median age was 31 years. For every 100 females there were 87.0 males.
The 1999 median income for a household in the borough was $27,611, and the median income for a family was $30,682. Males had a median income of $31,178 versus $29,429 for females. The per capita income for the borough was $13,959. About 28.0% of families and 30.7% of the population were below the poverty line, including 41.5% of those under age 18 and 21.3% of those age 65 or over.
Since New York City's consolidation in 1898, the Bronx has been governed by the New York City Charter that provides for a mayor-council system. The centralized New York City government is responsible for all municipal functions.
The office of Borough President was created in the consolidation of 1898 with powers mostly derived from having a vote on the New York City Board of Estimate. The 1989 Board of Estimate of City of New York v. Morris case declared the Board unconstitutional, and since 1990 the Borough President has acted as an advocate for the borough at the mayoral agencies, the City Council, the New York state government, and corporations.
On February 18, 2009, U.S. President Barack Obama appointed the former Bronx Borough President, Adolfo Carrión, Jr., to the position of Director of the White House Office of Urban Affairs Policy. On April 21, 2009, a special election was held to choose Carrión's successor. Democratic New York State Assembly member Rubén Díaz, Jr., running on the "Bronx Unity" ticket, won this election with 29,420 votes (86%) against 4,646 votes (14%) for the Republican Anthony Ribustello ("People First") and 11 votes for write-in candidates. On May 1, 2009, Assemblyman Diaz was sworn in as the 13th Borough President of the Bronx.
Every currently-elected public official in the Bronx has first won the Democratic nomination (whether or not also nominated by other parties). Local party platforms center on affordable housing, education and economic development. Controversial political issues in the Bronx include environmental issues, the cost of housing, and the alienation of parkland for new Yankee Stadium.
Since its separation from New York County on January 1, 1914, the Bronx, has had, like each of the other 61 counties of New York State, its own directly-elected District Attorney, the county's chief public prosecutor. Robert T. Johnson, a Democrat, has been the District Attorney of Bronx County since 1989. He was the first African-American District Attorney in New York State.
Eight members of the New York City Council represent districts wholly within the Bronx, while a ninth represents a Manhattan district (8) that also includes a small area of the Bronx. (All of them were Democrats in 2008.) One of those members, Joel Rivera (District 15), has been the Council's Majority Leader since 2002.
The Bronx also has 12 Community Boards, appointed bodies that field complaints and advise on land use and municipal facilities and services for local residents, businesses and institutions. (They are listed at Bronx Community Boards).
Education in the Bronx is provided by a large number of public and private institutions, many of which draw students who live beyond the Bronx. The New York City Department of Education manages public noncharter schools in the borough. In 2000, public schools enrolled nearly 280,000 of the Bronx's residents over 3 years old (out of 333,100 enrolled in all pre-college schools). There are also several public charter schools. Private schools range from élite independent schools to religiously-affiliated schools run by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York and Jewish organizations.
In 2000, according to the U.S. Census, out of the nearly 800,000 people in the Bronx who were then at least 25 years old, 62.3% had graduated from high school and 14.6% held a bachelor's or higher college degree. These percentages were lower than those for New York's other boroughs, which ranged from 68.8% (Brooklyn) to 82.6% (Staten Island) for high school graduates over 24, and from 21.8% (Brooklyn) to 49.4% (Manhattan) for college graduates. (The respective state and national percentages were [NY] 79.1% & 27.4% and [US] 80.4% & 24.4%.)
In the 2000 Census, 79,240 of the nearly 95,000 Bronx residents enrolled in high school attended public schools. Many public high schools are located in the borough including the élite Bronx High School of Science, DeWitt Clinton High School, High School for Violin and Dance, Bronx Leadership Academy 2, Bronx International High School, the School for Excellence, the Morris Academy for Collaborative Study, Wings Academy for young adults, Validus Preparatory Academy, Bronx Expeditionary Learning High School, Herbert H. Lehman High School and High School of American Studies. The Bronx is also home to three of New York City's most prestigious private, secular schools: Fieldston, Horace Mann, and Riverdale Country School.
High schools linked to the Roman Catholic Church include: Saint Raymond's Academy for Girls, All Hallows High School, Fordham Preparatory School, Monsignor Scanlan High School, St. Raymond High School for Boys, Cardinal Hayes High School, Cardinal Spellman High School, The Academy of Mount Saint Ursula, Aquinas High School, Preston High School, St. Catharine Academy, Mount Saint Michael Academy, and St. Barnabas High School. The SAR Academy and SAR High School are Modern Orthodox Jewish Yeshiva coeducational day schools in Riverdale, with roots in Manhattan's Lower East Side.
In the 1990s, New York City began closing the large, public high schools in the Bronx and replacing them with small high schools. Among the reasons cited for the changes were poor graduation rates and concerns about safety. Schools that have been closed or reduced in size include John F. Kennedy, James Monroe, Taft, Theodore Roosevelt, Adlai Stevenson, Evander Childs, Christopher Columbus, Morris, Walton, and South Bronx High Schools. More recently the City has started phasing out large middle schools, also replacing them with smaller schools.
In 2000, 49,442 (57.5%) of the 86,014 Bronx residents seeking college, graduate or professional degrees attended public institutions. Several colleges and universities are located in the Bronx. Fordham University, was founded as St. John's College in 1841 by the Diocese of New York as the first Catholic institution of higher education in the northeast. It is now officially an independent institution, but strongly embraces its Jesuit heritage. The 85-acre (340,000 m2) Bronx campus, known as Rose Hill, is the main campus of the university, and is among the largest within the city (other Fordham campuses are located in Manhattan and Westchester County).
Three campuses of the City University of New York are in the Bronx: Hostos Community College, Bronx Community College (occupying the former University Heights Campus of New York University) and Herbert H. Lehman College (formerly the uptown campus of Hunter College), which offers both undergraduate and graduate degrees.
The College of Mount Saint Vincent is a Catholic liberal arts college in Riverdale under the direction of the Sisters of Charity of New York. Founded in 1847 as a school for girls, the academy became a degree-granting college in 1911 and began admitting men in 1974. The school serves 1,600 students. Its campus is also home to the Academy for Jewish Religion, a transdenominational rabbinical and cantorial school.
Manhattan College is a Catholic college in Riverdale which offers undergraduate programs in the arts, business, education, engineering, and science. It also offers graduate programs in education and engineering. Albert Einstein College of Medicine, part of Yeshiva University, is in Morris Park.
Two colleges based in Westchester County have Bronx campuses. The Catholic and nearly-all-female College of New Rochelle maintains satellite campuses at Co-op City and in The Hub. The coeducational and non-sectarian Mercy College in Dobbs Ferry, founded by the Catholic Sisters of Mercy in 1950, has a campus near Westchester Square.
By contrast, the private, proprietary Monroe College, focused on preparation for business and the professions, started in the Bronx in 1933 but now has a campus in New Rochelle (Westchester County) as well the Bronx's Fordham neighborhood.
The State University of New York Maritime College in Fort Schuyler (Throggs Neck)—at the far southeastern tip of the Bronx—is the national leader in maritime education and houses the Maritime Industry Museum. (Directly across Long Island Sound is Kings Point, Long Island, home of the United States Merchant Marine Academy and the American Merchant Marine Museum.)
The Bronx is the home of the New York Yankees, one of the leading baseball franchises in sports history. The original Yankee Stadium opened in 1923 on 161st Street and River Avenue, a year which saw the Yankeees bring home their first of 27 World Series Championships. With the famous facade, the short right field porch and Monument Park, Yankee Stadium has played host to many of the greatest players ever to take the field including Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, Whitey Ford, Yogi Berra, Mickey Mantle, Reggie Jackson, Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera and Alex Rodriguez. The Stadium, as referred to by locals, has witnessed of the most memorable moments in sports history such as Lou Gehrig's Farewell Speech in 1939, Joe DiMaggio's 56 game hitting streak in 1941, Don Larsen's perfect game in the 1956 World Series, Roger Maris' record breaking 61st home run in 1961, Reggie Jackson's 3 home runs to clinch Game 6 of the 1977 World Series and more recently the dynasty of the 1996-2000 Yankee club that captured 4 out of 5 World Series victories during that span. The original Yankee Stadium closed in 2008 to make way for a brand new stadium in which the Yankees started play in 2009 and capped off a memorable first year in their new home with a 27th World Series title, by beating the Philadelphia Phillies 4 games to 2 in the Fall Classic.
The Bronx is home to several Off-Off-Broadway theaters, many staging new works by immigrant playwrights from Latin America and Africa. The Pregones Theater, which produces Latin American work, opened a new 130-seat theater in 2005 on Walton Avenue in the South Bronx. Some artists from elsewhere in New York City have begun to converge on the area, and housing prices have nearly quadrupled in the area since 2002. However rising prices directly correlate to a housing shortage across the city and the entire metro area.
The Bronx Museum of the Arts, founded in 1971, exhibits 20th century and contemporary art through its central museum space and 11,000 square feet (1,000 m2) of galleries. Many of its exhibitions are on themes of special interest to the Bronx. Its permanent collection features more than 800 works of art, primarily by artists from Africa, Asia and Latin America, including paintings, photographs, prints, drawings, and mixed media. The museum was temporarily closed in 2006 while it underwent a major expansion designed by the architectural firm Arquitectonica.
The Bronx has also become home to a peculiar poetic tribute, in the form of the Heinrich Heine Memorial, better known as the Lorelei Fountain from one of Heine's best-known works (1838). After Heine's German birthplace of Düsseldorf had rejected, allegedly for anti-Semitic motives, a centennial monument to the radical German-Jewish poet (1797–1856), his incensed German-American admirers, including Carl Schurz, started a movement to place one instead in Midtown Manhattan, at Fifth Avenue and 59th Street. However, this intention was thwarted by a combination of ethnic antagonism, aesthetic controversy and political struggles over the institutional control of public art. In 1899, the memorial, by the Berlin sculptor Ernst Gustav Herter (1846–1917), finally came to rest, although subject to repeated vandalism, in the Bronx, at 164th Street and the Grand Concourse, or Joyce Kilmer Park near today's Yankee Stadium. (In 1999, it was moved to 161st Street and the Concourse.) In 2007, Christopher Gray of The New York Times described it as "a writhing composition in white Tyrolean marble depicting Lorelei, the mythical German figure, surrounded by mermaids, dolphins and seashells."
One national landmark in the Bronx is the Hall of Fame for Great Americans, overlooking the Harlem River and designed by the renowned architect Stanford White. The never–landmarked Yankee Stadium, the "House that Ruth Built" and home to the New York Yankees since 1923, has been replaced with a similar-looking ballpark just across 161st Street.
The peninsular borough's maritime heritage is acknowledged in several ways.The City Island Historical Society and Nautical Museum occupies a former public school designed by the New York City school system's turn-of-the-last-century master architect C. B. J. Snyder. The state's Maritime College in Fort Schuyler (on the southeastern shore) houses the Maritime Industry Museum. In addition, the Harlem River is reemerging as "Scullers' Row" due in large part to the efforts of the Bronx River Restoration Project, a joint public-private endeavor of the city's parks department. Canoeing and kayaking on the borough's namesake river have been promoted by the Bronx River Alliance. The river is also straddled by the New York Botanical Gardens, its neighbor, the Bronx Zoo, and a little further south, on the west shore, Bronx River Art Center.
The Bronx has several local newspapers, including The Bronx News, Parkchester News, City News, The Riverdale Press, Riverdale Review, The Bronx Times Reporter, Inner City Press (which now has more of a focus on national issues) and Co-Op City Times. Four non-profit news outlets, Norwood News, Mount Hope Monitor, Mott Haven Herald and The Hunts Point Express serve the borough's poorer communities. The editor and co-publisher of The Riverdale Press, Bernard Stein, won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing for his editorials about Bronx and New York City issues in 1998. (Stein graduated from the Bronx High School of Science in 1959.)
The Bronx once had its own daily newspaper, The Bronx Home News, which started publishing on January 20, 1907 and merged into the New York Post in 1948. It became a special section of the Post, sold only in the Bronx, and eventually disappeared from view.
One of New York City's major non-commercial radio broadcasters is WFUV, an National Public Radio–affiliated 50,000-watt station broadcasting from Fordham University's Rose Hill campus in the Bronx. The radio station's antenna is atop an apartment building owned by Montefiore Medical Center.
The City of New York has an official television station run by the NYC Media Group and broadcasting from Bronx Community College, and Cablevision operates News 12 The Bronx, both of which feature programming based in the Bronx. Co-op City was the first area in the Bronx, and the first in New York beyond Manhattan, to have its own cable television provider. The local Public-access television station BronxNet provides Government-access television (GATV) public affairs programming in addition to programming produced by Bronx residents.
Middle 20th century movies set in the Bronx portrayed densely-settled, working-class, urban culture. Hollywood films such as From This Day Forward (1946), set in Highbridge, occasionally delved into Bronx life. Paddy Chayefsky's Academy Award-winning Marty was the most notable examination of working class Bronx life was also explored by Chayefsky in his 1956 film The Catered Affair, and in the 1993 Robert De Niro/Chazz Palminteri film, A Bronx Tale, Spike Lee's 1999 movie Summer of Sam, centered in an Italian-American Bronx community, 1994's I Like It Like That that takes place in the predominately Puerto Rican neighborhood of the South Bronx, and Doughboys, the story of two Italian-American brothers in danger of losing their bakery thanks to one brother's gambling debts.
The Bronx's gritty urban life had worked its way into the movies even earlier, with depictions of the "Bronx cheer", a loud flatulent-like sound of disapproval, allegedly first made by New York Yankees fans. The sound can be heard, for example, when Spike Jones sings "Der Fuehrer's Face" (from the 1942 Disney animated film of the same name), repeatedly lambasting Adolf Hitler with: "We'll Heil! (Bronx cheer) Heil! (Bronx cheer) Right in Der Fuehrer's Face!" Other movies have also used the term Bronx for comic effect, such as "Bronx", the character on the Disney animated series Gargoyles.
Starting in the 1970s, the Bronx often symbolized violence, decay, and urban ruin. The wave of arson in the South Bronx in the 1960s and 1970s inspired the observation that "The Bronx is burning": in 1974 it was the title of both a New York Times editorial and a BBC documentary film. The line entered the pop-consciousness with Game Two of the 1977 World Series, when a fire broke out near Yankee Stadium as the team was playing the Los Angeles Dodgers. Numerous fires had previously broken out in the Bronx prior to this fire. As the fire was captured on live television, announcer Howard Cosell stated, "There it is, ladies and gentlemen: the Bronx is burning". Historians of New York City frequently point to Cosell's remark as an acknowledgement of both the city and the borough's decline. A new feature-length documentary film by Edwin Pagan called Bronx Burning is in production in 2006, chronicling what led up to the numerous arson-for-insurance fraud fires of the 1970s in the borough.
Bronx gang life was depicted in the 1974 novel The Wanderers by Bronx native Richard Price and the 1979 movie of the same name. They are set in the heart of the Bronx, showing apartment life and the then-landmark Krums ice cream parlor. In the 1979 film The Warriors, the eponymous gang go to a meeting in Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, and have to fight their way out of the borough and get back to Coney Island in Brooklyn. The 2005 video game adaptation features levels called Pelham, Tremont, and "Gunhill" (a play off the name Gun Hill Road).
This theme lends itself to the title of The Bronx Is Burning, an eight-part ESPN TV mini-series (2007) about the New York Yankees' drive to winning baseball's 1977 World Series. The TV series emphasizes the boisterous nature of the team, led by manager Billy Martin, catcher Thurman Munson and outfielder Reggie Jackson, as well as the malaise of the Bronx and New York City in general during that time, such as the blackout, the city's serious financial woes and near bankruptcy, the arson for insurance payments, and the election of Ed Koch as mayor.
The 1981 film Fort Apache, The Bronx is another film that used the Bronx's gritty image for its storyline. The movie's title is from the nickname for the 41st Police Precinct in the South Bronx which was nicknamed "Fort Apache". Also from 1981 is the horror film Wolfen making use of the rubble of the Bronx as a home for werewolf type creatures. Knights of the South Bronx, a true story of a teacher who worked with disadvantaged children, is another film also set in the Bronx released in 2005.
The Bronx was the setting for the 1983 film Fuga dal Bronx, also known as Bronx Warriors 2 and Escape 2000, an Italian B-movie best known for its appearance on the television series Mystery Science Theatre 3000. The plot revolves around a sinister construction corporation's plans to depopulate, destroy and redevelop the Bronx, and a band of rebels who are out to expose the corporation's murderous ways and save their homes. The film is memorable for its almost incessant use of the phrase, "Leave the Bronx!" Many of the movie's scenes were filmed in Queens, substituting as the Bronx.
Bronx born and reared Nancy Savoca's 1989 comedy True Love, explores two Italian-American Bronx sweethearts in the days before their wedding. The film, which debuted Annabella Sciorra and Ron Eldard as the betrothed couple, won the Grand Jury Prize at that year's Sundance Film Festival.
The CBS television sitcom Becker, 1998–2004, was more ambiguous. The show starred Ted Danson as Dr. John Becker, a doctor who operated a small practice and was constantly annoyed by his patients, co-workers, friends, and practically everything and everybody else in his world. It showed his everyday life as a doctor working in a small clinic in the Bronx.
Penny Marshall's 1990 film Awakenings, which was nominated for several Oscars, is based on neurologist Oliver Sacks' 1973 account of his psychiatric patients at Beth Abraham Hospital in the Bronx who were paralyzed by a form of encephalitis but briefly responded to the drug L-dopa. Robin Williams played the physician; Robert De Niro was one of the patients who emerged from a catatonic (frozen) state. The home of Williams' character was shot not far from Sacks' actual City Island residence. A 1973 Yorkshire Television documentary and "A Kind of Alaska", a 1985 play by Harold Pinter, were also based on Sacks' book.
Gus Van Sant's 2000 Finding Forrester was quickly billed "Good Will Hunting in the Hood." Sean Connery is in the title role of a reclusive old man who 50 years earlier wrote a single novel that garnered the Pulitzer Prize. He meets 16 year old Jamal – actor Rob Brown – a gifted, Bronx reared basketball player and aspiring writer, and becomes his mentor. The movie includes stock footage of Bronx housing projects from 1990, as well as some other scenes shot in Manhattan and Brooklyn.
Brooklyn, New York:
Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, after New York County (Manhattan). It is also the westernmost county on Long Island.
Brooklyn was an independent city until its consolidation with New York City in 1898, and continues to maintain a distinct culture, independent art scene, and unique architectural heritage. Many Brooklyn neighborhoods are ethnic enclaves where particular ethnic groups and cultures predominate.
Brooklyn's official motto is Eendraght Maeckt Maght. Written in the (early modern spelling of the) Dutch language, it is inspired by the motto of the United Dutch Provinces and translated "Unity makes strength". The motto is displayed on the borough seal and flag, which also feature a young robed woman bearing fasces, a traditional emblem of republicanism. Brooklyn's official colors are blue and gold.
The Dutch were the first Europeans to settle in the area on the western end of Long Island, also inhabited by a Native American people, the Lenape (often referred to in contemporary colonial documents by the Lenape place-name for one of the larger native settlements:"Canarsee"). The first Dutch settlements, established in 1624, were called Midwout (Midwood) and Vlacke Bos (Flatbush). The Dutch also purchased land during the 1630s from the Mohawks in present-day Gowanus, Red Hook, the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and Bushwick. The Village of Breuckelen, named for Breukelen in the province of Utrecht in the Netherlands, was authorized by the Dutch West India Company in 1646; it became the first municipality in what is now New York State. At the time, Breuckelen was part of New Netherland. Other villages which were later incorporated into Brooklyn were Boswijk (Bushwick), Nieuw Utrecht (New Utrecht), and Nieuw Amersfoort (Flatlands). A few houses and cemeteries still bear witness to the Dutch origins of the borough of Brooklyn.
The Dutch lost Breuckelen in the British conquest of New Netherland in 1664. In 1683, the British reorganized the Province of New York into twelve counties, each of which was sub-divided into towns. Over time, the name evolved from Breuckelen, to Brockland, to Brocklin, to Brookline, to Brookland and eventually, to Brooklyn. Kings County was one of the original counties, and Brooklyn was one of the original six towns within Kings County. The county was named in honor of King Charles II of England.
On August, 27 1776, the Battle of Long Island (also called the Battle of Brooklyn) was fought in Kings County. It was the first major battle in the American Revolutionary War following the Declaration of Independence and the largest battle of the entire conflict. While General George Washington's defeat on the battlefield may have cast early doubts on his abilities as a military tactician and leader, he did keep the Continental Army intact with a brilliant overnight tactical retreat, across the East River.
New York became the British political and military base of operations in North America. This encouraged the departure of patriots and their sympathizers while attracting loyalist refugees fleeing the other colonies. Loyalists swelled the population of the surrounding area, including Brooklyn. Correspondingly, the region became the focus of General Washington's intelligence activities (see Intelligence in the American Revolutionary War). The British also began to hold American patriot prisoners-of-war in rotting hulks anchored in Wallabout Bay off Brooklyn. More American prisoners died in these prison-ships than the sum of all the American battle casualties of the Revolutionary War.
The first half of the nineteenth century saw significant growth along the economically strategic East River waterfront across from New York City. Brooklyn's population expanded more than threefold between 1800 and 1820, doubled again in the 1820s, and doubled yet again during the 1830s. The county encompassed two cities: the City of Brooklyn and the City of Williamsburgh. Brooklyn annexed Williamsburgh in 1854, which lost its final "h" in the process. With the addition of this new area, Brooklyn grew from a substantial community of 36,236 to an influential city of 96,838.
The building of rail links, such as the Brighton Beach Line in 1878 heralded explosive growth, and, in the space of a decade, the City of Brooklyn annexed the towns of New Lots in 1886; Flatbush, Gravesend, and New Utrecht in 1894; and Flatlands in 1896. Brooklyn had reached its natural municipal boundaries at the Kings County line.
In 1883, the Brooklyn Bridge was completed, easing the trip to Manhattan. Brooklyn engaged in the consolidation process developing throughout the region. In 1894, Brooklyn residents voted by a slight majority to join with Manhattan, The Bronx, Queens, and Richmond (later Staten Island) to become the five boroughs of the modern New York City. This referendum took effect in 1898. Kings County retained its status as one of New York State's counties.
Founded in 1863, the Brooklyn Historical Society (BHS) is a museum, library, and educational center dedicated to preserving and encouraging the study of Brooklyn's history. BHS houses materials relating to the founding of the U.S. and the history of Brooklyn and its people.
Since consolidation with New York City in 1898, Brooklyn has been governed by the New York City Charter that provides for a "strong" mayor-council system. The centralized New York City government is responsible for public education, correctional institutions, libraries, public safety, recreational facilities, sanitation, water supply, and welfare services.
The office of Borough President was created in the consolidation of 1898 to balance centralization with local authority. Each borough president had a powerful administrative role derived from having a vote on the New York City Board of Estimate, which was responsible for creating and approving the city's budget and proposals for land use. In 1989, the Supreme Court of the United States declared the Board of Estimate unconstitutional because Brooklyn, the most populous borough, had no greater effective representation on the Board than Staten Island, the least populous borough, a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause pursuant to the high court's 1964 "one man, one vote" decision.
Since 1990 the Borough President has acted as an advocate for the borough at the mayoral agencies, the City Council, the New York state government, and corporations. Brooklyn's current Borough President is Marty Markowitz, elected as a Democrat in 2001 and re-elected in 2005, and 2009.
The Democratic Party holds the majority of public offices. As of 2005, 69.7% of registered voters in Brooklyn were Democrats. Party platforms center on affordable housing, education and economic development. The most controversial political issue is the proposed Atlantic Yards, a large housing and sports arena project. Pockets of Republican influence exist in Bay Ridge and Dyker Heights.
Each of the city's five counties (coterminous with each borough) has its own criminal court system and District Attorney, the chief public prosecutor who is directly elected by popular vote. Charles J. Hynes, a Democrat, has been the District Attorney of Kings County since 1989. Brooklyn has 16 City Council members, the largest number of any of the five boroughs. Brooklyn has 18 of the city's 59 community districts, each served by an unpaid Community Board with advisory powers under the city's Uniform Land Use Review Procedure. Each board has a paid district manager who acts as an interlocutor with city agencies.
Brooklyn's job market is driven by three main factors: the performance of the national and city economy, population flows and the borough's position as a convenient back office for New York's businesses. Forty-four percent of Brooklyn's employed population, or 410,000 people, work in the borough; more than half of the borough's residents work outside its boundaries. As a result, economic conditions in Manhattan are important to the borough's jobseekers. Strong international immigration to Brooklyn generates jobs in services, retailing and construction.
In recent years, Brooklyn has benefited from a steady influx of financial back-office operations from Manhattan, the rapid growth of a high-tech and entertainment economy in DUMBO, and strong growth in support services such as accounting, personal supply agencies, and computer services firms.
Jobs in the borough have traditionally been concentrated in manufacturing, but since 1975, Brooklyn has shifted from a manufacturing-based to a service-based economy. In 2004, 215,000 Brooklyn residents worked in the services sector, while 27,500 worked in manufacturing. Although manufacturing has declined, a substantial base has remained in apparel and niche manufacturing concerns such as furniture, fabricated metals, and food products. The pharmaceutical company Pfizer has a manufacturing plant in Brooklyn that employs 990 workers.
First established as a shipbuilding facility in 1801, the Brooklyn Navy Yard employed 70,000 people at its peak during World War II and was then the largest employer in the borough. The Missouri, the ship on which the Japanese formally surrendered, was built there, as was the Maine, whose sinking off Havana led to the start of the Spanish-American War. The iron-sided Civil War vessel the Monitor was built in Greenpoint. From 1968–1979 Seatrain Shipbuilding was the major employer Later tenants include industrial design firms, food processing businesses, artisans, and the film and television production industry. About 230 private-sector firms providing 4,000 jobs are at the Yard.
Construction and services are the fastest growing sectors. Most employers in Brooklyn are small businesses. In 2000, 91% of the approximately 38,704 business establishments in Brooklyn had fewer than 20 employees. As of August 2008, the borough's unemployment rate was 5.9%. Brooklyn is also home to many banks and credit unions. According to the FDIC, there are 37 banks and 21 credit unions operating in Brooklyn.
Brooklyn has long been a magnet for immigrants, and many ethnic groups dominate a particular neighborhood for a time, although the neighborhoods are ever-changing as populations move in and out. For example, during the early to mid-20th century, Brownsville had a majority of Jewish residents; since the 1970s it has been majority African American. Midwood during the early 20th century was filled with ethnic Irish, then filled with Jewish residents for nearly 50 years, and is slowly becoming a Pakistani enclave. With gentrification, many of Brooklyn's neighborhoods are becoming increasingly mixed, with an influx of immigrants integrating its neighborhoods, and this may be the permanent equilibrium. Brooklyn and Queens have been a worldwide example of poor immigrants getting along most of the time, often with better results than in their home countries. It presently has substantial populations from many countries. The borough also attracts people previously living in other cities in the United States. Of these, most come from Chicago, Detroit, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Philadelphia, Boston, Cincinnati, and Seattle.
Brooklyn contains dozens of distinct neighborhoods, representing many of the major ethnic groups found within the New York City area. The borough is home to a large African-American community. Bedford Stuyvesant is home to one of the most famous African-American communities in the city, along with Brownsville and East New York. "Bed-Stuy" is a hub for African-American culture, often referenced in hip hop and African-American arts. Brooklyn's African-American and Caribbean communities are spread throughout much of Brooklyn.
Brooklyn is also home to many Russians and Ukrainians, who are mainly concentrated in community of Brighton Beach and Sheepshead Bay. Brighton Beach features many Russian and Ukrainian businesses. Because of the large Ukrainian community, it has been nicknamed "Little Odessa." However, recently, it has been renamed to "Little Russia" because of the overwhelming presence of the Russian population. Originally these were mostly Jews, now however the Ukrainian and Russian communities of Brighton Beach represent various aspects of Russian culture. While previous Russian Jews have become American Jews for the most part, similarly Russian Christians have become American Christians over generations and left Brighton Beach.
Bushwick is the largest hub of Brooklyn's Hispanic-American community. Like other neighborhoods in New York City, Bushwick's Hispanic population is mainly Puerto Rican, with many Dominicans and peoples from several South American nations as well. As nearly 80% of Bushwick's population is Hispanic, its residents have created many businesses to support their various national and distinct traditions in food and other items. Sunset Park's population is 42% Hispanic, made up of these various ethnic groups.
Italian Americans are mainly concentrated in the neighborhoods of Bensonhurst, Dyker Heights and Bay Ridge, where there are many Italian restaurants and pizzerias. Italian Americans live throughout most of southern Brooklyn, including Bath Beach, Gravesend, Marine Park, Mill Basin, and Bergen Beach. The Carroll Gardens area, as well as the northern half of Williamsburg, also have long-standing Italian-American communities.
Orthodox Jews and Hasidic Jews have become concentrated in Borough Park, where there are many yeshivas, synagogues, and kosher delicatessens, as well as other Jewish businesses. Other notable religious, Orthodox and Hasidic Jewish neighborhoods are in Kensington, Midwood, Williamsburg, Flatbush, Canarsie, Sea Gate and Crown Heights. Many hospitals in Brooklyn were started by Jewish charities, including Maimonides Medical Center in Borough Park, and Brookdale in Flatbush. Many non-religious Jews are concentrated in Ditmas Park, Windsor Terrace and Park Slope. Jesse Jackson in-famously referred to New York as 'Hymie Town' upon coming to New York's neighborhoods as reported in the Washington Post interview with Milton Coleman in 1984. Brooklyn's Polish are largely concentrated in Greenpoint, which is home to Little Poland. They are also scattered throughout the southern parts of Brooklyn.
Brooklyn's Greek Americans live throughout the borough, but their businesses today are concentrated in Downtown Brooklyn near Atlantic Avenue. Greek-owned diners are throughout the Borough. Chinese live throughout the southern parts of Brooklyn, in Sunset Park, Bensonhurst, Gravesend, an Homecrest. The largest concentration is in Sunset Park along 8th Avenue, which is known for Chinese culture. It is called "Brooklyn's Chinatown". Many Chinese restaurants can be found throughout Sunset Park, and the area hosts a popular Chinese New Year celebration.
Scots-Irish Americans can be found throughout Brooklyn, in low to moderate concentrations in the neighborhoods of Bay Ridge, Marine Park, Gerritsen Beach, and Vinegar Hill. Many moved east on Long Island in the mid-twentieth century.
Today, Arab Americans have moved into the southwest portion of Brooklyn, particularly in Bay Ridge, where there are many Middle Eastern restaurants and hookah lounges. Bay Ridge has Arabs of both Christian and Islamic faiths, where there are Arabic churches, particularly Maronite and Coptic Orthodox churches, as well as Mosques. Earlier, the area was known predominately for its Irish, Norwegian, and Scottish populations. Traditionally, many Middle Eastern businesses have flourished on Atlantic Avenue west of Flatbush Avenue.
Brooklyn's West Indian community is concentrated in the Crown Heights, Flatbush, East Flatbush, Kensington and Canarsie neighborhoods in central Brooklyn. Brooklyn is home to one of the largest communities of West Indians outside of the Caribbean, being rivaled only by London, Miami and Toronto. Crown Heights and Flatbush are home to many of Brooklyn's West Indian restaurants and bakeries. The West Indian Labor Day Parade, takes place every Labor Day on Eastern Parkway.
Brooklyn has played a major role in various aspects of American culture including literature, cinema and theater. It has the world-renowned Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Brooklyn Philharmonic and the second largest public art collection in the United States, housed in the Brooklyn Museum. In the late 1980s Brooklyn achieved a new cultural prominence with the films of Spike Lee, whose She's Gotta Have It and Do The Right Thing were shot there.
The Brooklyn Museum, opened in 1897, is the nation's second-largest public art museum. It has in its permanent collection more than 1.5 million objects, from ancient Egyptian masterpieces to contemporary art. The Brooklyn Children's Museum, the world's first museum dedicated to children, opened in December 1899. The only such New York State institution accredited by the American Association of Museums, it is one of the few globally to have a permanent collection – over 30,000 cultural objects and natural history specimens.
The Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) includes a 2,109-seat opera house, a 874-seat theater, and the art house BAM Rose Cinemas. Bargemusic and St. Ann's Warehouse are located on the other side of Downtown Brooklyn in the DUMBO arts district. Brooklyn Technical High School has the second-largest auditorium in New York City (after Radio City Music Hall), with a seating capacity of over 3,000.
Brooklyn has several local newspapers: The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Bay Currents (Oceanfront Brooklyn), Brooklyn View, The Brooklyn Paper, and Courier-Life Publications. Courier-Life Publications, owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, is considered to be Brooklyn's largest chain of newspapers. Brooklyn is also served by the major New York dailies, including The New York Times, The New York Daily News, and The New York Post. The borough is home to the bi-weekly cultural guide The L Magazine and the arts and politics monthly Brooklyn Rail, as well as the arts and cultural quarterly Cabinet. Brooklyn Based is Brooklyn's most highly read email-based newsletter. HelloBrooklyn.com is Brooklyn's largest portal, with more than 10,000 links.
Brooklyn has a thriving ethnic press. El Diario La Prensa, the largest and oldest Spanish-language daily newspaper in the United States, maintains its corporate headquarters at 1 MetroTech Center in downtown Brooklyn. Major ethnic publications include the Brooklyn-Queens Catholic paper The Tablet and Hamodia, an Orthodox Jewish daily. Many nationally distributed ethnic newspapers are based in Brooklyn. Over 60 ethnic groups, writing in 42 languages, publish some 300 non-English language magazines and newspapers in New York City. Among them the quarterly "L'Idea", a bilingual magazine printed in Italian and English since 1974. In addition, many newspapers published abroad, such as The Daily Gleaner and The Star of Jamaica, are available in Brooklyn.
The Brooklyn accent is often portrayed as 'typical New York' in American television and film. The City of New York has an official television station, run by the NYC Media Group, which features programming based in Brooklyn. Brooklyn Community Access Television is the borough's public access channel. BCAT, the Media program of BRIC Arts | Media | Bklyn, shares the former Strand Theater, adjoining BAM's Harvey Theater, with the non-profit artists collective atelier and exhibition center, Urban Glass. The facility's upcoming expansion will include a new 250-seat, year-round home for BRIC's annual "Celebrate Brooklyn" performances.
Prospect Park; is a 585 acres (2.37 km2) (237 ha) public park in central Brooklyn. The park was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, who created Manhattan's Central Park. Attractions include the Long Meadow, a 90-acre (36 ha) meadow, the Picnic House, which houses offices and a hall that can accommodate parties with up to 175 guests; Litchfield Villa, the home of Edwin Clark Litchfield, an early developer of the neighborhood and a former owner of a southern section of the Park; Prospect Park Zoo; a large nature conservancy managed by the Wildlife Conservation Society; the Boathouse, housing a visitors center and the first urban Audubon Center; Brooklyn's only lake, covering 60 acres (24 ha); the Prospect Park Bandshell that hosts free outdoor concerts in the summertime; and various sports and fitness activities including seven baseball fields.
Brooklyn Botanic Gardens; located adjacent to Prospect Park is the 52-acre (21 ha) botanical garden, which includes a cherry tree esplanade, a one-acre (0.4 ha) rose garden, a Japanese hill and pond garden, a fragrance garden, a water lily pond esplanade, several conservatories, a rock garden, a native flora garden, a bonsai tree collection, and children's gardens and discovery exhibits.
Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge: a unique Federal wildlife refuge straddling the Brooklyn-Queens border, part of Gateway National Recreation Area. Floyd Bennett Field; the first municipal airport in New York City and long closed for operatins, is now part of the National Park System. Many of the historic hangars and runways are still extant. A variety of nature trails and diverse habitats are found within the park, including salt marsh and a restored area of shortgrass prairie that was once widespread on the Hempstead Plains.
Coney Island developed as a playground for the rich in the early 1900s, but it grew as one of America's first amusement grounds and attracted crowds from all over New York. The Cyclone rollercoaster, built in 1927, is on the National Register of Historic Places. The 1920 Wonder Wheel and other rides are still operational at Astroland. Coney Island went into decline in the 1970s, but is currently undergoing a renaissance: the new Luna Park opened in 2010. The annual Coney Island Mermaid Parade is a hipster costume-and-float parade which honored David Byrne, pre-punk music guru, as the head merman in 1998. Coney Island also hosts the annual Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest.
New York Transit Museum displays historical artifacts of the New York subway, commuter rail and bus systems; it is located in the former IND Court Street subway station in Brooklyn Heights. Green-Wood Cemetery, founded by the social reformer Henry Evelyn Pierrepoint in 1838, is both one of the most significant cemeteries in the United States and an expansive green space encompassing 478 acres (190 ha) of rolling hills and dales, several ponds, and a baroque chapel. Still in use, the cemetery is the burial ground of many notable New Yorkers, such as F.A.O. Schwarz (1836–1911), toy store founder; William M. "Boss" Tweed (1823–1878), notorious boss of the New York political machine; and actor Frank Morgan (1890–1949), best known for his portrayal of the title character in the film The Wizard of Oz.
Brooklyn has a storied sports history. It has been home to many famous sports figures such as Vince Lombardi, Mike Tyson, Joe Torre, and Vitas Gerulaitis. Basketball legend Michael Jordan was born in Brooklyn but grew up in Wilmington, North Carolina.
In the earliest days of organized baseball, Brooklyn teams dominated the new game. The second recorded game of baseball was played near what is today Fort Greene Park on October 24, 1845. Brooklyn’s Excelsiors, Atlantics and Eckfords were the leading teams from the mid-1850s through the Civil War, and there were dozens of local teams with neighborhood league play, such as at Mapleton Oval. During this “Brooklyn era,” baseball’s rules evolved into the modern game: the first fastball, first changeup, first batting average, first triple play, first pro baseball player, first enclosed ballpark, first scorecard, first known African-American team, first black championship game, first road trip, first gambling scandal, and first eight pennant winners were all in or from Brooklyn.
Brooklyn's most famous team, the Brooklyn Dodgers, named for "trolley dodgers" played at Ebbets Field. In 1947 Jackie Robinson was hired by the Dodgers as the first African-American player in Major League Baseball in the modern era. In 1955, the Dodgers, perennial National League pennant winners, won the only World Series for Brooklyn against their rival New York Yankees. The event was marked by mass euphoria and celebrations. Just two years later, the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles. Walter O'Malley, the team's owner at the time, is still vilified, including by Brooklynites too young to remember the Dodgers as Brooklyn's ball club. More recent attempts to bring back the Dodgers have not been successful.
After a 43-year hiatus, professional baseball returned to the borough in 2001 with the Brooklyn Cyclones, a minor league team that plays in MCU Park in Coney Island. They are an affiliate of the New York Mets. Minor-league soccer arrived in Brooklyn when the Brooklyn Knights relocated from their previous home in Queens to the new Aviator Field complex. It includes a 2,000-seat soccer-specific stadium. The team plays in the USL Premier Development League, at the fourth level of US soccer.
The Eastern Professional Hockey League included a team called the Brooklyn Aces into its inaugural 2008 season membership. After the league folded in 2009, The Brooklyn Aces became the New York Aviators and now the Brooklyn Aviators and continue to play in the Federal Hockey League. The team plays at Aviator Sports and Events Center.
In 2012, the NBA's New Jersey Nets will move to the newly built Barclays Center, bringing Brooklyn back into the major leagues. At one time Brooklyn had many sporting goods manufacturers. Today 5boro, a skateboard company, has a factory in the borough. It is co-owned by Mark Nardelli and Steve Rodriguez.
Brooklyn is well served by public transit. Eighteen New York City Subway lines, including the Franklin Avenue Shuttle, traverse the borough and 92.8% of Brooklyn residents traveling to Manhattan use the subway. Major stations of the 170 in Brooklyn include, Atlantic Avenue – Pacific Street, Broadway Junction, DeKalb Avenue, Jay Street – MetroTech, and Coney Island – Stillwell Avenue.
The public bus network covers the entire borough. There is also daily express bus service into Manhattan. New York's famous yellow cabs also provide transportation in Brooklyn, although they are less numerous in the borough. There are three commuter rail stations in Brooklyn: East New York station, Nostrand Avenue station, and Atlantic Terminal, the terminus of the Atlantic Branch of the Long Island Rail Road. The terminal is located near the Atlantic Avenue – Pacific Street Station, with ten connecting subway services.
The grand majority of limited-access expressways and parkways are located in the western and southern sections of Brooklyn. These include, the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, the Gowanus Expressway, which is part of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, the Prospect Expressway, New York State Route 27, the Belt Parkway, and the Jackie Robinson Parkway (formerly the Interboro Parkway). Planned expressways that were never built include the Bushwick Expressway, an extension of I-78 and the Cross-Brooklyn Expressway, I-878. Major thoroughfares include, Atlantic Avenue, Fourth Avenue, 86th Street, Kings Highway, Bay Parkway, Ocean Parkway, Eastern Parkway, Linden Boulevard, McGuiness Boulevard, Flatbush Avenue, Pennsylvania Avenue, and Bedford Avenue.
Much of Brooklyn has only named streets, but Park Slope, Bay Ridge, Sunset Park, Bensonhurst, and Borough Park and the other western sections have numbered streets running approximately northwest to southeast, and numbered avenues going approximately northeast to southwest. East of Dahill Road, lettered avenues (like Avenue M) run east and west, and numbered streets have the prefix "East". South of Avenue O, related numbered streets west of Dahill Road use the "West" designation. This set of numbered streets ranges from West 17th Street to East 108 Street, and the avenues range from A-Z with names substituted for some of them in some neighborhoods (notably Albemarle, Beverley, Cortelyou, Dorchester, Ditmas, Foster, Farragut, Glenwood, Quentin). Numbered streets prefixed by "North" and "South" in Williamsburg, and "Bay", "Beach", "Brighton", "Plum" or "Flatlands" along the southern and southwestern waterfront are loosely based on the old grids of the original towns of Kings County that eventually consolidated to form Brooklyn.
Brooklyn is connected to Manhattan by three bridges, the Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Williamsburg bridges; a vehicular tunnel, the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel; and several subway tunnels. The Verrazano-Narrows Bridge links Brooklyn with the more suburban borough of Staten Island. Though much of its border is on land, Brooklyn shares several water crossings with Queens, including the Kosciuszko Bridge (part of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway), the Pulaski Bridge, and the JJ Byrne Memorial Bridge, all of which carry traffic over Newtown Creek, and the Marine Parkway Bridge connecting Brooklyn to the Rockaway Peninsula.
Historically Brooklyn's waterfront was a major shipping port, especially at the Brooklyn Army Terminal in Sunset Park. Most container ship cargo operations have shifted to the New Jersey side of New York Harbor, while the city has recently built a new cruise ship terminal in Red Hook that is to become a focal point for New York's growing cruise industry. The Queen Mary 2, the world's largest ocean liner, was designed specifically to fit under the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, the longest suspension bridge in the United States. The Queen Mary 2 makes regular ports of call at the Red Hook terminal on her transatlantic runs from Southampton, England. New York Water Taxi offers commuter services from Brooklyn's west shore to points in Lower Manhattan, Midtown, Long Island City and Breezy Point in Rockaway, Queens, as well as tours and charters. A Cross-Harbor Rail Tunnel, originally proposed in 1920s as a core project for the then new Port Authority of New York is again being studied and discussed as a way to ease freight movements across a large swath of the metropolitan area. Approximately 57% of all households in Brooklyn were autoless households. The citywide rate is 55%.
Education in Brooklyn is provided by a vast number of public and private institutions. Public schools in the borough are managed by the New York City Department of Education, the largest public school system. Brooklyn Technical High School (commonly called Brooklyn Tech), a New York City public high school, is the largest specialized high school for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics in the United States. Tech opened in 1922. The school's current location is across the street from Fort Greene Park. It was built from 1930 to 1933 at a cost of $6 million, is 12 stories high, and covers over half a city block. Brooklyn Tech is noted for its famous alumni (including two Nobel Laureates), its academics, and the large number of graduates attending prestigious universities.
Brooklyn College is a senior college of the City University of New York, and was the first public co-ed liberal arts college in New York City. The College ranked in the top 10 nationally for the second consecutive year in Princeton Review’s 2006 guidebook, America’s Best Value Colleges. Many of its students are first and second generation immigrants.
Brooklyn Law School was founded in 1901 and is notable for its diverse student body. Women and African Americans were enrolled in 1909. According to the Leiter Report, a compendium of law school rankings published by Brian Leiter, Brooklyn Law School places 31st nationally for quality of students. Kingsborough Community College is a junior college in the City University of New York system, located in Manhattan Beach. It was recently named one of the top ten community colleges in the United States by the New York Times.
Long Island University is a private university in Downtown Brooklyn with 6,417 undergraduate students. The Brooklyn campus has strong science and medical technology programs, at the graduate and undergraduate levels. Founded in 1970, Medgar Evers College is a senior college of the City University of New York, with a mission to develop and maintain high quality, professional, career-oriented undergraduate degree programs in the context of a liberal arts education. The College offers programs both at the baccalaureate and associate degree levels, as well as Adult and Continuing Education classes for Central Brooklyn residents, corporations, government agencies, and community organizations. Medgar Evers College is a few blocks east of Prospect Park in Crown Heights.
Pratt Institute, in Clinton Hill, is one of the leading art, design, and architecture schools in the US. Pratt is a private college with undergraduate and graduate programs ranked among the top ten in the country. Its graduate interior design program is ranked number one by US News and World Reports and by DesignIntelligence. Pratt was ranked among the top design schools by Newsweek and was named the top New York art school by Global Language Monitor. Pratt has over 4700 students, with most at its Brooklyn campus. Graduate programs include library and information science, architecture, and urban planning, as well as numerous art and design programs. Undergraduate programs include virtually all art and design disciplines, architecture, writing, and critical and visual studies, over 25 programs in all. Pratt's contemporary sculpture park was ranked among the top campus art collections by Public Art Review.
Polytechnic University (New York), the United States' second oldest private technological university, founded in 1854, has its main campus in Downtown's MetroTech Center, a commercial, civic and educational redevelopment project of which it was a key sponsor. As of July 2008 it merged with the much larger and wealthier NYU, and is now called Polytechnic Institute of NYU.
Poly's MetroTech neighbor, CUNY's New York City College of Technology (City Tech) of The City University of New York (CUNY) (Downtown Brooklyn/Brooklyn Heights) is the largest public college of technology in New York State and a national model for technological education. Established in 1946, City Tech can trace its roots to 1881 when the Technical Schools of the Metropolitan Museum of Art were renamed the New York Trade School. That institution – which became the Voorhees Technical Institute many decades later – was soon a model for the development of technical and vocational schools worldwide. In 1971, Voorhees was incorporated into City Tech.
St. Francis College is located in Brooklyn Heights and was founded in 1859 by Franciscan friars. Today, there are over 2,400 students attending the small liberal arts college. St. Francis is considered by the New York Times as one of the more diverse colleges, and it has recently been ranked one of the best baccalaureate colleges by both Forbes Magazine and U.S. News and World Report.
SUNY Downstate Medical Center, originally founded as the Long Island College Hospital in 1860, is the oldest hospital-based medical school in the United States. The Medical Center comprises the College of Medicine, College of Health Related Professions, College of Nursing, University Hospital of Brooklyn, and the School of Graduate Studies. The Nobel Prize-winner Dr. Robert F. Furchgott is a member of the faculty. Half of the Medical Center's students are minorities or immigrants. The College of Medicine has the highest percentage of minority students of any medical school in New York State. Brooklyn also has smaller liberal arts institutions, such as Saint Francis College in Brooklyn Heights, Saint Joseph's College, New York in Clinton Hill, and Boricua College in Williamsburg.
As an independent system, separate from the New York and Queens public library systems, the Brooklyn Public Library offers thousands of public programs, millions of books, and use of more than 850 free Internet-accessible computers. It also has books and periodicals in all the major languages spoken in Brooklyn, including English, Russian, Chinese, Spanish, Hebrew, and Haitian Kreyol, as well as French, Yiddish, Hindi, Bengali, Polish, Italian, and Arabic. The Central Library is a landmarked building facing Grand Army Plaza and is undergoing extensive renovations and an underground expansion. There are 58 library branches, placing one within a half mile of each Brooklyn resident. In addition to specialized Business Library in Brooklyn Heights, the Library is preparing to construct its new Visual & Performing Arts Library (VPA) in the BAM Cultural District, which will focus on the link between new and emerging arts and technology and house traditional and digital collections. It will provide access and training to arts applications and technologies not widely available to the public. The collections will include the subjects of art, theater, dance, music, film, photography and architecture. A special archive will house the records and history of Brooklyn's arts communities.
Brookville, New York:
The Village of Brookville is located within the town of Oyster Bay in Nassau County, New York. As of the 2010 United States Census, the village population was 3,465. The village is the home of the C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University and the Post campus's nationally known cultural venue, the Tilles Center. The Long Island Lutheran Middle and High School is also located in the village. BusinessWeek dubbed Brookville the wealthiest town in America.
The geographic Village of Brookville was formed in two stages. When the village was incorporated in 1931, it consisted of a long, narrow tract of land that was centered along Cedar Swamp Road (Route 107). In the 1950s, the northern portion of the unincorporated area then known as Wheatley Hills was annexed and incorporated into the village, approximately doubling the village's area to its present 2,650 acres (1,070 ha).
When the town of Oyster Bay purchased what is now Brookville from the Matinecocks in the mid-17th century, the area was known as Suco's Wigwam. Most pioneers were English, many of them Quakers. They were soon joined by Dutch settlers from western Long Island, who called the surrounding area Wolver Hollow, apparently because wolves gathered at spring-fed Shoo Brook to drink. For most of the 19th century, the village was called Tappentown after a prominent family. Brookville became the preferred name after the Civil War and was used on 1873 maps.
Brookville's two centuries as a farm and woodland backwater changed quickly in the early 20th century as wealthy New Yorkers built lavish mansions. By the mid-1920s, there were 22 estates, part of the emergence of Nassau's North Shore Gold Coast. One was Broadhollow, the 108-acre (0.44 km2) spread of attorney-banker-diplomat Winthrop W. Aldrich, which had a 40-room manor house. The second owner of Broadhollow was Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt II, who was owner of the Belmont and Pimlico racetracks. Marjorie Merriweather Post, daughter of cereal creator Charles William Post, and her husband Edward Francis Hutton, the famous financier, built a lavish 70-room mansion on 178 acres (0.72 km2) called Hillwood. In 1931, estate owners banded together to win village incorporation to head off what they saw as undesirable residential and commercial development in other parts of Nassau County. In 1947, the Post estate was sold to Long Island University for their C. W. Post campus. The campus is noted as the home of the Tilles Center for the Performing Arts. Also in Brookville is the DeSeversky Conference Center of the New York Institute of Technology. The center was formerly Templeton, mansion of socialite and businessman Winston Guest. Templeton was later used as one of the settings for the Dudley Moore film Arthur.
The Chapelle de St. Martin de Sayssuel, also known as the St. Joan of Arc Chapel where Joan of Arc prayed prior to engaging the English, was moved from France to Brookville in the early 20th century. It was acquired by Gertrude Hill Gavin, daughter of James J. Hill, the American railroad magnate. The chapel was dismantled stone by stone and imported from France to her Brookville estate in 1926. The chapel is now located at Marquette University in Wisconsin.
The Brookville Reformed Church, one of the oldest existing church congregations in the country, calls Brookville its home. The Brookville Church was founded by 17th century Dutch settlers.
The James Preserve is a nature preserve in Old Brookville and is the only tract of land showing the natural appearance of the village before development. Although it is in Old Brookville, it is connected to Greenvale.
Bushwick, New York:
Bushwick is a neighborhood in the northern part of the New York City borough of Brooklyn. The neighborhood, formerly Brooklyn's 18th Ward, is now part of Brooklyn Community Board 4. It is served by the NYPD's 83rd Precinct and is represented in the New York City Council as part of Districts 34 and 37.
Bushwick is bound by Williamsburg to the west, East New York to the east, Bed-Stuy and Brownsville to the south, and Ridgewood, Queens to the north. It is served by Postal Service zip codes 11207, 11221 and 11237. Bushwick was once an independent town and has undergone various territorial changes throughout its history.
Bushwick's diverse housing stock includes six-family apartment buildings and two- and three-family townhouses. The median age of the housing stock is 76 years. Over 91% of housing units are within 440 yards of a park, and over 97% of housing units are within 880 yards of a subway. Median rent in 2007 was $795, the 40th highest median rent in the city. About one out of six rental units is subsidized, and greater than one out of three units is rent regulated. 4% of renters live in severely overcrowded conditions. Vacant land fills 4.1% of Bushwick, rating it the 21st most vacant neighborhood in the city. In 2007, the neighborhood had a 18.7% home ownership rate, though roughly 1 out of 20 owners of a 1-4 unit building received a notice of foreclosure.
Bushwick's population in 2007 was 129,980, 38.9% of that population was foreign born. Though an ethnic neighborhood, Bushwick's population is, for a New York City neighborhood, relatively homogeneous scoring a 0.5 on the Furman Center's racial diversity index, making it the city's 35th most diverse neighborhood in 2007. Most residents are Latinos from the Caribbean island of Puerto Rico and from the Dominican Republic but more recent years have seen an increase in native-born Americans as well as other Latino groups. In 2008 the neighborhood's median household income was $28,802. 32% of the population falls under the poverty line, making Bushwick the 7th most impoverished neighborhood in New York City. Over 75% of children in the neighborhood are born in poverty. Only 40.3% of students in Bushwick read at grade level, making it the 49th most literate neighborhood in the city in 2007. 58.2% of students do math at grade level in Bushwick, 41st in the city. In 2007, Bushwick averaged with 25 felonies per 1000 persons, the 25th, out of 55, most felonious community district in the city.
Bushwick is the largest hub of Brooklyn's Hispanic-American community. Like other neighborhoods in New York City, Bushwick's Hispanic population is mainly Puerto Rican and Dominican with a sizable South American population as well. As nearly 80% of Bushwick's population is Hispanic, residents have created many businesses to support their various national and distinct traditions in food and other items. The neighborhood's major commercial streets are Knickerbocker Avenue, Myrtle Avenue, Wyckoff Avenue, and Broadway.
In 1638, the Dutch West India Company secured a deed from the local Lenape people for the Bushwick area, and Peter Stuyvesant, chartered the area in 1661, naming it "Boswijck," meaning "little town in the woods" or "Heavy Woods" in 17th century Dutch. Its area included the modern day communities of Bushwick, Williamsburg, and Greenpoint. Bushwick was the last of the original six Dutch towns of Brooklyn to be established within New Netherland. The community was settled, though unchartered, on February 16, 1660, on a plot of land between the Bushwick and Newtown Creeks by fourteen French and Huguenot settlers, a Dutch translator named Peter Jan De Witt, and one of the original eleven slaves brought to New Netherland, Franciscus the Negro, who had worked his way to freedom. The group centered their settlement around a church located near today's Bushwick and Metropolitan Avenues. The major thoroughfare was Woodpoint Road, which allowed farmers to bring their goods to the town dock. This original settlement came to be known as Het Dorp by the Dutch, and, later, Bushwick Green by the British. The English would take over the six towns three years later and unite the towns under Kings County in 1683.
At the turn of the 19th century, Bushwick consisted of four villages, Green Point, Bushwick Shore, later to be known as Williamsburg, Bushwick Green, and Bushwick Crossroads, at the spot today's Bushwick Avenue turns southeast at Flushing Avenue.
Bushwick's first major expansion occurred after it annexed The New Lots of Bushwick, a hilly upland originally claimed by the Native Americans in the first treaties they signed with European colonists providing the settlers rights to the lowland on the water. After the second war between the natives and the settlers broke out, the natives fled, leaving the area to be divided among the six towns in Kings County. Bushwick had the prime location to absorb its new tract of land in a contiguous fashion. New Bushwick Lane (Evergreen Ave), a former Native American trail, was a key thoroughfare to access this new tract suitable mostly for potato and cabbage agriculture. This area is bounded roughly by Flushing Avenue to the north, and Evergreen Cemetery to the south.
In the 1850s, the New Lots of Bushwick area began to develop. References to the town of Bowronville, a new neighborhood contained within the area south of Lafayette Avenue and Stanhope Street begin to appear dating to the 1850s.
The area known as Bushwick Shore was so called for about 140 years. Bushwick residents called Bushwick Shore "the Strand," another term for "beach." Bushwick Creek, in the north, and Cripplebush, a region of thick, boggy shrubland extending from Wallabout Creek to Newtown Creek, in the south and east, cut Bushwick Shore from the other villages in Bushwick. Farmers and gardeners from the other Bushwick villages sent their goods to Bushwick Shore to be ferried to New York City for sale via a market at present day Grand St. Bushwick Shore's favorable location close to New York City led to the creation of several farming developments. Originally a 13-acre (53,000 m2) development within Bushwick Shore, Williamsburgh rapidly expanded during the first half of the nineteenth century and eventually seceded from Bushwick to form its own independent city.
When Bushwick was founded, it was primarily an area for farming food and tobacco. As Brooklyn and New York City grew, factories that manufactured sugar, oil, and chemicals were built. The inventor Peter Cooper built a glue manufacturing plant, his first factory, in Bushwick. Immigrants from western Europe joined the original Dutch settlers. The Bushwick Chemical Works, at Metropolitan Avenue and Grand Street on the English Kills channel, was another early industry among the lime, plaster, and brick works, coal yards, and other factories which developed along English Kills, which was dredged and made an important commercial waterway. In October, 1867, the American Institute awarded The Bushwick Chemical Works the first premium for commercial acids of greatest purity and strength. The Bushwick Glass Company, later to be known as Brookfield Glass Company established itself in 1869, when a local brewer sold it to James Brookfield. The Bushwick Glass Company made a variety of both bottles and jars. Around the same time, in 1868, the Long Island Rail Road built the Bushwick Branch from its hub in Jamaica via Maspeth to Bushwick Terminal at the intersection of Montrose and Bushwick avenues, allowing easy movement of passengers, raw materials, and finished goods.
In the 1840s and 1850s, a majority of the immigrants were German, which became the dominant population. Bushwick established a considerable brewery industry, including "Brewer's Row": 14 breweries operating in a 14-block area by 1890. Thus, Bushwick was dubbed the "beer capital of the Northeast." The last Bushwick brewery closed its doors in 1976.
As late as 1883, Bushwick maintained open farming land east of Flushing Avenue. A synergy developed between the brewers and the farmers during this period, as the dairy farmers collected spent grain and hops for cow feed. The dairy farmers sold the milk, and other dairy products, to consumers in Brooklyn. Both industries supported blacksmiths, wheelwrights, and feed stores along Flushing Avenue.
The first elevated railway in Brooklyn, known as the Lexington Avenue Elevated, opened in 1885. Its eastern terminus was at the edge of Bushwick, at Gates Avenue and Broadway. This line was extended southeastward into East New York shortly thereafter. By the end of 1889, the Broadway Elevated and the Myrtle Avenue Elevated were completed, enabling easier access to Downtown Brooklyn and Manhattan and the rapid residential development of Bushwick from farmland.
With the success of the brewing industry and the presence of the Els, another wave of European immigrants settled in the neighborhood. Also, parts of Bushwick became affluent. Brewery owners and doctors commissioned mansions along Bushwick and Irving avenues at the turn of the 20th century. New York mayor John Francis Hylan kept a townhouse on Bushwick Avenue during this period. Bushwick homes were designed in the Italianate, Neo Greco, Romanesque Revival, and Queen Anne styles by well known architects. Bushwick was a center of culture with several Vaudeville era playhouses, including the Amphion Theatre, the nation's first theatre with electric lighting. The wealth of the neighborhood peaked between World War I and World War II, even when events such as Prohibition and the Great Depression were taking place. After WWI, the German enclave was steadily replaced by a significant proportion of Italian Americans. By 1950, Bushwick was one of New York City's largest Italian American neighborhoods, although some German Americans remained.
Interestingly, the Italian community was comprised nearly entirely of Sicilians, most all of whom came from the Palermo, Trapani, and Agrigento provinces in Sicily. In particular, the Sicilian townsfolk of Menfi, Santa Margherita di Belice, Trapani, Castelvetrano, and many other paesi had their own clubs, or "clubbu", in the area. Il Circolo di Santa Margherita di Belice remains the oldest operating Sicilian organization in the United States but began here. These clubs often started as mutual benevolance associations or funeral societies but transformed as the needs of their communities did from the late 1800s until the 1960s, when many began to fade away. St. Joseph Patron of the Universal Church Roman Catholic Parish was the hub of this Sicilian community, and held five feasts during the year, complete with processions of saints or Our Lady of Trapani. St. Joseph opened in 1923 because the Italian community had been rapidly growing in Bushwick since 1900. This Sicilian community first was centered in Our Lady of Pompeii parish on Siegel St. in Williamsburgh, however as industry expanded along Flushing Ave. the Sicilian population expanded with the growing need for labor by factory operators. St. Leonard's parish was the large German Catholic parish in the area, however the Italian community was not welcome there and thus compelled to open their own parish. St. Leonard's closed in 1973. St. Joseph's is now a large and vibrant Latino parish run by the Scalabrini Order of priests, an Italian missionary order that caters to migrants.
The demographic transition of Bushwick mirrored many Brooklyn neighborhoods after WWII. Initially, working class African American and Caribbean American families took over homes in the southeastern edge of the neighborhood, closest to Eastern Parkway. Beginning in the mid 1950s and particularly in the 1960s, an influx of less affluent African American and Puerto Rican migrants began to move into central Bushwick. "While poorer than the previous residents, Black Bushwickites were working class and strongly oriented to home ownership and forming block associations. These blocks were in a better position to withstand the devastations of the 1970's" (John A. Dereszewski). This change in demographics coincided with changes in the local economy. At the same time, locally rising energy costs, advances in transportation, and the invention of the steel can encouraged beer companies to move out of New York City. As the breweries closed, the neighborhood deteriorated along with much of Brooklyn and New York City. Discussions of urban renewal took place in the 1960s, but never materialized. The U.S. Census records that it went from almost 90% white in 1960 to less than 40% in 1970. A contributor to this drastic change was the John Lindsay administration's policy of raising rent for welfare recipients, which encouraged Bushwick landlords to fill vacant units with such tenants, since they now brought higher rents than ordinary tenants would pay on the open market. By the mid-seventies, half of Bushwick’s residents were on public assistance. According to the New York Times, "In a five-year period in the late 1960's and early 70's, the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn was transformed from a neatly maintained community of wood houses into what often approached a no man's land of abandoned buildings, empty lots, drugs and arson."
On the night of July 13, 1977, a major blackout occurred in New York City. Arson, looting, and vandalism followed in low income neighborhoods across the city. Bushwick, however, saw some of the most devastating damages and losses. While local owners in the predominantly Puerto Rican Knickerbocker Avenue and Graham Avenue shopping districts were able to defend their stores with force, suburban owners with stores on the Broadway shopping district saw their shops looted and burned. Twenty-seven stores, some of which were of mixed use, along Broadway had burned (Goodman 104). Looters (and residents who bought from looters) saw the blackout as an opportunity to get what they otherwise could not afford. Fires spread to many residential buildings as well. After the riots were over and the fires were put out, residents saw "some streets that looked like Brooklyn Heights, and others that looked like Dresden in 1945" (Goodman 181): unsafe dwellings and empty lots among surviving buildings. Broadway business space had a 43% vacancy rate in the wake of the riots.
Bushwick was left with a lack of both retail stores and housing. After the blackout, residents who could afford to leave abandoned the area. But new immigrants were coming into the area during the late 1960s, early 1970s and 1980s, many of whom were from Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and more recently Central America. However, apartment renovation and new construction did not keep pace with the demolition of unsafe buildings, forcing overcrowded conditions at first. As buildings came down, the vacant lots made parts of the neighborhood look and feel desolate, and more residents left. The neighborhood was a hotbed of poverty and crime through the 1980s. During this period, the Knickerbocker Ave shopping district was nicknamed "The Well" for its seemingly unending supply of drugs. In the 1990s, it remained a poor and relatively dangerous area, with 77 murders, 80 rapes, and 2,242 robberies in 1990.
Starting in the middle of the 2000s, the City and State of New York began pouring resources into the Bushwick neighborhood, primarily through a program called the Bushwick Initiative. The Bushwick Initiative was a two-year pilot program spearheaded by the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD), the Ridgewood Bushwick Senior Citizens Council (Ridgewood Bushwick), and the Office of Assemblyman Vito Lopez. The program goal is to improve the lives of Bushwick residents in the twenty-three square blocks surrounding Maria Hernandez Park through various housing and quality of life programs. The Bushwick Initiative aims to address deteriorated housing conditions, increase economic development opportunities, reduce drug dealing activities, and enhance the quality of life in the twenty-three square blocks surrounding Maria Hernandez Park.
One of the most critical pieces of the Bushwick Initiative is the strengthened relationship between HPD’s Narcotics Control Unit (NCU) and the New York City Police Department’s 83rd Precinct and Narcotics Division, who have joined together to reduce the extensive drug dealing operations within the target area.
In an effort to reduce lead hazards in buildings, HPD and DOHMH created a grant program focusing on residential buildings in the Bushwick Initiative target area. As a result of this outreach, 64 buildings received lead abatement work worth approximately $750,000. 150 buildings were referred to HPD’s Housing Litigation Division (HLD) for action. HLD brought cases to compel the owners of those buildings to correct outstanding violations; to obtain civil penalties for the owners’ failure to comply with the Housing Maintenance Code and the Multiple Dwelling Law where appropriate; and to compel those owners who had failed to register with HPD to do so. In addition, in situations where the owners had failed to correct emergency conditions, including lead paint hazards, and had denied HPD’s inspectors and contractors access to scope and complete the necessary work to remediate the conditions, the Housing Litigation Division obtained access warrants ordering the owners to allow HPD’s inspectors and contractors into the buildings to complete necessary emergency repairs.
Many of the Bushwick Initiative’s efforts towards economic development are focused on revitalizing Knickerbocker Avenue, the primary commercial strip in the area. Ridgewood Bushwick spoke to business owners in the area about reviving the now-defunct Knickerbocker Avenue Merchants’ Association. Through this organization, Ridgewood Bushwick hopes to utilize SBS’s resources to increase economic opportunities for local business owners in the area.
In addition to DOHMH’s lead prevention work, the Bushwick Initiative has benefited from a series of public health programs addressing pest control, infant health, and fitness. DOHMH spent $25,000 purchasing 1,000 rodent-resistant trash cans, which were distributed to buildings with a high number of rodent complaints. Educational information in both English and Spanish concerning rodent control was distributed at the same time, and cans were plastered with the flyers reading "CAN IT – Keep Rats Out of Your Community."
The last half of the 20th century transformed Bushwick into a home for low-income renters in a primarily Hispanic, immigrant community. Ethnic groups common in the neighborhood are Puerto Ricans, Hondurans, Dominicans, Mexicans, Ecuadorians, African Americans, Haitians, Jamaicans, and Afro-Caribbean. There are also smaller numbers of Chinese, Koreans, Indo-Caribbeans (Guyana and Trinidad), Filipinos, and Arabs in the area. Since 2000, the rise of real estate prices in nearby Manhattan has made the neighborhood more attractive to younger professionals. In the wake of reduced crime rates citywide and a shortage of cheap housing in nearby neighborhoods such as Park Slope and Williamsburg, an influx of young professionals and artists moved into converted warehouse lofts, brownstones, limestone-brick townhouses and other renovated buildings.
Major subway stops include: Jefferson Street, DeKalb Avenue, Myrtle–Wyckoff Avenues, Halsey Street, Wilson Ave, and Bushwick-Aberdeen on the BMT Canarsie Line (L); Central Avenue, Knickerbocker Avenue, Myrtle–Wyckoff Avenues on the BMT Myrtle Avenue Line (M); and Flushing Av, Myrtle Avenue, Koscuisko Street, Gates Avenue, Halsey Street, Chauncey on the BMT Jamaica Line (J) and (Z). The Myrtle Avenue/Wyckoff Avenue bus and subway hub was renovated into a state-of-the-art transportation center in 2007. Bus lines serving Bushwick include the B13, B26, B38, B52, B54, and B60.
During the 1960's under the direction of Robert Moses, there were plans to build an extension of I-78 through Bushwick, to connect lower Manhattan with the southern shore of Long Island. The extension was to be called the Bushwick Expressway, yet was never built due to then Mayor John V. Lindsay's concerns, that traffic leaving Manhattan should bypass it via the Verrazano Bridge.
Bushwick Park and Pool is located on Flushing Avenue between Beaver and Garden Streets, and encompasses 1.29 acres (5,200 m2). The park which is administered by the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation has a free public pool (a large pool as well as a children's pool is available), basketball courts, a handball court and a children's playground.
Bushwick Playground is located on Knickerbocker Avenue between Woodbine Street and Putnam Avenue, and encompasses 2.78 acres (11,300 m2). Bushwick Playground park features handball courts, spray showers, a sitting areas and a children's playground.
Green Central Knoll Park is a 2.6 acres (11,000 m2) park located between Flushing and Central Avenues and Knoll and Evergreen Streets. The park is located on the former site of the Rheingold beer brewery. New York City took ownership of the property after the beer company closed due to failure to pay taxes but it was not given to the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation until 1997. The park includes a baseball field, sitting areas and a children's playground.
Heisser Triangle is located at the intersections of Knickerbocker and Myrtle Avenues and Bleecker Street. The triangle is named after Charles Heisser, a World War I sergeant with the 106th Infantry, that was killed in action in France on September 27, 1918. The bronze war memorial at the center of the plot was sculpted by Pietro Montana in 1921.
Hope Gardens Multi Service Center is a building located on Wilson and Linden, it serves as an elderly bingo game building, an after school program for children from kindergarten to fifth grade, a karate class host, and a summer day camp for the neighborhood children.
Irving Square Park is bound between Wilson and Knickerbocker Avenues and Halsey and Weirfield Streets. The park encompasses 2.78 acres (11,300 m2). The park is believed to be named after Washington Irving. The park features swings, a sandpit, spray shower, a handball court and a basketball court. After renovations in 2006 and 2008 the park also features a public plaza and gardening space.
Maria Hernandez Park is a municipal park in Bushwick. It is located between Knickerbocker and Irving Avenues and between Starr and Suydam Streets. It has a newly renovated basketball court, handball court, fitness equipment, spray showers and benches, and a newly built performance stage. The park encompasses 6.87 acres (27,800 m2).
Ridgewood Bushwick Youth Center is a youth activity center administered by the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation located between Gates Avenue and Palmetto Street and run by the Ridgewood Bushwick Senior Citizens Council (RBSCC).
Three New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) developments are located in Bushwick. They are mainly occupied by low-income families: Bushwick II CDA (Group E), five three-story buildings; Hope Gardens, seven four- and one fourteen-story buildings; and Palmetto Gardens, one six-story building
Canarsie, New York:
Canarsie is a neighborhood in the southeastern portion of the borough of Brooklyn, in New York City, United States. The area is part of Brooklyn Community Board 18. Canarsie, which includes the entire 11236 ZIP code, is bordered on the east by Fresh Creek Basin, East 108th Street, and the BMT Canarsie Line (L train) to Linden Boulevard; on the north by Linden Boulevard; on the west by Remsen Avenue to Ralph Avenue and the Paerdegat Basin; and on the south by Jamaica Bay. Canarsie also neighbors East Flatbush, Flatlands, Mill Basin, Bergen Beach, and East New York. Canarsie is patrolled by the NYPD's 69th Precinct.
"Canarsie" is a phonetic interpretation of a word in the Lenape language for "fenced land" or "fort." The Native Americans who made the infamous sale of the island of Manhattan for 60 guilders were Lenape. Europeans would often refer to the indigenous people living in an area by the local place-name, and so reference may be found in contemporary documents to "Canarsee Indians." The current neighborhood lies within the former town of Flatlands, one of the five original Dutch towns on Long Island.
Canarsie was built on swamps near Jamaica Bay. It was a fishing village through the 1800s, until pollution killed the oysters and the edible fish. In the 1920s, Southern Italian immigrants along with Jews settled in the area (though the Jewish population in Canarsie in recent years has been steadily shrinking).. Ferry service at Canarsie Pier withered away after the building of the Marine Parkway Bridge. During the 1990s, much of Canarsie's white population left for Staten Island, Long Island, and Queens, part of a national urban phenomenon called "white flight" by many. Today, Canarsie's population is mostly non-white because of large West Indian immigration. East Brooklyn Community High School now serves the transfer student population.
Currently, approximately 96,000 people reside in Canarsie. At the southeast end of Canarsie is Canarsie Pier on Jamaica Bay, a fishing spot and recreation area. Canarsie Pier is part of Gateway National Recreation Area, a National Park Service site. At the other end are mostly commercial warehouses and buildings. Canarsie has many one and two family homes, although there are three large public housing developments and a number of small apartment buildings scattered throughout the neighborhood. The neighborhood has many parks, including a large park (over 100 acres) commonly referred to as Seaview Park, but officially named Canarsie Beach Park, expanded to the southwest in 2007. On Jamaica Bay, beyond the Belt Parkway, lies the Canarsie Pier section of Gateway National Recreation Area.
The BMT Canarsie Line, on which the L train of the New York City Subway runs and terminates in Canarsie, connects the neighborhood to Manhattan. The L train is a local-only subway that starts at street level and proceeds above ground and then down into the interconnecting tunnels of the subway, under the East River, and into Manhattan. Bus service such as the B6, B17, B42, B60, B82, B103, and BM2 also runs through Canarsie.
The principal commercial streets are Rockaway Parkway and Flatlands Avenue. Avenue L is also fairly commercial. "By way of Canarsie" was a mid-twentieth century American English figure of speech meaning "to come to one's destination by a roundabout way or from a distant point." It presumably arose when the Wilson Avenue Line was a principal route to Canarsie Landing. The expression has dropped from modern common parlance. Frank Zappa's instrumental album box Shut Up 'n Play Yer Guitar Some More includes a piece called "Canarsie." It is introduced with the words: "Canarsie. Where everyone looks the same."
Canarsie is home to two high-school campuses, Canarsie Educational Campus and South Shore, and several junior high schools and elementary schools. In late fall 2006, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that five troubled high schools would close by 2010. Among those five were Canarsie's South Shore and Canarsie High School. According to Melody Meyer, a DOE spokesperson, the closing is attributed to "dismal graduation rates, consistent low test scores, a poor history of educating, low performing students, and lackluster demand."
Canarsie High School phased out at the end of the 2010-2011 school year. There are three small schools operating in the Canarsie Educational Campus: High School for Medical Professions (HSMP), Innovation in Advertising and Media (IAM), and Urban Action Academy (UAA). They will have their first graduating class at the end of the 2011-2012 school year.
The Canarsie Courier, located at 1142 East 92nd Street and published every Thursday, is the oldest weekly publication in Brooklyn and is still in publication today. It was founded by Walter S. Patrick on April 22, 1921. The Courier was then purchased by brothers Bob and Joe Samitz in 1959. After the passing of Joe Samitz, Mary (Mae) Samitz became co-publisher of the paper with her husband Bob and then became the sole publisher after he died. After his death in 1998, the Samitz family sold the paper to Donna Marra and Sandra Greco. Mrs. Marra became the sole publisher in 2010. The newspaper's estimated circulation is fewer than 5,000, including paid, mailed subscriptions and subscribers to their Web site, as well as newsstand and over-the-counter sales. In addition to Canarsie, the Courier is distributed in various communities in southeast Brooklyn, such as Georgetown, East New York, Mill Basin, Bergen Beach, and Spring Creek, among others.
While the weekly focuses on local community news, it also offers readers a variety of features for the discriminating reader, plus local sports, culture news, guest columns, and opinion columns by in-house editors.
Clinton Hill, New York:
Clinton Hill is a neighborhood in the north-central portion of the borough of Brooklyn in New York City. It is bordered on the east by Bedford-Stuyvesant, on the west by Fort Greene, on the north by Wallabout Bay and on the south by Prospect Heights. The neighborhood is served by the NYPD's 88th Precinct.
By the 1840s, Clinton Hill had become a fashionable neighborhood for the wealthy of Brooklyn, who could commute to Manhattan by way of stagecoach to the Fulton Ferry in nearby Brooklyn Heights. By the 1880s and '90s, Clinton Avenue was lined with mansions of millionaires, many of which have survived to the present day. The most prominent of these are linked to Charles Pratt, who built a mansion for himself and one each as wedding presents for three of his four sons (pictured, right). These four mansions can be seen on Clinton Avenue between DeKalb and Willoughby. Pratt Institute, founded by Charles Pratt in 1887, is located a few blocks from his former home. Due in part to the presence of Pratt Institute the neighborhood boasts an increasing arts community, and many bohemians are flocking towards the yet-to-be gentrified industrial areas adjacent to the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
Clinton Hill has one of the largest concentrations of row houses from the post-Civil War period. Also located in Clinton Hill is St. Joseph's College's Brooklyn campus and St. Mary's Episcopal Church, which was built in 1858. The Clinton Hill Historic District was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1985. The Clinton Hill South Historic District was listed in 1986.
Clinton Hill is served by the IND Fulton Street Line (A C trains), with a stop at the Clinton–Washington Avenues station as well as the IND Crosstown Line (G train), with stops at Classon Avenue station and a separate Clinton–Washington Avenues station. Several New York City Transit bus routes provide service to the neighborhood, including the B25, B26, B38, B45, B48, B54, B52, B57, B61 and B69.
Coney Island, New York:
Coney Island is a peninsula and beach on the Atlantic Ocean in southern Brooklyn, New York, United States. The site was formerly an island, but became partially connected to the mainland by landfill.
Coney Island is possibly best known as the site of amusement parks and a major resort that reached their peak during the first half of the 20th century. It declined in popularity after World War II and endured years of neglect. In recent years, the area has seen the opening of MCU Park and has become home to the minor league baseball team the Brooklyn Cyclones.
The neighborhood of the same name is a community of 60,000 people in the western part of the peninsula, with Sea Gate to its west, Brighton Beach and Manhattan Beach to its east, and Gravesend to the north.
Coney Island is the westernmost part of the barrier islands of Long Island, about 4 miles (6.4 km) long and 0.5 miles (0.80 km) wide. Formerly it was an island, separated from the main part of Brooklyn by Coney Island Creek, which was partially tidal mudflats, but it has since been developed into a peninsula. There were plans early in the 20th century to dredge and straighten the creek as a ship canal, but they were abandoned, and the center of the creek was filled in for construction of the Belt Parkway before World War II. The western and eastern ends are now peninsulas.
The Native American inhabitants of the region, the Lenape, called the island Narrioch—meaning "land without shadows"—because, as with other south shore Long Island beaches, its orientation means the beach remains in sunlight all day. Following European settlement, New York State and New York City were originally a Dutch colony and settlement, named Nieuw Nederland and Nieuw Amsterdam. The Dutch name for the island—originally Conyne Eylandt, or Konijneneiland in modern Dutch spelling—probably precedes the similar English name, Coney Island, with both translating as "Rabbit Island". As on other Long Island barrier islands, Coney Island had many and diverse rabbits, and rabbit hunting prospered until resort development eliminated their habitat. The Dutch name is found on the New Netherland map of 1639 by Johannes Vingboon, which is before any known English records.
Coney Island therefore appears to be the English adaptation of the Dutch name. The word "coney" was popular in English at the time as an alternative for rabbit; while coney survives in archaic and dialectal contexts, a later adaptation, "bunny", is now in common use. Coney came into the English language through the Old French word conil, which itself derived from the Latin word for rabbit, cuniculus. The English name "Conney Isle" appeared on maps as early as 1690, and by 1733 the modern name, Coney Island, was used. Joseph DesBarre's chart of New York harbor in the 1779 work Atlantic Neptune, and John Eddy's map of 1811, both use the modern spelling.
Although the history of Coney Island's name and its anglicization can be traced through historical maps spanning the 17th century to the present, and all the names translate to Rabbit Island in modern English, there are still those who contend that the name derives from other sources. Also possible is the Irish Gaelic name for Rabbit which is Coinín, which is also anglicised to Coney. Ireland has many islands named Coney Island, all of which predate this one. Some claim that an Irish captain named Peter O'Connor named Coney Island in the 18th century, after an island in County Sligo known as both Coney Island and Inishmulclohy. Another purported origin is from the name of the Indian tribe, the Konoh, who supposedly once inhabited it. A further claim is that the island is named after Henry Hudson's right-hand-man, John Coleman, supposed to have been slain by Indians.
Due to Coney Island's location—easily reached from Manhattan and other boroughs of New York City, yet distant enough to suggest a proper vacation—it began attracting holidaymakers in the 1830s and 1840s, when carriage roads and steamship services reduced travel time from a half-day journey to just two hours.
The original Coney Island Hotel was constructed in 1829, with The Brighton Hotel, Manhattan Beach Hotel, and Oriental Hotel opening soon after, with each trying to provide an increasing level of elegance. Coney Island became a major resort destination after the American Civil War, as excursion railroads and the Coney Island & Brooklyn Railroad streetcar line reached the area in the 1860s, and the Iron steamboat company arrived in 1881. The two Iron Piers served as docks for the steamboats until they were destroyed in the 1911 Dreamland fire.
When the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company electrified the steam railroads and connected Brooklyn to Manhattan via the Brooklyn Bridge at the beginning of the 20th century, Coney Island soon turned from a resort to a location accessible to day-trippers from New York City, especially those escaping the summer heat.
Charles I. D. Looff, a Danish woodcarver, built the first carousel at Coney Island in 1876. It was installed at Vandeveer's bath-house complex at West 6th Street and Surf Avenue, which later became known as Balmer's Pavilion. The carousel consisted of hand-carved horses and animals standing two abreast, with a drummer and a flute player providing the music. A tent-top provided protection from the weather. The fare was five cents.
From 1885 to 1896, the Coney Island Elephant was the first sight to greet immigrants arriving in New York, who would see it before the Statue of Liberty became visible. In 1915 the Sea Beach Line was upgraded to a subway line. This was followed by upgrades to the other former excursion roads, and the opening of the New West End Terminal in 1919, thus ushering in Coney Island's busiest era.
Nathan's Famous original hot dog stand opened on Coney Island in 1916 and quickly became a landmark. An annual Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest has been held there annually on July 4 since its opening, but has only attracted broad attention and television coverage since the late 1990s.
After World War II, contraction began seriously from a number of pressures. Air conditioning in movie theaters and then in homes, along with the advent of automobiles which provided access to the less crowded and more appealing Long Island state parks, especially Jones Beach State Park, lessened the attractions of Coney's beaches. Luna Park closed in 1946 after a series of fires, and the New York street gang problems of the 1950s spilled into Coney Island. The presence of threatening youths did not impact the beach-goers, but discouraged visitors to the rides and concessions which were staples of the Coney Island economy. The local economy was dealt a severe blow by the 1964 closing of Steeplechase Park, the last of the major amusement parks.
Development on Coney Island has always been controversial. When the first structures were built around the 1840s, there was an outcry to prevent any development on the island and preserve it as a natural park. Starting in the early 20th century, the City of New York made efforts to condemn all buildings and piers built south of Surf Avenue, with the local amusement community opposing the city. Eventually a settlement was reached where the beach was declared as not beginning until 1,000 ft (300 m) south of Surf Avenue, the territory marked by a city-owned boardwalk, while the city would demolish any structures that had been built over public streets in order to reclaim beach access.
In 1944, Robert Moses actively opposed the "tawdry" entertainment at Coney Island and discouraged the building of new amusements. By 1949, Moses moved the boardwalk back from the beach several yards, demolishing many structures, including the city's municipal bath house. He would later demolish several blocks of amusements to clear land for both the New York Aquarium, where Dreamland once stood, and the Abe Stark Ice Skating Rink. In 1953, Moses had the entire island rezoned for residential use only, and announced plans to demolish the amusements to make room for low income housing. After public complaints, the Estimate Board reinstated some areas as protected for amusement use only, leading to many public land battles.
In 1964, Coney Island's last remaining large theme park, Steeplechase Park, closed and the property was sold to developer Fred Trump. Trump wanted to build luxury apartments on the old Steeplechase property and spent ten years battling in court to get the property rezoned. After a decade of court battles, Trump exhausted his legal options and the property remained zoned for amusements. He eventually leased the property to Norman Kaufman, who ran a small collection of fairground amusements on a corner of the site, calling his amusement park Steeplechase Park. However, between the loss of both Luna Park and the original Steeplechase Park, as well as an urban-renewal plan that took place in the surrounding neighborhood, involving middle class houses being replaced with low income housing projects, fewer visitors came to Coney Island. In the late 1970s the city proposed a plan to revitalize Coney Island by bringing in gambling casinos, as had been done in Atlantic City, but gambling was never legalized for Coney Island, and the area ended up with vacant lots.
In 1994 Rudy Giuliani took office as mayor of New York, and supported a plan to build a sporting complex named Sportsplex, provided it include a stadium for a minor league baseball team owned by the New York Mets. Once the stadium was completed Giuliani reneged on the Sportsplex deal, and The Mets decided to call the minor league team the Brooklyn Cyclones and sold the naming rights to the stadium to Keyspan Energy. Executives from Keyspan complained that the stadium's line of view from the rest of the Coney Island amusement area was blocked by the derelict Thunderbolt roller-coaster, and the following month Giuliani ordered an early-morning bulldozing of the Thunderbolt.
In 2003, Mayor Michael Bloomberg took an interest in revitalizing Coney Island as a possible site for the 2012 Olympics. When the city lost the bid for the Olympics, revitalization plans were rolled over to the Coney Island Development Corporation (CIDC), which came up with a plan to restore the resort. Shortly before the CIDC's plans were released, a development company, Thor Equities, purchased all of Bullard's western property, sold it to Taconic Investment Partners, and used much of the proceeds to purchase or offer to purchase every piece of property inside the traditional amusement area. In September 2005, Thor went public with a plans to build a large Bellagio-style hotel resort surrounded by rides and amusements. Plans of the hotel showed it covering the entire amusement area from the Aquarium to beyond MCU Park, and requiring the demolition of The Wonder Wheel, Cyclone, and Nathan's original hot dog stand, as well as the new MCU Park.
Late in 2006 Thor purchased Coney Island's last remaining amusement park, Astroland, and announced plans to close it after the 2007 season and build a Nickelodeon-themed hotel on the site. In January 2007 Thor released plans for a new amusement park to be built on the Astroland site called Coney Island Park. In late 2007 Thor began to evict businesses from the buildings it owned along the boardwalk, but when one of the business owners complained, Thor reinstated their leases.
In early 2007, the Municipal Art Society launched the initiative ImagineConey, as discussion of a rezoning plan that highly favored housing and hotels began circulating from the Department of City Planning. City Planning certified the rezoning plan in January 2009. As of 2010 the plan was going through the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP) process, with Thor Equities saying it hoped to complete the project by 2011. The Coney Island Aquarium was also planning a renovation from the mid-2000s. In June 2009, the city's planning commission unanimously approved the construction of 4,500 units of housing and 900 affordable units, and vowed to "preserve, in perpetuity, the open amusement area rides that everyone knows and loves", while protesters argued that the "20 percent affordable-housing component is unreasonably low."
The neighborhoods on Coney Island, from west to east, are Sea Gate, Coney Island proper, Brighton Beach, and Manhattan Beach. Sea Gate is a private community, one of only a handful of neighborhoods in New York City where the streets are owned by the residents and not the city; Sea Gate and the Breezy Point Cooperative are the only city neighborhoods cordoned off by a fence and gate houses.
The majority of Coney Island's population resides in approximately thirty 18- to 24-storey towers, mostly various forms of public housing. In between the towers are many blocks that were filled with vacant and burned out buildings. Since the 1990s there has been steady revitalization of the area. Many townhouses were built on empty lots, popular franchises opened, and Keyspan Park was built to serve as the home for the Brooklyn Cyclones baseball team. Once home to many Jewish residents, Coney Island's main population groups today are African American, Italian American, Hispanic, and recent Russian and Ukrainian immigrants.
Coney Island is served by the New York City Department of Education. The Coney Island neighborhood is zoned to PS 90 for K-5 education and IS 303 Herbert S. Eisenberg for Grades 6-8. PS/IS 288 The Shirley Tanyhill School (Pre-K-8), PS 329 (K-5), PS 188 The Michael E. Berdy School (K-5), PS 100 (K-5), and Mark Twain (6-8) are all schools located in the heart of Coney Island. There are no zoned high schools.
Nearby high schools include: Abraham Lincoln High School; John Dewey High School; The Leon M. Goldstein High School for the Sciences; Rachel Carson's School of Coastal Studies; William E. Grady Vocational High School; and The High School Of Sports Management.
Coney Island's main subway station is called Coney Island – Stillwell Avenue and is served by the D F N Q trains of the New York City Subway. The terminal is the largest elevated metro station in North America, with eight tracks serving the four services that use the station. The entire station was rebuilt in 2002–04, modernizing it with a large solar-panel canopy covering all eight tracks.
There is a bus terminal beneath the station. The buses that terminate there are the B68 to Prospect Park, the B74 to the Coney Island-Sea Gate border at West 37th Street via Mermaid Avenue, and the B82 to Starett City. The B36 runs from the Coney Island-Sea Gate border at West 37th Street to Nostrand Avenue at Avenue U in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. The X28 provides an express service to Manhattan.
The three main avenues in the Coney Island community, are, from north to south, Neptune Avenue (which crosses to the mainland to become Emmons Avenue), Mermaid Avenue, and Surf Avenue (which becomes Ocean Parkway and then runs north towards Brooklyn's Prospect Park). The cross streets in the Coney Island neighborhood proper are numbered with "West" prepended to their numbers, running from West 1st Street to West 37th Street at the border of Sea Gate.
Between about 1880 and World War II, Coney Island was the largest amusement area in the United States, attracting several million visitors per year. At its height it contained three competing major amusement parks, Luna Park, Dreamland, and Steeplechase Park, as well as many independent amusements.
Astroland served as a major amusement park from 1962 to 2008, and was replaced by a new incarnation of Dreamland in 2009 and of Luna Park in 2010. The other parks and attractions include Deno's Wonder Wheel Amusement Park, 12th Street Amusements, and Kiddie Park, while the Eldorado Arcade has an indoor bumper car ride. The Zipper and Spider on 12th Street were closed permanently on September 4, 2007, and dismantling began after its owner lost his lease. They are to be reassembled at an amusement park in Honduras. On April 20, 2011, the first new roller coasters to be built at Coney Island in eighty years were opened as part of efforts to reverse the decline of the amusement area.
The New York Aquarium, which opened in 1957 on the former site of the Dreamland amusement park, is an attraction on Coney Island. In 2001, KeySpan Park opened on the former site of Steeplechase Park to host the Brooklyn Cyclones minor league baseball team.
Coney Island maintains a broad sandy beach from West 37th Street at Sea Gate, through the central Coney Island area and Brighton Beach, to the beginning of the community of Manhattan Beach, a distance of approximately 2.5 mi (4.0 km). The beach is continuous, and is served for its entire length by the broad Riegelmann Boardwalk. A number of amusements are directly accessible from the land-side of the boardwalk, as is the aquarium, and a variety of food shops and arcades.
The beach is groomed and replenished on a regular basis by the city. The position of the beach and lack of significant obstructions means virtually the entire beach is in sunlight all day. The beach is open to all without restriction, and there is no charge for use. The beach area is divided into "bays", areas of beach delineated by rock jetties, which moderate erosion and the force of ocean waves.
The Coney Island Polar Bear Club consists of a group of people who swim at Coney Island throughout the winter months, most notably on New Year's Day, when additional participants join them to swim in the frigid waters. Coney Island beach serves as the training grounds for the Coney Island Brighton Beach Open Water Swimmers (CIBBOWS), a group dedicated to promoting open water swimming for individuals of all levels. CIBBOWS hosts several open water swim races each year, such as Grimaldo's Mile and the New York Aquarium 5k, as well as regular weekend training swims.
The Coney Island Mermaid Parade takes place on Surf Avenue and the boardwalk, and features floats and various acts. It has been produced annually by Coney Island USA, a non-profit arts organization established in 1979, dedicated to preserving the dignity of American popular culture.
Coney Island USA has also sponsored the Coney Island Film Festival every October since 2000, as well as Burlesque At The Beach, and Creepshow at the Freakshow (an interactive Halloween-themed event). It also houses the Coney Island Museum. The annual Cosme 5K Charity Run/Walk, supported by the Coney Island Sports Foundation (CISF), takes place on the last Sunday of June on the Riegelmann Boardwalk.
In August 2006 Coney Island hosted a major national volleyball tournament sponsored by the Association of Volleyball Professionals. The tournament, usually held on the west coast of the United States, was televised live on NBC. The league built a 4,000-seat stadium and twelve outer courts next to the boardwalk for the event. The tournament returned to Coney Island in 2007 and 2008.
In April 2009, Feld Entertainment, parent company to Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, announced that "The Greatest Show on Earth" would perform on Coney Island for the entire summer of 2009, the first time since July 16, 1956 that Ringling Bros. had performed in this location. The tents were located between the boardwalk and Surf Avenue, and the show was called The Coney Island Boom-A-Ring. In 2010, they returned to the same location with The Coney Island Illuscination. Many characters of O. Henry's short stories visit amusement parks on Coney Island.
Corona, New York:
Corona is a densely-populated neighborhood in the former Township of Newtown in the borough of Queens in New York City, New York, United States. It is neighbored by Flushing to the east, Jackson Heights to the west, Forest Hills and Rego Park to the south, Elmhurst to the southwest, and East Elmhurst to the north.
Corona is bordered on the east by Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, one of the largest parks in New York City and the site of the 1939 and 1964 World's Fairs. Located within the park are Citi Field, which replaced Shea Stadium as home of the New York Mets in 2009, and the USTA National Tennis Center, where the U.S. Open in tennis is held annually.
Corona's main thoroughfares include Corona Avenue, Roosevelt Avenue, Northern Boulevard, Junction Boulevard, and 108th Street. The neighborhood is part of Queens Community Board 4, while the northern most part is included in Community Board 3. Corona's zip code is 11368. Total population of this ZIP code was 98,609 as of the 2000 Census. Corona's racial/ethnic composition is 7.9% White, 14.5% Black, 10.0% Asian, 64.9% Hispanic/Latino, and 2.7% Other.
Corona was a late 19th century development in the old Town of Newtown. The name allegedly derives from the crown used as an emblem by the Crown Building Company, which developed the area; the Italian immigrants who moved into the new housing stock referred to the neighborhood by the Italian or Spanish word for "crown" (which is "corona").
In the last half of the 20th century Corona saw dramatic ethnic successions. In the 1950s what was predominately an Italian American and African American neighborhood began to give way to an influx of Dominicans. In the late 1990s, Corona saw a new wave of immigrants from Latin America. The residents of the Dorie Miller Coops and Meadow Manor Apartments remain predominately African American. There is also a predominately African American and African immigrant community in The LeFrak City housing development located within the southwest ending boundaries of Corona.
The majority Hispanic community consists of Dominicans, Mexicans, Colombians, Ecuadorians, Guatemalans, Bolivians, Peruvians, and Chileans. There are also Asian Americans (Koreans, Filipinos, Chinese and Pakistanis) as well as Italian Americans and African Americans. Dominican Americans represent Corona in the New York City Council, Julissa Ferreras, and in the New York State Senate, Jose Peralta. Corona is also represented by Ecuadorian American Francisco Moya in the New York State Assembly. Corona has several private schools including School of the Transfiguration.
Dorie Miller Residential Cooperative, built in 1952, comprises six buildings, containing 300 apartments, with 1,300 rooms in total. The cooperative is named after Doris "Dorie" Miller, a U.S. Naval hero at Pearl Harbor and the first African American recipient of the Navy Cross. Among its original residents were jazz greats Nat Adderley & Jimmy Heath; Kenneth and Corien Drew, publishers of Queens' first African-American newspaper, The Corona East Elmhurst News, Thelma E. Harris founder of Aburi Press and prominent Queens attorney Henry Slaughter to name a few.
During the 1950s and '60s Corona and its neighbor, East Elmhurst, was home to legendary African American musicians, civil rights leaders and athletes including Dr. Ophelia Devore, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Shavers, Ella Fitzgerald, Norman Mapp, Nat Adderley, Frankie Lymon, Willie Mays, George Williams former Harlem Night Club Dancer turned restaurateur who owned the renowned BBQ George's Supper Club frequented by the Black elite of Queens and New York politicos including civil rights activist Judge William "Bill" Booth, Publisher and NYC Commissioner Ken Drew, New York City's Mayor John Lindsay and New York Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller.
The two communities were often referred to as one "Corona/East Elmhurst" and is the childhood home of the first African American US Attorney General, Eric Holder, to rap (Hip Hop) artists Kid n' Play, Kwamé, Salt-n-Pepa and Kool G Rap, and is home to Queens Borough President Helen Marshall and her husband Donald.
Corona/East Elmhurst also houses one of the most extensive collections of African American art and literature in the Langston Hughes Community Library and Cultural Center, which serves Queens County with reference and circulating collections, totaling approximately 30,000 volumes of materials written about or relating to black culture. The Black Heritage Reference Center of Queens County includes books, periodicals, theses and dissertations, VHS videos, cassettes and CDs, photographs, posters, prints, paintings, and sculpture. Cultural arts programs are scheduled through the Center. Meeting space is available to community organizations by application. Special features of the Center include: The Schomburg Clippings File, an extensive microfiche collection of periodicals, magazine clippings, typescripts, broadsides, pamphlets, programs, book reviews, menus and ephemera of all kinds. The UMI Thesis and Dissertation Collection—consists of more than 1,000 volumes of doctoral and master dissertations concerning the African and African-American diasporas. The Adele Cohen Music Collection contains most of America's foremost black publications on microfilm. The papers cover 15 states beginning in 1893, and are updated each year with current issues. The Black Heritage Video Collection documents the history and culture of Africans and African-Americans on tape, and in all subject areas including literature, biography, social science, fine arts. Through the Black Heritage Reference Center literature readings, workshops and lectures are scheduled, as well as cultural arts programming in fine art exhibitions, film festivals, dance, musical, and dramatic presentations/performances.
The IRT Flushing Line (7 <7> trains) runs through the neighborhood with stops at 111th Street, 103rd Street – Corona Plaza and Junction Boulevard.
Crown Heights, New York:
Crown Heights is a neighborhood in the central portion of the New York City borough of Brooklyn. The main thoroughfare through this neighborhood is Eastern Parkway, a tree-lined boulevard designed by Frederick Law Olmsted extending two miles (3 km) east-west.
Originally, the area was known as Crow Hill. It was a succession of hills running east and west from Utica Avenue to Classon Avenue, and south to Empire Boulevard and New York Avenue. The name was changed when Crown Street was cut through in 1916.
Crown Heights today is bounded by Washington Avenue (to the west), Atlantic Avenue (to the north), Howard Avenue (to the east) and Empire Boulevard (to the south). It is about two miles (3 km) long and two miles (3 km) deep. These neighborhoods border Crown Heights: Prospect Heights (to the west); Flatbush (to the south); Brownsville (to the southeast); and Bedford-Stuyvesant (to the north).
This neighborhood extends through much of Brooklyn Community Board 8 and 9. It is under the jurisdiction of two precincts of the New York City Police Department. The 77th precinct is part of Brooklyn North, which covers Crown Heights, Prospect Heights and Weeksville. The 71st precinct is part of Brooklyn South and covers the southern end of Crown Heights.
Although no known evidence remains in the Crown Heights vicinity, prior to the European colonization of the Americas large portions of what is now called Long Island including present-day Brooklyn were occupied by the Lenape, (later renamed Delaware Indians by the European colonizers). The Lenape lived in communities of bark- or grass-covered wigwams, and in their larger settlements—typically located on high ground adjacent to fresh water, and occupied in the fall, winter, and spring—they fished, harvested shellfish, trapped animals, gathered wild fruits and vegetables, and cultivated corn, tobacco, beans, and other crops.
The first recorded contact between the indigenous people of the New York City region and Europeans was with the explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano in 1524 when he anchored at the approximate location where the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge touches down in Brooklyn today. There he was visited by a canoe party of Lenape. The next contact was in 1609 when the explorerer Henry Hudson arrived in what is now New York Harbor aboard a Dutch East India Company ship the Halve Maen (Half Moon) commissioned by the Dutch Republic.
European habitation in the New York City area began in earnest with the founding of a Dutch fur trading settlement, later called "Nieuw Amsterdam" (New Amsterdam), on the southern tip of Manhattan in 1614. By 1630, Dutch and English colonists started moving into the western end of Long Island. In 1637, Joris Jansen de Rapalje purchased about 335 acres (1.36 km2) around Wallabout Bay and over the following two years, Director Kieft of the Dutch West India Company purchased title to nearly all the land in what is now Kings County and Queens County from the indigenous inhabitants.
Finally, the areas around present-day Crown Heights saw its first European settlements starting in about 1661/1662 when several men each received, from Governor Pieter Stuyvesant and the Directors of the Dutch West India Company what was described as “a parcel of free (unoccupied) woodland there” on the condition that they situate their houses “within one of the other concentration, which would suit them best, but not to make a hamlet.”
Crown Heights had begun as a posh residential neighborhood, a "bedroom" for Manhattan's growing bourgeois class. The area benefited by having its rapid transit in a subway configuration (the IRT line underneath Eastern Parkway), in contrast to many other Brooklyn neighborhoods that had elevated lines. Conversion to a commuter town also included tearing down the 19th century Kings County Penitentiary at Carroll Street and Nostrand Avenue.
Beginning in the early 1900s, many upper-class residences, including characteristic brownstone buildings, were erected along Eastern Parkway. Away from the parkway were a mixture of lower middle-class residences. This development peaked in the 1920s. Before World War II Crown Heights was among New York City's premier neighborhoods, with tree-lined streets, an array of cultural institutions and parks, and numerous fraternal, social and community organizations.
Population changes began in the 1920s with newcomers from Jamaica and the West Indies, as well as African Americans from the South. During the '40s, '50s and '60s, many middle class Jews lived in Crown Heights. In 1950, the neighborhood was 89 percent white, with a small but growing black population. Some 50- 60 percent of the white population, about 75,000 people, were Jewish. By 1957, there were about 25,000 blacks in Crown Heights, about one fourth of the population. There were thirty-four large synagogues in the neighborhood, including the Bobov, Chovevei Torah, and 770 Eastern Parkway, home of the worldwide Lubavitch movement. There were also three prominent Yeshiva elementary schools in the neighborhood, Crown Heights Yeshiva on Crown Street, the Yeshiva of Eastern Parkway, on Eastern Parkway, and the Reines Talmud Torah.
The 1960s and 1970s were a time of turbulent race relations. With increasing poverty in the city, racial conflicts plagued some New York neighborhoods. With its racially and culturally mixed populations, Crown Heights was mired in this strife. The neighborhood's relatively large population of Lubavitch Hasidim, at the request of their leader, the Lubavitcher Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneersohn stayed in the community after other whites left.
During the Johnson administration, Crown Heights was declared a primary poverty area due to a high unemployment rate, high juvenile and adult crime rate, poor nutrition for lack of family income, relative absence of job skills and readiness to work, and a relatively high concentration of elderly residents.
Violence has erupted in the neighborhood on more than one occasion, including during the New York City blackout of 1977. More than 75 stores were robbed in the area. Thieves used cars to pull down gates protecting stores. In 1991 there was an outbreak known as the Crown Heights Riot. Through the 1990s, crime, racial conflict, and violence decreased in New York. Urban renewal and gentrification began to take effect in NYC including Crown Heights.
The Crown Heights Riot was a three-day disturbance that occurred in August 1991 in the Crown Heights neighborhood in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. The community was and is majority West Indian and African American and has a large minority of Jews. The riots began on August 19, 1991 after Gavin Cato, the son of two Guyanese immigrants, was accidentally struck and killed by an automobile in the motorcade of a prominent Hasidic rabbi. A Jewish ambulance known as Hatzolah came to the scene and removed the Jewish driver and placed him in the ambulance. The child was left pinned under the vehicle which had jumped onto the sidewalk of President Street and Utica Avenue. The police ordered the ambulance away, fearing the outrage that was being expressed by black bystanders. The rioting began very shortly after the Hatzolah left the scene. During the riot an Orthodox Jew, Yankel Rosenbaum, who was visiting Crown Heights from Australia, was murdered. The riot unveiled long-simmering tensions between Crown Heights' black and Jewish communities, had an impact on the 1993 mayoral race and ultimately led to a successful outreach program between black and Jewish leaders that somewhat helped improve race relations in the city.
Crown Heights today has extreme contrasts between lovely architecture and vacant, run-down buildings. It contains a variety of people ranging from bearded, dark-suit wearing Hasidim, to vividly and brightly dressed Afro-Caribbean residents. In the spring of 2008 racial tension flared up in a few blocks; however, it never reached the level of tension that occurred during the Crown Heights Riot of the early 1990s. In some areas the increasing rents have caused the displacement of long-time residents. That being said, Crown Heights remains an overall ethnic and social melange where a wide variety of people from older residents to new immigrants and other groups continue to reside.
NYC.GOV statistics for 2007 revealed that the 77th precinct, which includes a significant part of Crown Heights, had experienced a year-to-date decline of 40% in the number of murders (a total of 9, down from 15), significantly impacted by local volunteer police patrols, and a decline of 20% in the number of rapes (12, down from 15). However, felonious assaults and burglaries had increased significantly in that period(16.8 and 24.8%, respectively). According to the latest statistics, in 2010 stats showed an increase in the homicide rate for the 77th precinct which covers Crown Heights and Bed-stuy when it rose from 13 in 2009 to 20 in 2010. The 71st precinct which covers the southern portion of Crown Heights also recorded 10 homicides for the year.
As of 1994, of the approximately 150,000 residents in Crown Heights, 90 percent were of African descent (70 percent from the Caribbean and 20 percent of American birth), 9 percent were Hasidic Jews, and less than 1 percent were Latino, Asian and other ethnic groups. Reflecting the most varied population of Caribbean immigrants outside the West Indies, Crown Heights is known for its annual West Indian Carnival. The boisterous and colorful event is the West Indian Carnival Parade, also known as "The Labor Day Parade." The vivid ostentation goes along Eastern Parkway, from Utica Avenue to Grand Army Plaza. According to the West Indian-American Day Carnival Association, over 3.5 million people participate in the colorful parade each year. It is also the location of the Worldwide Headquarters of the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic Jewish movement, at 770 Eastern Parkway. A thriving Orthodox Jewish community has grown up around that location.
In City government, Crown Heights is part of New York City Council Districts 35 and 36. Crown Heights is represented in State government as part of the State Senate 19th District and the State Senate 20th District. In the New York State Assembly, Crown Heights is part of State Assembly District 43 and State Assembly District 57. Crown Heights is within the boundaries of New York's 11th congressional district for the U. S. House of Representatives, currently represented by Yvette Clark.
Crown Heights is served by the IRT Eastern Parkway Line/IRT New Lots Line, with major subway stations at Franklin, Nostrand, Kingston and Utica Avenues (IRT #3) and President Street (IRT #2). Several bus lines serve the station, including the B12, B14, B17, B43, B44 and B46. The B45, B15 and B65 run north of Eastern Parkway.
Cypress Hills, New York:
Cypress Hills is a sub-section of the East New York neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York City, lying north of City Line and south of Cypress Hills Cemetery, in the far northeastern corner of Brooklyn. It is abutted on the west by Bushwick and on the east, across the Brooklyn–Queens border, by Woodhaven and Ozone Park. It lies within the 37th City Council District of New York City. The southern border of the neighborhood is Atlantic Avenue.
The northern part, north of Atlantic Avenue, is mixed, with Hispanic-Americans, South Asian-Americans, Caribbean Americans, Italian-Americans, Irish-Americans and other white ethnics. The southern part is composed of African-Americans and Hispanic-Americans, and a scattered presence of South Asian-Americans.
It is served by the J train and the Z train, BMT elevated rail lines of the Metropolitan Transit Authority (the Jamaica Line), and the A train and the C train of the IND subway lines. Conduit Boulevard passes through the neighborhood.
In the south, on Sutter Avenue, facing the Cypress Hills Houses, is a branch of the Brooklyn Public Library. There is also a branch on Arlington Avenue between Warwick Street and Ashford Street. Northeastward, in the Woodhaven neighborhood, on Forest Parkway, is a branch of the Queens Borough Public Library.
Franklin K. Lane High School is at the extreme northeast corner of the neighborhood, north of Jamaica Avenue. P.S. 108 Sal Abbracciamento School is at 200 Linwood Street (on the corner of Arlington). Blessed Sacrament Elementary School is on Euclid Avenue, between Fulton Street and Ridgewood Avenue. The Intermediate School, IS 171 is on Ridgewood Avenue between Nichols Avenue and Lincoln Avenue.i.s. 218 & P.S. 72 also right across from the public houses. The middle school, IS 302 is also a public school, on Linwood Street between Atlantic Avenue and Liberty Avenue. Also, within this school, due to lack of funding, there was a public school ranging from grades K (kindergarten) to 8th grade, P.S.89 (aka Cypress Hills Community School) which has since attained its own school building not far from IS 302 on the corner of Atlantic Avenue and Warwick Street. P.S 7 sits under the J line in between Crescent Street and Hemlock Street. P.S 65 "The Little Red School House" serves 549 students in grades K-5.
To the south, more properly in the City Line neighborhood, are the "Cypress Hills Houses," housing projects under the authority of the New York City Housing Authority.
Dyker Heights, New York:
Dyker Heights is a residential neighborhood in the southwest corner of the Borough of Brooklyn in New York City, USA. It is sandwiched among Bay Ridge, Bensonhurst, and Gravesend Bay. According to the Post Office, Dyker Heights is bounded to the west by Interstate 278, to the north by Bay Ridge Avenue, to the east by Fourteenth Avenue, and to the south by Fort Hamilton. The Dyker Beach Golf Course extends to the Belt Parkway. Dyker Heights originated as a speculative luxury housing development in October 1895 when Walter Loveridge Johnson developed a portion of woodland into a suburban community. During the height of his development, the boundaries were primarily between Tenth Avenue and Thirteenth Avenue and from 79th Street to 86th Street. The finest homes of the development were situated along the top of the 110-foot (34 m) hill, at about Eleventh Avenue and 82nd Street. Dyker Heights is patrolled by the 68th Precinct of the NYPD.
The neighborhood of Dyker Heights lies within the boundaries of the original Dutch town of New Utrecht settled in 1657. The area that is now as Dyker Heights was not developed in the 17th or 18th centuries because the land was too sloped for farming. It remained common woodland until the mid-19th century. The trees of this forest were used by the townsfolk as a source of firewood and construction material. When the agricultural industry of New Utrecht changed from the farming of grains to the cultivation of market garden produce, the trees were cleared and the area became a large market garden with tomatoes, cabbages, and potatoes, among other produce.
The first house built at the top of the hill (what is now Eleventh Avenue and Eighty-Second Street, at about 110 feet (34 m) above sea level) was built in the late 1820s by Brigadier General René Edward De Russy of the United States Army. De Russy was a military engineer who built many forts in the United States – from the Canadian border and the eastern seaboard to the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific coast – including Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn. Since this is the tallest natural point in southwest Brooklyn, De Russy built his homestead here – it afforded a clear view of the harbor and its defenses, especially Fort Hamilton which was complete by November 1831. De Russy died in 1865 and his wife, Helen, sold the property in 1888 to Jane Elisabeth Loveridge and Frederick Henry Johnson.
According to the Brooklyn Eagle, Frederick Johnson did "much toward developing the locality in which he resided. He was the author of the original New Utrecht Improvement Bill, and an ardent advocate of the annexation of the Town to this City." The Town of New Utrecht was annexed to the City of Brooklyn on July 1, 1894. On January 1, 1898, the City of Brooklyn was annexed to the City of New York. Involved with real estate, Johnson was probably very aware of the real estate pressures on and potential of the real estate in New Utrecht. With this in mind, he most likely purchased the De Russy Estate with the intention of building an upscale residential neighborhood similar to Bensonhurst-by-the-Sea, built by James D. Lynch from 1880-1890 in the Bath Beach section of New Utrecht. At that time, The Real Estate Record claimed Bensonhurst-by-the-Sea was "the most perfectly developed suburb ever laid out around New York." The restrictions placed upon the property made Bensonhurst-by-the-Sea "a model settlement, where some of the most refined, intelligent and cultured of New York and Brooklyn's citizens have built their homes."
Following Frederick Johnson's death on August 15, 1893 at the age of 52, his second son, Walter Loveridge Johnson, took over the real estate business and by October 1895 Walter started Dyker Heights on his parents' property. Walter L. Johnson named his development "Dyker Heights" after the Dyker Meadow and Beach, which his development overlooks. The meadow and beach received their name from either the Van Dykes (an original New Utrecht family) who built the dykes to drain the meadow, or for the dykes that the Van Dykes built.
Walter L. Johnson was able to develop this portion of New Utrecht woodland into a residential community by making necessary improvements to it. In 1890, the only roads present were Kings Highway, Eighty-Sixth Street, Denyse's Lane, and a small unnamed road near Tenth Avenue – none of which were paved and only Eighty-Sixth Street was a thoroughfare specifically planned as such. The remaining land was unimproved. Johnson continued Brooklyn's street grid south with macadam pavement, graded the properties, installed gas, water, telephone, and electricity lines, and planted sugar maple trees – seven on the avenues and twenty along the streets. This opened over two hundred more building sites between Tenth and Thirteenth avenues as well as between Seventy-Ninth Street and Eighty-Sixth Street.
In 1895, Johnson, very much aware of the successful Bensonhurst-by-the-Sea, built three homes. His home was on the southwest corner of Eleventh Avenue and Eighty-Second Street (across the Avenue from the home of his mother), Albert Edward Parfitt's home was on Eighty-Second Street next to Johnson's, and the last, closest to Tenth Avenue, was the home of Arthur S. Tuttle who was Assistant Engineer of The Water Supply of The City Works Department of The City of Brooklyn. Parfitt was the architect of these three homes. Johnson's house burned down before 1900, Parfitt's was demolished by a developer in 1928 and replaced with seven, run-of-the-mill, fully detached, single-family homes, and Tuttle's house was remodeled over 10 years ago and clad in bright-white and sky-blue brick.
Throughout the infancy of the development, Walter L. Johnson was able to use the print press to his advantage. He advertised his suburban homes heavily and stated that the high ground, magnificent ocean view, and careful restrictions made Dyker Heights the handsomest suburb in Greater New York. Based on the newspaper accounts, he was right. In 1896 Johnson built and sold thirty homes in Dyker Heights. By January 1897, the Brooklyn Eagle reported on his achievements. "Mr. Johnson has met with great success in the development of Dyker Heights and had probably done more business and made more sales during the past year than all the rest of the surrounding settlements combined." In April 1898 sales were still very strong. "Dyker Heights still holds its lead among the suburban sections in building operations, over forty houses having been erected there during the past year... and there are fully twenty more houses about to be built." One of its many advantages was the location, which according to the Brooklyn Eagle, "is one of the finest in Greater New York, commanding an extensive view of water from Sandy Hook to the New Jersey Palisades, with Staten Island and the shores of New Jersey directly in front." Still more praise in February 1899, "Dyker Heights has been one of the most successful and the most rapid in growth of any of the suburban settlements, over one hundred dwellings, costing from $5,000 to $25,000 each, having been erected there within the last two years."
In September 1899, the Wall Street Journal even reported on the advantages of the development, recommending it to "the busy man of Wall Street" because of "its magnificent transportation facilities... it can be reached via the Thirty-Ninth Street Brooklyn Ferry and Eighty-Sixth Street Nassau Line in 45 minutes." In addition the article claimed that "the 45 minutes' trip between Dyker Heights and Wall Street by water and rail is as invigorating as the Dyker Heights climate is healthy-living. The rare opportunities afforded by Dyker Heights to the wealthy and to those in moderate circumstances are due largely to the energy, enterprise and good taste of its founder, Mr. Walter L. Johnson." A month later, the Wall Street Journal published "An Ideal Spot for a Home." From that article, one can clearly see why Dyker Heights was so successful. Its location and luxurious homes were first rate, "Dyker Heights is without a rival as to location, situated as it is at an elevation of 110 feet above the sea level, and is directly opposite the new Dyker Meadow Park... which will be the only seaside park in Greater New York." The article also explained the exclusiveness of the property, which can be seen in "its massive stone piers with heavy wrought-iron lamps and scrolls" that adorn the entrances. In December 1899 the Brooklyn Eagle reported that, "work has recently been commenced upon thirty high class Houses, the demand for which runs a dead heat with the supply."
Johnson set very high standards for the community: the Wall Street Journal explained "the property is carefully restricted against all nuisances and no building can be erected upon a plot of less than 60 feet (18 m) in width by 100 feet (30 m) in depth, and each building must cost at least $4,000 and stand well back from the street." These regulations, which were similar to those of Bensonhurst-by-the-Sea, were active until 1915. However, the most desirable feature of the area was still the "uninterrupted view of the lower bay from The Narrows to Sandy Hook and Atlantic Ocean, which is one of the most magnificent in the country, and nowhere else in the consolidated city is there anything to compare it with. From here can be seen a marine panorama hard to beat." Dyker Heights was so desirous that important members of society flocked to it. The Brooklyn Eagle reported in December 1899 that this "drain" on the more established social neighborhoods such as Brooklyn Heights and those in Manhattan, "almost threatens to lower the social tone of the neighborhoods where this universal exodus is effecting a gradual change in the character of the population."
Property on Eighty-fourth Street near Thirteenth Avenue was made available to the International Sunshine Society in 1906 by lawyer, financier, and promoter George E. Crater, Jr. The society was able to acquire the house for $11,000, roughly half the market value, and opened the Dyker Heights Home for Blind Babies on 1 November 1906. Cynthia W. Alden, Mary C. Seward, and other society officers worked with the New York City Board of Education to establish the first public kindergarten for blind children at the home in 1907. The original building is gone, but the work begun in Dyker Heights provided a legacy of significant reforms in the public education of blind children within New York and other regions of the United States.
One of the many focal points of the neighborhood was the Dyker Heights Club, which started in October 1896. By spring of 1898 the Club had a $30,000 club house designed by Albert Edward Parfitt on an $8,500 lot, measuring 200 × 200, located on the northeast corner of Thirteenth Avenue and Eighty-Sixth Street. Johnson moved his real estate office into the club house and hired a full-time architect, Constantine Schubert, who was also a Dyker Heights homeowner. This grand, neo-classical building was sadly demolished in 1929 by the Archbishop John Hughes Knights of Columbus Club, when they acquired the property for $60,000.
Early in the history of Dyker Heights, Walter L. Johnson continually purchased consecutive tracts of land until the boundaries of Dyker Heights stretched from Seventy-Ninth Street in the north, roughly Eighty-Sixth Street in the south, Tenth Avenue to the west, and about 300 feet (90 m) east of Thirteenth Avenue to the east. However, the boundaries of the Neighborhood of Dyker Heights are now defined by the Dyker Heights Post Office on the northwest corner of 13th and 84th Streets; along its northeast edge runs Bay Ridge Avenue; Sixteenth Avenue is its southeast boundary; Fort Hamilton makes its southwest border; and Interstate 278 is the northwest limit.
In December 1899, the Brooklyn Eagle wrote a very detailed description of the homes in Dyker Heights: "The typical Dyker Heights residences have five rooms each on the first and second floors and four rooms on the third. Upon entrance, the inmate or visitor is ushered into a hall twelve feet wide which runs back to the butler’s pantry. To the right of this hall is the parlor and library and to the left the reception and dining rooms. The rear space is taken up by the kitchen, butler’s pantry and washrooms with tiled floors. Birdseye maple is used in the finishing of the parlor and quartered oak in that of the library, one with mantles of the same wood in fancy tile finish. A large fireplace with ornamental andirons completes the mural decoration. The ceilings are ten feet high on the first floor, while nine feet is the elevation of the second and eight feet that of the third floor. Usually the dining room is fifteen feet square and finished off in quartered sycamore. Like the hall, the reception room is done off in quartered oak, but is circular in form and has a diameter of ten feet. In the kitchen is a glazed fireplace, while below stairs, speaking from a first floor level, are the cellar and laundry, with a depth of eight feet, and an asphalt double concrete floor."
"Of the five rooms on the second floor, one is a sitting room and the remainder sleeping apartments, all of which are finished in quartered oak and sycamore. A large bathroom with tiled floors takes up the remaining space of the second story. Rising to the third floor we find plain cypress as the invariable finish of the apartments, which comprise two servants’ rooms, a card or sitting room and a billiard parlor wainscoted on the sides and provided with seats for the players and onlookers. It may be noted further that the reception room and dining room are also wainscoted six feet high."
Of the approximately 150 homes initially built by Walter L. Johnson, about half remain; while the others have been razed and replaced by large Mediterranean villas, condos, as well as semi and fully attached homes. Very few of the newer homes fit into the historic context of Dyker Heights, and many of the original surviving homes have been extensively renovated and remodeled.
The Saitta House is a two-and-a-half-story, one-family Queen Anne dwelling completed ca. 1899 by architect John J. Petit and builder P.J. la Note for Beatrice and Simone Saitta (pronounced: sigh-eat-a). The home is located on the north side of 84th Street between Twelfth Avenue to the east and Eleventh Avenue to the west. The home reportedly cost $14,000 to build and the 8,000 sq ft (700 m2) of land cost $2,700.
The Saitta House is significant in the area of architecture as a remarkably intact, high-style example of Queen Anne residential architecture and for its association with the development and planning of Dyker Heights, a turn-of-the-20th-century suburban development in Brooklyn. No other house in Dyker Heights retains so much of its original architectural and structural components – both interior and exterior – as the Saitta House. The house was architect-designed for an affluent Dyker Heights family, and built ca. 1899 by craftsmen who came from Italy and lived on the premises during construction. Architect John J. Petit’s work can be found elsewhere in Brooklyn especially in the Prospect Park South Historic District (National Register listed). The Saitta House represents the original ideals, way of life, and quality architectural design of the original Dyker Heights development. It was listed on both the State and National Register of Historic Places in 2007. In June 2007, many local newspapers reported this news.
The original inhabitants of Dyker Heights were mainly of Anglican background; in fact they established Saint Phillip’s Episcopal Church, which still functions today. The residents were either local government officials or wealthy professionals. For instance, I. M. De Varona was Engineer of the Water Bureau, Clarence Barrow was Ex-Fire Commissioner, William C. Bryant was current Fire Commissioner, George W. Dickinson was a cotton-goods merchant, W. Bennett Wardell was a retired Judge, Richard Perry Chittenden was Assistant of the Corporation Counsel, Freeland Willcox was Secretary of the Cheeseborough Vaseline Company, and Eugene Boucher was longshoreman and insurance broker.
Italian-American homeowners in Dyker Heights were originally small in number and included Dr. Lorenzo Ullo, Counselor to the General Company of Italian Navigation, and Simone Saitta, a Manhattan wholesale fruit dealer. However, Walter L. Johnson did not care much for Italians, especially poor Italians. The Brooklyn Eagle explained a problem Johnson had with a particular Italian family in Dyker Heights ". . . The property which at the time was owned by Walter L. Johnson, was occupied by an Italian family, to whom Mr. Johnson paid $600 to vacate it in order that the neighborhood of Dyker Heights, which is very carefully restricted, might have no objectionable features about it." By 1940 Dyker Heights was inhabited by a majority of people of Italian descent many of whom helped establish the Roman Catholic Shrine Church of Saint Bernadette (ca. 1935) on 13th Avenue between 82nd and 83rd streets.
According to the CompStat (COMPuter STATistics) database of the NYPD for the 68th Precinct, Dyker Heights is one of the safest neighborhoods in all of New York City, with an 86.23% reduction in all crimes since 1990. Most notably, murder is down 90.9% since 1990 with 1 reported case in 2009 and 0 in 2008. There were 6 reported cases of rape in 2009, consistent with a 62.5% drop since 1990. There were 115 robberies and 206 burglaries in 2009, down 83.9% and 87.8%, respectively, since 1990. Felony assault charges have decreased by 68.1% since 1990, with 79 cases in 2009. Grand larceny, having a total of 370 cases in 2009, and grand larcenies for automobiles (G.L.A), with 155 reports in 2009, have also dropped, 60.7% and 95.1% respectively.
The center of Dyker Heights is not served by subway, but its neighboring communities are. Bay Ridge is served by the BMT Fourth Avenue Line (R train), with stations at Bay Ridge Avenue, 77th Street, 86th Street and 95th Street. The far south end of Boro Park is served by the BMT Sea Beach Line (N train), with stations at Fort Hamilton Parkway and New Utrecht Avenue. Bensonhurst is served by the BMT West End Line (D train), with stations at 79th Street, 71st Street and 62nd Street.
Several local bus routes and one express route serve Dyker Heights: B64, which runs on 13th Avenue (Dyker Heights Boulevard) between 86th Street and Bay Ridge Avenue; B4, which services Bay Ridge Parkway; B16, running on Fort Hamilton Parkway; B1, which is on 86th Street; B70, serving Seventh and Eighth Avenues on the neighborhood's western edge; X28: to Manhattan via the Gowanus Expressway.
Dyker Heights is accessible by car via the Belt Parkway, Verrazano-Narrows Bridge to Staten Island, and Gowanus Expressway (Brooklyn-Queens Expressway).
Dyker Heights is now most famous for its Christmas lights and decorations erected each year by its residents. It’s been called "Con Ed's warmest heartthrob," the "undisputed capital of Christmas pageantry," and the “king of the Christmas lights." Christmas lights are now the core of the Dyker Heights identity as not just one home, or one block, but rather the entire community participates.
Although in which December the lights began is unclear, newspaper reports and tours of the area suggest it started sometime in the 1980s. In 1985 one Lou Singer began running tours (Singer's Brooklyn) through the most elaborately light parts of Bensonhurst, Canarsie, Bay Ridge, and Dyker Heights where one could find "designer lighting."
Since those initial 1980 reports, the lights of Dyker Heights have become increasing more popular with New Yorkers as countless newspaper articles, news programs, documentaries, and remotes were created. Early on, the two most noted homes were on 84th Street, between 11th and 12th avenues, directly across from one another. The home of Lucy Spata with her Santa theme at 1152 84th St and that of Alfred Polizzotto with his Nutcracker motif at 1145 84th St.
Spata’s home is covered in lights, illuminated soldiers and choirboys, and other Christmas figures. The inside is decorated with 50 motorized dolls, miniature villages and many gifts. Outside Santa, played by her nephew, greets children and others who pass by.
The white mansion, owned by Alfred Polizzotto, is adorned with a pair of 29-foot (8.8 m) high wooden soldiers which stand guard and wave their arms. The front lawn has rearing horses and a quartet of dancers. In 1988, Polizzotto was diagnosed with lymphoma, which was successfully treated the following year. To celebrate his triumph, Polizzotto mounted the display the following year and ever since. In 2001, Mr. Polizzotto died and his family has continued the tradition in his honor.
In 1996, the Casos, who moved to Dyker Heights in 1995 (they have since relocated) had Midwood artist Carl Oliveri design Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol," which included 29 life-size figures on their front lawn at 1062 84th St.
In 2000, Conan O'Brien filmed a remote for Late Night with Conan O'Brien in Dyker Heights. A PBS televised documentary "Dyker Lights" was produced in 2001 as an insight into the neighborhood with stories involving the Christmas celebration lights.
Dyker Heights has been referred to as an "an epicenter of professionally hung Christmas lights," and as such most holiday decorations in the area are not erected by homeowners, but by local decorating companies, including B&R Christmas Decorators, Mechanical Displays, DiMeglio Christmas Decorators, Creative Christmas Decorators and others. The cost of hiring professional decorators can vary greatly, from $1,000 to $20,000 or more, depending on the scale of the display, and many companies also offer additional services, including the option to take down and store decorations.
The Dyker Beach Park and Golf Course is a municipal, 18-hole, championship golf course in the southern most part of Dyker Heights. It stretches from the Belt Parkway in the south to 86th Street in the north, between 7th Avenue on the west and 14th Avenue on the east. The course totals 217 acres and includes 6,548 yards of golf. The golf course is managed by American Golf Corporation, which not only won the contract to run the majority of New York City courses in 1999 but also renovated and expanded the club house in 2007-2008. Dyker Beach Golf Course is one of the oldest golf courses in the United States and second oldest in New York City, behind Van Cortlandt Park, in the Bronx.
The park officially dates back to 1895, but its use as public land goes back to the times of the Canarsee Indians and the original New Utrecht Dutch settlers who referred to it as the "common land." The Indians and the Dutch were unable to farm the land or to build houses on it because it was mainly meadows, marsh, and swamps. During the 17th century, the Van Dyke family tried to drain and reclaim this marshy land by building dykes. Thus the origins of the park’s name – after the Van Dyke family who built dykes or the dykes that the Van Dykes built.
The park evolved in four stages between 1895 and 1934, from upwards of eight parcels of land. Starting in 1895, the City of Brooklyn secured the first parcel, which stretched from the shore of Gravesend Bay to about 92nd street, and hired the landscape architecture firm of Olmsted, Olmsted and Eliot to design a 50-acre (200,000 m2) park, to be "the only seaside park in Greater New York." It was to include a saltwater lagoon, children's playgrounds, bathhouses, lawns, and drives along the shore. According to the NYC Parks Department, the 1896 Annual Report of the Brooklyn Parks Department claimed that Dyker Beach Park would be the "finest seaside park in the world." Although bathhouses were erected and roads were constructed, the plans were revised in 1911 by Mr. Charles D. Lay, a former landscape architect for the Park’s Department, who proposed to decrease the size of the lagoon and to add concert groves. In 1918 work began to fill the swampy areas of the park.
Prior to the 1920s, land stretching from 92nd Street to 86th Street was privately owned. The Dyker Meadow Land and Improvement Company owned the largest parcel and leased the land to both the Dyker Golf Club and Marine and Field Club, who used the Dyker Heights Club House, built in 1898, as their golf club house. In February 1916, the Poly Prep Country Day School, which was moving from 99 Livingston Street in Downtown Brooklyn to Dyker Heights, was unsuccessful in its attempts to purchase this parcel for their new county day school, as they were some $80,000 short. Thus, the land was sold to the NYC Parks Department. However, Parks Commissioner Raymond V. Ingersoll, who had two boys at Poly, offered the school a 25-acre (100,000 m2) site on 92nd Street and 7th Avenue, which was donated to the Parks Department by Frederic B. Pratt, the Chairman of the Brooklyn Committee on City Planning. The school graciously accepted the offer and constructed a neo-Georgian school, which still functions today in this same location.
According to the Parks Department, four additional parcels of land were acquired between 1924 and 1927 by assignment and condemnation and another three lots were transferred to the department in 1934, which concluded the expansion of the park. These later expansions demapped many streets which ran between 92nd and 86th streets, one such street was ‘De Russy Street’ which was built in the 1870s. Thus in 2008, the NYC Parks Department agreed to name the circular driveway in front of the Dyker Beach Golf Course Club house in his honor. In 1935, the Club House was constructed, designed by architect John Van Kleek. This building was renovated and expanded in 2008 by American Golf Corporation to house all golf operations as well as a wedding ceremony and reception hall which can accommodate 300 patrons.
During the 1950s and 1960s, Dyker Beach Golf Course was the world’s busiest, with over 100,000 rounds played annually. In 1965, a total of 103,581 rounds were played. In the 1970s, Tiger Woods’ father, then-US Army Col. Earl Woods learned to play the game in 1972 while stationed at Fort Hamilton. Today, besides the 18-hole golf course and the catering center, the park has baseball, football, and soccer fields as well as bocce, basketball, handball, and tennis courts.
East Elmhurst, New York:
East Elmhurst is a culturally diverse area in New York City, in the northwest of the borough of Queens. It is located north of Jackson Heights and Corona and is bounded on the east and north by Flushing Bay. Residents are mostly moderate-income families, but there are also low-income areas. It includes Trainsmeadow, which is its western section. It is patrolled by the New York Police Department's 115th Precinct. The neighborhood is part of Queens Community Board 3. The zip codes of East Elmhurst are 11369 and 11370.
East Elmhurst and its southern neighbor Corona are often referred to jointly as “Corona/East Elmhurst”. During the ‘50’s and '60's the area was home to legendary African American musicians, civil rights leaders, professionals and athletes including Dizzy Gillespie, Nat Adderley, Louis Armstrong, Jimmy Heath, Frankie Lymon, Charlie Shavers, Ella Fitzgerald, and Willie Mays. During the late 60' and early 70's numerous New York Mets such as Ed Charles and Tommie Agee called East Elmhurst home. East Elmhurst is the childhood home of US Attorney General Eric Holder and is home to Queens Borough President Helen Marshall.
Corona/East Elmhurst houses one of the most extensive collections of African American art and literature in the Langston Hughes Community Library and Cultural Center. A component of the Queens Library system, the Langston Hughes Community Library and Cultural Center is located on Northern Boulevard.
The Black Heritage Reference Center, a part of the Langston Hughes Community Library and Cultural Center, serves Queens County with a comprehensive reference and circulating collection, totaling approximately 30,000 volumes of materials written about and related to Black culture. Emphasis is given to those geographic areas where African-Americans have lived in significant numbers, including West Africa, South America, the Caribbean, Canada and the United States. The Black Heritage Reference Center of Queens County includes books, periodicals, theses and dissertations, VHS videos, cassettes and CDS, photographs, posters, prints, paintings, and sculpture. The curator is responsible for the coordination, supervision, and care of the special collection for its continued development and on-going maintenance. Cultural arts programs are scheduled through the Black Heritage Reference Center. Meeting space is available to community organizations by application.
Special features of the Black Heritage Center include: The Schomburg Clipping File — an extensive microfiche collection of periodicals, magazine clippings, typescripts, broadsides, pamphlets, programs, book reviews, menus and ephemera of all kinds. The UMI Thesis and Dissertation Collection — consists of more than 1,000 volumes of doctoral and master dissertations concerning Africans and African-Americans in the Diaspora. The focus of the collection is on criticisms of Black writers, with special emphasis on the works of writer and poet Langston Hughes. The Adele Cohen Music Collection — contains most of America's foremost Black publications on microfilm. The papers cover 15 states beginning in 1893, and are updated each year with current issues. The Black Heritage Video Collection — documents the history and culture of Africans and African-Americans on tape, and in all subject areas including literature, biography, social science, fine arts; and titles such as "Sankofa," and the "Million Man March." Through the Black Heritage Reference Center literature readings, workshops and lectures are scheduled, as well as cultural arts programming in fine art exhibitions, film festivals, dance, musical, and dramatic presentations/ performances.
In 1987 British Airways moved its United States corporate offices to the Bulova Corporate Center, a converted watch factory in the East Elmhurst/Jackson Heights area. In 1999 British Airways said it would close its headquarters in the watch factory and move to a new headquarters building in a location in the New York City area by 2002, when the airline's lease would run out. By 2001 the airline said it would keep 80,000 square feet (7,400 m2) of office space in the watch building, but that its telephone operations would move to Jacksonville, Florida. As of 2008 British Airways maintains offices in the Bulova building.
New York City Department of Education operates public schools in the area. P.S. 127 Aerospace Science Magnet School, an elementary school for grades PK-8, and I.S. 227 Louis Armstrong Middle School for grades 5-8 are in the neighborhood. A small section of the neighborhood is zoned for separate district in Whitestone, Queens causing some children to attend P.S. 21 for elementary and J.H.S 185 for middle school. Private schools in the neighborhood include Monsignor McClancy Memorial High School, an all-male Catholic high school for grades 9-12, and St. Gabriel School, a co-ed Catholic school for grades PK-8.
East New York, New York:
East New York is a residential neighborhood located in the Eastern section of the borough of Brooklyn in New York City, United States. The neighborhood is part of Brooklyn Community Board 5. Its boundaries, starting from the north and moving clockwise are: Cypress Hills Cemetery to the north, the Borough of Queens to the east, Jamaica Bay to the south, and the railway tracks next to Van Sinderen Avenue to the west. Linden Boulevard and Atlantic Avenue are the primary thoroughfares through East New York. ZIP codes include 11207, 11208, and 11239. The area is patrolled by the 75th Precinct located at 1000 Sutter Avenue. New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) property in the area is patrolled by P.S.A. 2. During the twentieth century, East New York came to be a commuter town predominantly inhabited by African Americans and Hispanics. Crime statistics have drop over the years, as East New York did at one point lead New York City in crimes and murders (reaching a record 129 in 1993), as of 2011 East New York still leads Brooklyn & New York City in Crimes & murders.
East New York has a population around 90,000. Over half the population lives below the poverty line and receives public assistance (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families [TANF], Home Relief, Supplemental Security Income, and Medicaid). East New York is predominantly African American with a significant Puerto Rican and Dominican population as well.
East New York consists of mixed properties but primarily semi-detached homes, 2-4 family houses and multi-unit apartment buildings including condominiums and co-ops. The area is also home to the East Brooklyn Industrial Park. Public housing developments of various type and a smaller number of tenements populate the area. The total land area is one square mile.
In 1980, the forty-four block East Brooklyn Industrial Park was established by the New York City Public Development Corporation in the northwest quadrant of East New York, Brooklyn. Bounded by Atlantic Avenue, Sheffield Avenue, Sutter Avenue and Powell Street.
There are twelve NYCHA developments located in East New York: Belmont-Sutter Area; three 3-story buildings; Boulevard Houses; eighteen buildings, 6 and 14-stories tall; Cypress Hills Houses; fifteen 7-story buildings; East New York City Line; thirty-three 3-story buildings; Fiorentino Plaza; eight 4-story buildings; Linden Houses; nineteen buildings, 8 and 14-stories; Long Island Baptist Houses; four, 6-story rehabilitated tenement buildings; Pennsylvania Avenue-Wortman Avenue; three buildings, 8 and 16-stories tall; Louis Heaton Pink Houses; twenty-two 8-story buildings; Unity Plaza (Sites 4, 5A, 6, 7, 11, 12, 27); five 6-story buildings; Unity Plaza (Sites 17,24,25A); three buildings 6-stories tall; and Vandalia Avenue; two 10-story buildings.
City Line is a subsection of East New York. The Brooklyn-Queens border to the east, Fountain Avenue to the west. Salem Fields Cemetery to the north and Jamaica bay to the south.
New Lots is often included in East New York. The boundaries of New Lots, starting from the south and moving counterclockwise, are: Linden Blvd to the south, Fountain Avenue to the east, Sutter Avenue to the north, and Van Sinderen Avenue to the west. New Lots includes multiple mixed income housing developments and is largely commercial.
Spring Creek is the southeastern part of the former Town of New Lots, and is often included in East New York. Its boundaries, starting from the north and moving clockwise are: Linden Blvd to the north, the Fountain Avenue border to the east, Gateway National Recreation Area to the south, and Schenck Avenue to the west. Spring Creek includes the well kept Starrett City apartment complex, the Gateway Plaza Mall, and is currently under development.
Cypress Hills is a subsection north of New Lots. The Cypress Hills housing project is not in Cypress Hills, it is in the City Line subsection of East New York. Van Sinderen Avenue to the west & Eldert Lane, Drew Street, 75th Street, Dumont Avenue,78th Street and 155th Avenue to the east. It is located north of Sutter Avenue and south of Highland Park & the Cypress Hills Cemetery.
Starrett City is a large subsidized apartment complex. Each building has between 11 and 20 floors. Its boundaries, starting from the north and moving clockwise are: Flatlands Avenue to the north, Hendrix Avenue to the east, Jamaica Bay to the south, and the Fresh Creek Basin to the west.
Brownsville is a neighborhood west of East New York. It has the train by Junius Street to the east, Remsen Avenue to the northeast & Ralph Avenue to the southeast,the train by Avenue D to the south, and East New York Avenue to the north. Woodhaven, Ozone Park, and Lindenwood are neighborhoods in the borough of Queens that are located to the east of East New York.
A chain of hills, geologically a terminal moraine, separates northwestern Long Island from Jamaica and the Hempstead Plains, the main part of Long Island's fertile outwash plain. Through one low spot in the chain passed a few 18th Century roads, including the ferry road or Jamaica Turnpike from Brooklyn to Jamaica, hence it was called "Jamaica Pass". During the American Revolutionary War invading British and Hessian soldiers ended an all-night march at this pass in August 1776 to surprise and flank General George Washington and the Continental Army, to win the Battle of Long Island.
In the middle 19th century the road between Brooklyn and Jamaica became the Brooklyn and Jamaica Plank Road. The New York and Manhattan Beach Railway and the Long Island Rail Road were also built through the pass. The point where they met was called Broadway Junction. As often happened at 19th century railroad junctions, a railway town arose. Rapid transit lines were built and brought urban sprawl to this recently rustic northern part of the Town of New Lots. The road to Brooklyn was renamed Fulton Street, the one to Jamaica, Jamaica Avenue and the one to Williamsburg, Broadway. East New York was annexed as the 26th Ward of the rapidly growing City of Brooklyn, and in the 20th century its name came to be applied to much of the former township.
After World War II, thousands of manufacturing jobs left New York City thereby increasing the importance of the remaining jobs to those with limited education and job skills. During this same period, large numbers of Puerto Ricans and African-Americans emigrated to New York City looking for employment. East New York, no longer replete with the jobs the new residents had come for, was thereby faced with a host of new socioeconomic problems, including widespread unemployment and crime.
Walter Thabit, a city planner for East New York, chronicled in his book, How East New York Became a Ghetto, the change in population from mostly working class Italians and Jewish residents to residents of Puerto Rican and African descent. Thabit argues that landlords and real estate agents played a significant role in the downturn of the area. Puerto Ricans were moving in masses to New York City in the late 1950s, at a time when unemployment rates in Puerto Rico soared to 25 percent, and left Puerto Rico on the brink of poverty.
Thabit also describes how the construction of public housing projects in East New York further contributed to its decline, noting that many of the developments were built by corrupt managers and contractors. He argues that the city government largely ignored the community when it could have helped turn it around.
Writing in the New York Press, Michael Manville accused Thabit of poor research, sweeping generalizations, and a failure to distinguish the actions of racist individuals from the effects of a racist capitalist system, and contends that much of the urban renewal and public housing efforts of the period were in fact well-intentioned, if ill-considered and hubristic.
New developments are rising in the area, including the Gateway Center, located on what was once part of a landfill near Jamaica Bay. The Gateway shopping mall in Starrett City near East New York is suburban-style, and is home to retailers that include Bed Bath & Beyond, Staples, Marshalls, Olive Garden, Red Lobster, Boulder Creek Steakhouse, Target, The Home Depot, and BJ's Wholesale Club. The development was welcomed by many in the neighborhood for the jobs it would provide and is frequented by people from all over Southern Queens and Southern Brooklyn, bringing business into the neighborhood. Unfortunately, that promise has been elusive, as the low-wage, high turnover positions which comprise the majority of jobs there do little to generate higher wealth in the community.
After a wave of arson ravaged the low income communities of New York City throughout the 1970s, many of the residential structures in East New York were left seriously damaged or destroyed. The dilapidated homes and streetscapes served as the fictional setting for the film Death Wish 3. The city, through its Department of Housing Preservation and Renewal, initiated several rehabilitation programs designed to redevelop many formerly abandoned apartment buildings and designate them low income housing beginning in the late 1970s. Also many subsidized multi-unit townhouses and newly constructed apartment buildings have been or are being built on vacant lots across the neighborhood. It is important to note that because of the restrictions placed by the rent-stabilization code on many of the redeveloped multi-family buildings, a significant number of these properties have fallen into disrepair and are at risk of landlord abandonment.
East New York is an extremely convenient zone with one fare buses and trains that can get you to most parts of NYC as well as JFK Airport. This area is served by the East New York station of the Long Island Railroad. It is served by the 3 train Junius Street, Pennsylvania Avenue, Van Siclen Avenue and New Lots Avenue stations on the IRT New Lots Line and the L train at Atlantic Avenue, Sutter Avenue, Livonia Avenue, New Lots Avenue on the BMT Canarsie Line. It is served by the Liberty Avenue, Van Siclen Avenue, Shepherd Avenue, Euclid Avenue, and Grant Avenue stations of the IND Fulton Street Line as well as the Broadway Junction station of the A, C, J, L, and Z lines of the New York City Subway. It is where the East New York Yard of the New York City Subway, and the East New York Bus Depot are located, near Jamaica Avenue. The B6, B12, B13, B14, B15, B20, B25, B82, B83, BM5, Q24 and Q56 buses also serve East New York.
East New York is patrolled by the NYPD's 75th and the Brooklyn North Task Force as well has Transit District 33 and Police Service Area 2 Precinct.
All areas of New York City are within the New York City Department of Education school district. East New York high schools suffer from high dropout rates. As with many NYC schools, gang violence is a common problem found in the local schools. One of the neighborhood's local public high schools, Thomas Jefferson High School, shut down in June 2007 due to extremely low academic performance: a graduation rate of 29%, with only 2% entering the school at grade level in math and 10% entering at grade level in in reading). The school was known for its ROTC program. Four new high schools were organized in the old building.
Elmhurst, New York:
Elmhurst is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Queens. It is bounded by Roosevelt Avenue (Jackson Heights) on the north; Corona to the northeast; Junction Boulevard on the east; Rego Park to the southeast; the Long Island Expressway on the south; Middle Village to the south and southwest; and Maspeth and the New York Connecting Railroad on the west; and Woodside on the northwest. The neighborhood is part of Queens Community Board 4.
The village was established in 1652 by the Dutch as Middenburgh (Middleburgh), and was a suburb of New Amsterdam (Nieuw Amsterdam) in New Netherland (Nieuw Nederland). The original settlers of Elmhurst were from the nearby colony of Maspat (now called Maspeth), following threats and attacks by local Indians.
When the British took over New Netherland in 1664, they renamed Middleburgh as New Town (Nieuwe Stad) to maintain the Dutch heritage. This was eventually simplified to Newtown. Among the English settlers in the present Elmhurst section of Newtown was Gershom Moore, in whose orchard a chance seedling produced the Newtown Pippin, Colonial America's most famous apple. Newtown was established as the Town Seat for the Township of the same name when it was established in 1683. The village was renamed Elmhurst in 1896 to identify the area with a new housing development, to avoid association with the larger Township and the Creek, and again to maintain the Dutch heritage. "Hurst" means "grove" or "woods" in Dutch.
Once Queens joined the City of Greater New York in 1898, Elmhurst developed into a fashionable district due to a housing development that was built by the Cord Meyer Development Company between 1896 and 1910, north of the Port Washington Branch railroad station. They expanded their holdings between 1905 and 1930, including Elmhurst Square, Elmhurst South, Elmhurst Heights, and New Elmhurst. Elmhurst also became home to the Grand St. LIRR station just west of the current Grand Avenue – Newtown (IND Queens Boulevard Line) station. The Grand Street LIRR station was served by the Main Line and the former Rockaway Beach Branch.
Prior to World War II, Elmhurst was an almost exclusively Jewish and Italian neighborhood. Following the war, Elmhurst evolved into what has been considered one of the most ethnically diverse neighborhoods in New York City. By the 1980s, there were persons from 112 nations in residence. Despite the decline of crime compared to their peaks during the crack and heroin epidemics, crime is not a problem in the community. Other problems in local schools include low test scores and high truancy rates.
Religious sites include a Buddhist temple and pagoda on 45th Ave and a large Jain temple on Ithaca St. Hindu temples include the Bangladeshi Hindu Mandir on 44th Ave. and the Geeta Temple on Corona Ave. There is alo a Satya Narayan Mandir on Woodside Ave.
Five churches of historic vintage are still extant and in use, two of which have historical graveyards. First Presbyterian Church of Newtown (Queens Boulevard and 54th Avenue) built in 1893, congregation was established in 1652. St. James Church (Originally St. James Episcopal Church, at Broadway and 51st Avenue), built in 1734. St. Adalbert Roman Catholic Church (52-29 83rd St.), founded in 1832. The Reformed Church of Newtown (85-15 Broadway at Corona Avenue), founded 1731, present structure built in 1834. Elmhurst Baptist Church (87-37 Whitney Avenue at the corner of Judge Street and Whitney Avenue), founded in 1900, built in 1902.
Elmhurst has two urban shopping malls: Queens Center and the smaller Queens Place Mall. Many furniture stores are adjacent to Grand Avenue on Queens Boulevard.
Accessible subway stations are Woodhaven Boulevard, Grand Avenue – Newtown and Elmhurst Avenue, all served by the E M R trains of the IND Queens Boulevard Line. In addition, the IRT Flushing Line, served by the 7 <7> train, runs along Roosevelt Avenue, the north border of Elmhurst, with stations at 74th Street – Broadway, 82nd Street – Jackson Heights and 90th Street – Elmhurst Avenue. Buses include the Q53, Q88, Q11, Q21, Q38, Q58, Q59, Q29, and Q60. Elmhurst is bounded by the Long Island Expressway (Interstate 495) to the south with exits on Grand Ave., Woodhaven Blvd., and Queens Blvd. The neighborhood is also bounded by the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway to the west with exits on Queens Blvd. Queens Blvd., Woodhaven Blvd., Junction Blvd., Roosevelt Ave., and Broadway are major roads in the community. Elmhurst is connected to Manhattan and Jamaice by Queens Blvd. and is connected to J.F.K International Airport by Woodhaven Blvd. and to LaGuardia Airport by Junction Blvd.
There is a growing Chinatown in Elmhurst; this new Chinatown is the second in Queens, in addition to the Flushing Chinatown. Previously a small area with Chinese shops on Broadway between 81st Street and Cornish Avenue, this newly evolved second Chinatown in Queens has now expanded to 45th Avenue and Whitney Avenue. In Chinese translation, Elmhurst is named 艾姆赫斯特 (ài mǔ hè sī tè-Mandarin translation). There are also many other Southeast Asian businesses and shops in the area, such as Malaysian, Indonesian, Thai, and Vietnamese.
McDowell's, the fictional restaurant depicted in the 1988 film Coming to America, is located in Elmhurst. The filmmakers cosmetically altered an existing Wendy's restaurant for the week-long location shoot. For many years Elmhurst was a familiar name due to the Elmhurst Gas Tanks (officially the Newtown Holder Station), a pair of large natural gas storage structures built in 1910 and 1921. Because the Long Island Expressway (LIE) frequently became congested in that area, "backup at the Elmhurst Gas Tanks" became a familiar phrase in radio traffic reporting. Being literal rather than legal landmarks, the gas holders were removed in 2001.
The Elmwood Theatre, one of the largest in the city, was built in 1928 and seats 2200 people. It closed in 2002 and was purchased by the Rock Church. Wrestling Groups including Usa Pro Wrestling,The Long Island Wrestling Federation,Ultimate Championship Wrestling/Impact Championship Wrestling and Extreme Championship Wrestling ran shows at the Elks Lodge on Queens Blvd in Elmhurst from 1997-2003. The Elks Lodge is now the ethnically diverse New Life Fellowship Church, and New Life Community Development Corporation, a non-profit organization that oversees services including and an ESL (English as a Second Language) program for immigrants. Elmhurst has produced a number of NBA basketball players, including Smush Parker (Guard for L.A. Clippers).
Far Rockaway, New York:
Far Rockaway is a neighborhood on the Rockaway Peninsula in the New York City borough of Queens in the United States. It is the easternmost section of the Rockaways. The neighborhood starts at the Nassau County line and extends west to Beach 32nd Street. The neighborhood is part of Queens Community Board 14. The name "Rockaway" may have meant "place of sands" in the Munsee language of the Native American Lenape. Other spellings include Requarkie, Rechouwakie, Rechaweygh, Rechquaakie and Reckowacky.
Access to Manhattan is available via the IND Rockaway Line (A) subway service, which has a terminal at Mott Avenue. This subway stretch is completely elevated throughout the Rockaway Peninsula.
The Far Rockaway station is the terminus for the Long Island Rail Road's Far Rockaway Branch, providing full service to Penn Station in Midtown Manhattan and Atlantic Terminal in Brooklyn. The line is unique in that trains leave New York City and make local stops in Nassau County before crossing back into Queens and terminating at Far Rockaway. Passengers can "change at Jamaica" between the various destinations and other LIRR lines. During rush hour, express service bypasses Jamaica station.
Residents of Far Rockaway thus have two options for rail access to Manhattan, an uncommon situation that provides a backup for commuters in the event of service disruptions on any one system.
The LIRR Far Rockaway Branch had originally been part of a loop that travelled along the existing route, continuing through the Rockaway Peninsula and heading on a trestle across Jamaica Bay through Queens where it reconnected with other branches. Frequent fires and maintenance problems led the LIRR to abandon the Queens portion of the route, which was acquired by the city to become the IND Rockaway Line, with service provided by the A train.
The neighborhood, like all of New York City, is served by the New York City Department of Education. Far Rockaway residents are zoned to several different elementary schools: P.S. 43; P.S. 104 The Bayswater School; P.S. 105 The Bay School; P.S. 106; P.S. 197 The Ocean School; P.S. 215 Lucretia Mott; and P.S. 253. Far Rockaway residents are zoned to I.S. 53 Brian Piccolo.
All New York City residents who wish to attend a public high school must apply to high schools. Far Rockaway High School is in Far Rockaway and Beach Channel High School is near Far Rockaway. Stella Maris High School, an all-girls Catholic high school, is located adjacent to the beach. Church of God Christian Academy is a K-12 co-ed school, located on Central Avenue.
Flatlands, New York:
Flatlands is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. The area is part of Brooklyn Community Board 18. One of the original five Dutch towns on Long Island (given the right to local rule by Peter Stuyvesant in 1661), this neighborhood was originally known as Nieuw Amersfoort, after the Dutch city of Amersfoort, but the name was changed to "Flatlands" after the British captured the area (future Kings County) from the Dutch in 1664. The area may have been settled by French Walloons as early as 1623, and by native Lenape Native Americans long before that.
Flatlands was originally a farming community where tobacco, corn, squash, and beans were grown, and oysters and clams were harvested from Jamaica Bay. Historic homes dated to the 18th century include the Stoothoff-Baxter-Kouwenhaven House and Joost Van Nuyse House.
The neighborhood borders are roughly delineated by Flatlands Avenue on the North, Avenue U to the south, Ralph Avenue to the east, and Flatbush Avenue to the west (other sources say Ave. H-Ave T. / Ralph Ave. - Nostrand Avenue. -- again, N/S/E/W).
Flatlands is one of the few Brooklyn neighborhoods not served by many subway lines; those that do serve it are the IRT Nostrand Avenue Line (2 5) at the Junction of Flatbush and Nostrand Avenues, and the BMT Brighton Line (B Q) (connected by city buses on Avenue L and Kings Highway). City bus lines serve the neighborhood.
According to the 2000 census, combined population of Canarsie and Flatlands is roughly 194,653 people (total Brooklyn residents: about 2,465,286). There are several historical structures in Flatlands, including the Hendrick I. Lott House (East 36th Street between Fillmore Ave and Ave. S, built around 1720), which was a stop on the Underground Railroad, and the Flatlands Dutch Reformed Church.
Flatlands is also home to the Gemini Lounge where Roy DeMeo of the Gambino Mafia Family frequented during the late 1970s-early 1980s. However, today the Gemini is a church. The Town of Flatlands was annexed by the City of Brooklyn in 1895, the last municipality in Kings County to be annexed by Brooklyn.
Flushing, New York:
Flushing, founded in 1645, is a neighborhood in the north central part of the City of New York borough of Queens, 10 miles (16 km) east of Manhattan.
Flushing was one of the first Dutch settlements on Long Island. Today, it is one of the largest and most diverse neighborhoods in New York City. Flushing's diversity is reflected by the numerous ethnic groups that reside there, including people of Asian, Hispanic, Middle Eastern, European, and African American ancestry, as well as Ashkenazi, Mizrahi, Sephardi, and Bukhari Jewish communities. It is part of the Fifth Congressional District, which encompasses the entire northeastern shore of Queens County, and extends into neighboring Nassau County. Flushing is served by five railroad stations on the Long Island Rail Road Port Washington Branch, and the New York City Subway Number 7 subway line has its terminus at Main Street. The intersection of Main Street and Roosevelt Avenue is the third busiest intersection in New York City behind only Times Square and Herald Square.
Flushing is part of Queens Community Board 7 and is bounded by Flushing Meadows-Corona Park to the West, Francis Lewis Boulevard to the East, Union Turnpike to the South and Willets Point Boulevard to the North. ZIP Codes beginning with 113- are administered from Flushing Post Office. The 113- area extends west into Jackson Heights, south into Glendale and Forest Hills and east into Little Neck.
In 1645, Flushing was established by English settlers on the eastern bank of Flushing Creek under charter of the Dutch West India Company and was part of the New Netherland colony. The settlement was named after the city of Vlissingen, in the southwestern Netherlands, the main port of the company; Flushing is an anglicization of the Dutch name that was then in use.
In its early days, Flushing was inhabited by English colonists, among them a farmer named John Bowne. John Bowne defied a prohibition imposed by New Amsterdam Director-General Peter Stuyvesant on harboring Quakers by allowing Quaker meetings in his home. The Flushing Remonstrance, signed in Flushing on December 27, 1657, protested religious persecution and eventually led to the decision by the Dutch West India Company to allow Quakers and others to worship freely. As such, Flushing is claimed to be a birthplace of religious freedom in the new world. Landmarks remaining from the Dutch period in Flushing include the John Bowne House on Bowne Street and the Old Quaker Meeting House on Northern Boulevard.
In 1664, the English took control of New Amsterdam, ending Dutch control of the colony, and renamed it New York. When Queens County was established in 1683, the "Town of Flushing" was one of the original five towns into which the county was subdivided. Many historical references to Flushing are to this town. The town was dissolved in 1898 when Queens became a borough of New York City.
Flushing was the site of the first commercial tree nurseries in North America, the most prominent being the Prince, Bloodgood, and Parsons nurseries. Much of the northern section of Kissena Park, former site of the Parsons nursery, still contains a wide variety of exotic trees. The naming of streets intersecting Kissena Boulevard on its way toward Kissena Park celebrates this fact (Ash Avenue, Beech, Cherry ...Poplar, Quince, Rose). Flushing also supplied trees to the Greensward project, now known as Central Park in Manhattan.
During the American Revolution, Flushing, along with most settlements in present-day Queens County, favored the British and quartered British troops. Following the Battle of Long Island, Nathan Hale, an officer in the Continental Army, was apprehended near Flushing Bay while on what was probably an intelligence gathering mission and was later hanged.
The 1785 Kingsland Homestead, originally the residence of a wealthy Quaker merchant, now serves as the home of the Queens Historical Society. The 1790 United States census recorded that 5,393 people lived in what is present-day Queens County.
During the 19th century, as New York City continued to grow in population and economic strength, so did Flushing. Its proximity to Manhattan was critical in its transformation to a fashionable residential area. In 1813, the Village of Flushing was incorporated within the Town of Flushing. By the mid-1860s, Queens County had 30,429 residents. Flushing's growth continued with two new villages incorporating: College Point in 1867, and Whitestone in 1868. In 1898, although opposed to the proposal, the Town of Flushing (along with two other towns of Queens County) was consolidated into the City of New York to form the new Borough of Queens. All towns, villages, and cities within the new borough were dissolved. Local farmland continued to be subdivided and developed transforming Flushing into a densely populated neighborhood of New York City.
The continued construction of bridges over the Flushing River and the development of other roads increased the volume of vehicular traffic into Flushing. In 1909, the construction of the Queensboro Bridge (also known as the 59th Street Bridge) over the East River connected Queens County to midtown Manhattan.
The introduction of rail road service to Manhattan in 1910 by the Long Island Rail Road Port Washington Branch and in 1928 by the New York City Subway's IRT Flushing Line (7 <7> trains) hastened the continued transformation of Flushing to a commuter suburb and commercial center. Due to increased traffic, a main roadway through Flushing named Broadway was widened and renamed Northern Boulevard.
Flushing was a forerunner of Hollywood, when the young American film industry was still based on the East Coast and Chicago. Decades later, the RKO Keith's movie palace would host vaudeville acts and appearances by the likes of Mickey Rooney, The Marx Brothers and Bob Hope. The theater now lies vacant and in disrepair due to an unauthorized real estate development project that took place in the early 1990s.
The 1939-1940 World's Fair was held in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park. Massive preparations for the Fair began in 1936 and included the elimination of the Corona dumps. Among the innovations presented to the world in 1939 was the television, which broadcast a speech by Franklin D. Roosevelt. After the World's Fair, the New York City pavilion was converted into the temporary headquarters of the United Nations where, in 1947, the UN voted in favor of the establishment of the State of Israel. After the United Nations moved to their permanent headquarters in Manhattan, the New York City pavilion was converted into a roller rink & ice skating center.
A second World's Fair, the 1964-1965 World's Fair was also held at the site of the Flushing Meadows-Corona Park. Pope Paul VI attended the Fair on October 4, 1965. On this papal trip, Pope Paul VI became the first pope to visit the United States. An exedra now commemorates the site of the Vatican pavilion. Michelangelo's masterpiece, the Pietà, was exhibited during his trip. Following the Fair, the Unisphere, the New York State Pavilion and the New York City Pavilion remained in the park. The NYC Pavilion's roller rink which had been converted back into exhibit space for the 1964-1965 World's Fair became the Queens Museum of Art.
Flushing has many landmark buildings. Flushing Town Hall on Northern Boulevard is the headquarters of the Flushing Council on Culture and the Arts, an affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. The building houses a concert hall and cultural center and is one of the sites designated along the Queens Historical Society's Freedom Mile.
Other registered New York City Landmarks include the Bowne House, Kingsland Homestead, Old Quaker Meeting House (1694), Flushing High School, St. George's Church (1854), the Lewis H. Latimer House, the former RKO Keith's movie theater, the United States Post Office on Main Street and the Unisphere, a 12-story high, stainless steel globe that served as the centerpiece for the 1964 New York World's Fair. The Flushing Armory, on Northern Boulevard, was formerly used by the National Guard. Presently, the Queens North Task Force of the New York City Police Department uses this building. In 2005, the Fitzgerald-Ginsberg Mansion on Bayside Avenue and in 2007, the Voelker Orth Museum, Bird Sanctuary and Victorian Garden were designated as landmarks.
Several attractions were originally developed for the World's Fairs in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park. There is a stone marker for the two 5,000-year Westinghouse Time Capsules made of special alloys buried in the park, chronicling 20th century life in the United States, dedicated both in 1938 and 1965. Also in the park are the Queens Museum of Art which features a scale model of the City of New York, the largest architectural model ever built; Queens Theatre in the Park; the New York Hall of Science and the Queens Zoo.
The Queens Botanical Garden on Main Street has been in operation continuously since its opening as an exhibit at the 1939 World's Fair. The Botanical Garden carries on Flushing's nearly three centuries long horticultural tradition, dating back to its once famed tree nurseries and seed farms.
Broadway-Flushing, also known as North Flushing, is a residential area with many large homes. Part of this area has been designated a State and Federal historic district due to the elegant, park-like character of the neighborhood. Recently much of the area was rezoned by the City of New York to preserve the low density, residential quality of the area. The neighborhood awaits designation as an Historic District by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission. Broadway-Flushing is bounded by 29th Avenue to the north, Northern Boulevard and Crocheron Avenue to the south, 155th to the west and 172nd Streets to the east.
The Waldheim neighborhood, an estate subdivision in Flushing constructed primarily between 1875 and 1925, is a small district of high quality "in-town" suburban architecture that preservationists have tried to save for at least twenty-five years. Waldheim (German for "home in the woods"), known for its large homes of varying architectural styles, laid out in an unusual street pattern, was the home of some of Flushing's wealthiest residents until the 1960s. Notable residents include the Helmann family of condiment fame, the Steinway family of Steinway pianos, as well as A. Douglas Nash, who managed a nearby Tiffany glass plant. The neighborhood was rezoned by the City of New York in 2008, in order to halt the destruction of its original housing stock, which began in the late 1980s, and to help preserve the low density, residential character of the neighborhood. As with the Broadway neighborhood, preservationists have been unable to secure designation as an Historic District by the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission to date. Today, Waldheim stretches between Sanford and Franklin Avenues on the north, 45th Avenue on the south, Bowne Street on the west and Parsons Boulevard on the east. The area is immediately southeast of the downtown Flushing commercial core, and adjacent to the Kissena Park and East Flushing neighborhoods. The area South of Kissena Park is often referred to as South Flushing.
All the public parks and playgrounds in Flushing are supervised by the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. For Queens County, the Department of Parks and Recreation is headquartered at The Overlook in Forest Park located in Kew Gardens.
Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, a 1,255-acre (5.08 km2) park, is considered a flagship park in Queens. The site hosted two World's Fairs, the first in 1939-1940 and the second in 1964-1965. As the result, the park infrastructure reflects the construction undertaken for the Fairs. Also located here is Citi Field, home of the New York Mets of Major League Baseball and the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center which is the home of the US Tennis Open. In 2008, a new Aquatic Center was opened in the park.
Kissena Park is a 234-acre (0.95 km2) park with a lake as a centerpiece. Queens Botanical Garden is a Template:Covert a garden which is the upper portion of Flushing Meadows – Corona Park. Kissena Corridor Park is a Template:Covert park which connects 2 separate Corridors which ties Flushing Meadows-Corona Park to Kissena Park. It contains a baseball field and it has a playground called Rachel Carson Playground. Bowne Park is an 11-acre (45,000 m2) park developed on the former estate of New York City Mayor Walter Bowne. Flushing Fields is a 10-acre (40,000 m2) greenbelt that includes the home athletic field of Flushing High School.
Public schools in Flushing are supervised by the New York City Department of Education through Administrative District 25. There are numerous public Elementary and Junior High Schools in Flushing and students generally attend a school based on the location of their residence.
The five public high schools in Flushing include: John Bowne High School; Robert F. Kennedy Community High School; Townsend Harris High School, is a selective high school located on the Queens College campus and was once ranked by U.S. News and World Report as one of the best public high schools in the United States; The Flushing International High School; and Flushing High School, the oldest public high school in the City of New York. It is housed in a distinctive Gothic Revival building built between 1912 and 1915 and declared a NYC Landmark in 1991. The two private high schools include: Archbishop Molloy High School and Holy Cross High School.
Queens College, founded in 1937, a senior college of the City University of New York (CUNY) is located on Kissena Boulevard near the Long Island Expressway. The City University of New York School of Law was founded in 1983 adjacent to the Queens College campus. The Law School operates Main Street Legal Services Corp., a legal services clinic.
In 1858, the first library in Queens County was founded in Flushing. Today, there are eight branches of the Queens Borough Public Library with Flushing addresses. The largest of the Flushing branches is located at the intersection of Kissena Boulevard and Main Street in Flushing's Chinatown and is the busiest branch of the highest circulation system in the country. This library has and houses an auditorium for public events. The current building, designed by Polshek Partnership Architects, is the third to be built on the site—the first was a gift of Andrew Carnegie.
The New York City Subway operates the IRT Flushing Line (7 <7> trains), which provides a direct rail link to Grand Central and Times Square in Manhattan. The Flushing – Main Street station, located at the intersection of Main Street and Roosevelt Avenue is the eastern terminus of the line. Until the Flushing line made its way to the intersection of Main Street and Roosevelt Avenue in 1928, the center of Flushing was considered to be at the intersection of Northern Boulevard and Main Street.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority operates the Long Island Rail Road's Port Washington Branch that has five rail road stations in Flushing. The Flushing Main Street is located one block away from the subway station that bears the same name. The other stations in the neighborhood are Mets – Willets Point, Murray Hill, Broadway and Auburndale. The Long Island Rail Road provides a direct rail link to Pennsylvania Station in Manhattan.
Major highways that serve the area include the Van Wyck Expressway, Whitestone Expressway, Grand Central Parkway and Long Island Expressway. Northern Boulevard extends from the Queensboro Bridge in Long Island City through Flushing into Nassau County.
Forest Hills, New York:
Forest Hills is a neighborhood in the borough of Queens in New York City, New York, United States. The neighborhood is home to upper-middle class residents, of whom the wealthier residents often live in the neighborhood's Forest Hills Gardens area. Historically, Forest Hills has been home to a large Jewish population, with more than ten thousand Jewish people located in the area.
The community of Forest Hills was founded in 1906; before that, the area was known as Whitepot. In 1909, Margaret Olivia Slocum Sage, who founded the Russell Sage Foundation, bought 142 acres (0.57 km2) of land from the Cord Meyer Development Company. The original plan was to build good low-income housing and improve living conditions of the working poor. Grosvenor Atterbury, a renowned architect, was given the commission to design Forest Hills Gardens. The neighborhood was planned on the model of the garden communities of England. As a result, there are many Tudor-style homes in Forest Hills, most of which are now located in Forest Hills Gardens. However, there are currently a number of Tudor homes in particular areas of Forest Hills outside of the Gardens. What is credited as the world's first radio commercial offered homes in Forest Hills.
The southern part of Forest Hills contains a particularly diverse mixture of upscale housing, ranging from single-family houses, attached townhouses, and both low-rise and high-rise apartment buildings. South of the Long Island Rail Road, the Forest Hills Gardens area is a private community that features some of the most expensive residential properties in Queens County. It was subject to restrictive covenants until the mid-1970s.
Forest Hills Gardens was named "Best Community" in 2007 by Cottage Living Magazine. The adjacent Van Court community also contains a number of detached single-family homes. There are also attached townhouses near the Westside Tennis Center and detached frame houses near Metropolitan Avenue. Finally, there are a number of apartment buildings scattered throughout the community. The most notable high-rise apartment buildings are The Continental on 108th St, Kennedy House, the Pinnacle, and the Windsor.
The north side of Forest Hills is home to the Cord Meyer community, which contains detached single-family homes. Teardowns and their replacement with larger single family residences has had a significant impact on the architectural integrity of the area. However, the Bukharian Jewish community, whose members have settled in the area in large numbers since the late 1990s, advocating the changes say the bigger homes are needed for their large extended families.
Northern Forest Hills is a combination of low-rise apartment buildings and detached single-family homes. The majority of these buildings are owner-occupied co-operatives and condominiums. On the northwestern edge of Forest Hills, on 62nd Drive, immediately adjacent to the Long Island Expressway is a NYCHA (New York City Housing Authority) low-income housing project that provoked controversy among the residents in the more prestigious areas of Forest Hills when it was constructed in the early 1970s.
The main thoroughfare is the twelve-lane-wide Queens Boulevard. Metropolitan Avenue is known for its antique shops. Forest Hills is easily accessible by subway, rail, bus and car. The commercial heart of Forest Hills is a mile-long stretch of Austin Street between Yellowstone Boulevard and Ascan Avenue, where many restaurants, boutiques, and chain stores are established. Restaurants are diverse; diners can find nearly any cuisine they desire.
Forest Hills has the multiple-link Forest Hills – 71st Avenue subway station (E F M R trains) at the intersection of Continental Avenue and Queens Boulevard. The local 75th Avenue stop (E F trains) is also in the area, and some entrance/exits of the express Kew Gardens – Union Turnpike station (E F trains) service the southeastern portion of Forest Hills. The neighborhood also has a commuter train station, the Forest Hills station of the Long Island Railroad, where Continental Avenue and Austin Street meet.
Forest Hills was once the home of the U.S. Open tennis tournament. The event was held at the West Side Tennis Club before it moved to the USTA National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows Park, about four miles (6 km) away. When the Open was played at the tennis stadium, the tournament was commonly referred to merely as Forest Hills, just as All-England Lawn Tennis Association Championships are referred to, simply, as Wimbledon. In the 2001 motion picture, The Royal Tenenbaums, Luke Wilson's character plays a tennis match at the West Side Tennis Club in Forest Hills. Gene Hackman's character is also shown cruising on the premises. A pivotal scene in Alfred Hitchcock's 1951 film Strangers on a Train, in which the main character (played by Farley Granger) is a professional tennis player, features a lengthy championship game at the Club, with distinctive shots of the surrounding community.
Two monuments are erected in Forest Hills Gardens: a tribute to the victims of World War I, the "Great War"; and the mast of the Columbia, the winner of the America's Cup yacht races in both 1899 and 1901. The Forest Hills Housing Co-ops are located on 62nd Drive and 108th Street.
Forest Hills, like all areas of New York City, is served by the New York City Department of Education. Pupils attend several public different elementary Schools, including: P.S. 101 School In The Gardens; P.S. 144 Col. Jeromus Remsen School; P.S. 175 Lynn Gross Discovery School; P.S. 196 Grand Central Parkway; and P.S. 220 Edward Mandel.
Catholic schools include Our Lady of Mercy and Our Lady Queen of Martyrs. Junior High students in Forest Hills attend either J.H.S. 157 Stephen A. Halsey (commonly referred to as Halsey) in Rego Park or J.H.S. 190 Russell Sage (known as Sage) in Forest Hills.
New York City high school students at the turn of the 21st century began applying to the high schools of their choice, as there is no longer a zoning policy for Forest Hills High School. Students from all over New York City may apply to high schools in other parts of the city. In addition to Forest Hills High School, a large percentage of students from both J.H.S. 157 and J.H.S. 190 gain admission to other high schools in New York City. Many J.H.S. 157 students also attend the Bronx High School of Science and Brooklyn Technical High School. Traditionally many more students from J.H.S. 190 choose to study at Stuyvesant High School and Townsend Harris High School, in addition to the Bronx High School of Science. Numerous students from Forest Hills also choose to attend middle and high school at the Baccalaureate School for Global Education, a public school in Astoria, Queens, which teaches grades 7 – 12 and follows the International Baccalaureate curriculum. Many of the students from outside the district accepted to attend Forest Hills High School are those who applied to either the school's Law & Humanities program, or the Carl Sagan program in accelerated math and science. FHHS has also began admitting students by audition to their Academy of Instructional Music and Performing Arts in 2005. Forest Hills, starting in Fall, 2010, will be served by Queens Metropolitan High School.
Famous graduates of Forest Hills High School include Jerry Springer and the founding members of punk bands the Ramones, and Reagan Youth, as well as singers Simon & Garfunkel. Bramson ORT College is an undergraduate college operated by the American branch of the Jewish charity World ORT. Its main campus is in Forest Hills, with a satellite campus in Brooklyn. The Forest Hills Library, and the North Forest Park Library operated by Queens Library, are in Forest Hills.
Forest Hills is served by the IND Queens Boulevard Line's E F M R routes. Stations serving Forest Hills are 67th Avenue (E M R trains), Forest Hills – 71st Avenue (E F M R trains) and 75th Avenue (E F trains). Also, the Long Island Railroad stops at its own Forest Hills station. Several buses, including the Q60 on Queens Boulevard and Q64, along Jewel Avenue serve the area, along with several MTA express buses to Manhattan. The Q23 follows a north-south route, bi-secting North Forest Hills, following 108th Street; and south of the LIRR, taking a west-ward diversion around Forest Hills Gardens, then resuming along 71st Avenue south of the Gardens.
Forest Hills is bordered by two of the more sizable parks in Queens managed by the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation: the 1,255 acres (5.08 km2) Flushing Meadows Corona Park, the site of two World's Fairs and home to the iconic Unisphere, and the 544 acres (2.20 km2) Forest Park. Within Forest Hills, some of the more popular parks and playgrounds include: Yellowstone Municipal Park – Katzman Playground (located on Yellowstone Blvd, between 68 Ave and 68 Rd); The Annandale Playground (located on Yellowstone Blvd, between 64 Rd and 65 Ave); The Willow Lake Playground (located off the Grand Central Parkway, between 71 Ave and 72 Ave); The Ehrenreich-Austin Playground (located on Austin St, between 76 Ave and 76 Dr); and The Russell Sage Playground (located on 68 Ave, between Booth St and Austin St).
Gerritsen Beach, New York:
Gerritsen Beach is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, located near Marine Park and Sheepshead Bay. The area is served by Brooklyn Community Board 15. Gerritsen Beach lies on a peninsula in the southeastern part of Brooklyn, near Marine Park; it is bounded on the north by Avenue U, to the east by Gerritsen Avenue, to the south by the Plumb Beach Channel, and on the west by Shell Bank Creek and Knapp Street. It is bisected, from west to east, by the Gotham Avenue Canal. The area north of the canal, known as the "new section" by local residents, has traditional city streets lined with stores, brick houses, and wide sidewalks. The area south of the canal (the "old section") is a popular spot for party boats and chartered fishing boats to be berthed. The streets in Gerritsen Beach are in alphabetical order (that is, Aster, Bevy, Celeste, Dictum, etc.), and they are patrolled by officers of the New York Police Department's 61st Precinct.
The neighborhood is named for Wolphert Gerretse, a Dutch settler, who, in the early seventeenth century, built a house and mill on Gerritsen Creek (which is now part of the nearby Marine Park neighborhood). The three-hundred-year-old mill was destroyed by fire in 1931. Until the early twentieth century, the area remained undeveloped except for a few squatters’ bungalows clustered at the foot of Gerritsen Avenue. In 1920, Realty Associates, a speculative real-estate builder, began constructing a middle-class summer resort there. The southwestern section of Gerritsen’s meadow was soon covered by one-story bungalows with peaked roofs and no backyards; typically, these houses were built on tiny 40-by-45-foot lots. The popularity of this venture spurred further growth. Some bungalow-owners made them suitable for year-round habitation; others built two-story houses with backyards; and, within a decade, there were fifteen hundred houses in Gerritsen Beach.
The neighborhood has a large Irish-Catholic presence in the community. A few long-standing residents of Irish descent refer to the community as being cois farraige, which is an Irish language phrase meaning "by the sea". The remaining percentage of the population is predominantly of Italian and German descent.
Resurrection Roman Catholic Elementary School operated until the end of the 2004-2005 school year when it was closed by the diocese. Currently, the Brooklyn Blue-Feather School for special-needs children operates in the former Resurrection school building. The neighborhood is also home of the New York City Department of Education's Public School 277 (P.S. 277), an elementary school known simply as "the Gerritsen Beach School".
The Gerritsen Ballfields, consisting of three baseball fields, two athletic fields for soccer or football, and one Little League field, are located on the east side of Gerritsen Avenue. In 1993, this site benefitted from a $192,000 renovation sponsored by Borough Council Member Herbert E. Berman. The park area also supports a "mini-airport" for motorized model airplanes; it is located at Seba Avenue and Gerritsen Avenue.
Recreational fishing is very popular with citizens of the community. Anglers can be found fishing along the shore at the southern end of Gerritsen Avenue and along the adjacent shoreline of the Gerritsen Creek-Marine Park "salt marsh". The Gerritsen Creek estuary and the adjacent salt marsh is also a major spawning ground for various species of marine fish. Riding of quads is also popular, as people ride around the beach and in the trails.
The community is served by the New York City Transit bus B31, and the BM4 express bus. The local Volunteer Fire Department (a.k.a. "the Vollies"), the last remaining volunteer fire department in Brooklyn, was organized in 1922 when Gerritsen Beach was a small summer-resort community. The name of the department is officially spelled Gerrittsen Beach Fire Department. In 1921, a damaging fire on Abbey Court demonstrated to the community that the city’s regular fire apparatus could not reach the beach in time to put out a fire. A mass meeting was called by the residents, and that resulted in the organization of the only volunteer fire department in Brooklyn.
Before the city added water mains under Gerritsen Beach streets, the Volunteers had to handle fires at least three times a week. The danger posed to Gerritsen Beach residents by fire was especially acute because most families relied on oil stoves and kerosene lamps, and the water to fight fires had to be pumped from wells. The city did not build Engine Company 321's firehouse at Gerritsen Avenue and Avenue U until October 4, 1930.
Members of the fire brigade, currently known as the Vollies, were, in earlier times, nicknamed "the Vamps". Members are not only trained to fight fires, but also to rescue people who are drowning and to assist in other medical emergencies. According to the Vollies 1976 anniversary booklet, the Vollies were approved by the New York State Department of Health as an Emergency Services Training Center. Although the community is now served by Engine Company 321, strong support for the "Vollies" continues.
The following historical events involved the Gerritsen Beach volunteers in actions outside their own neighborhood: The Vollies responded with medical aid to the victims of the jet airliner crash at 7th Avenue and Sterling Place, on December 16, 1960; Just three days after the New York air disaster, on December 19, 1960, the Vollies responded to the city’s call for assistance in fighting a blaze aboard the aircraft carrier USS Constitution at the Brooklyn Navy Yard; During heavy fog, the powerful beam of the department's Mack searchlight is used at Kennedy Airport when requested; When there was a major oil fire in Mill Basin in 1962, the Vollies responded with foam to help put it out; and During the blizzard of 2010, the department responded rapidly to Gerritsen Beach while the EMS system was heavily delayed. The Gerrittsen Beach Volunteer Fire Department has one fire engine and one ambulance.
Glendale, New York:
Glendale is a neighborhood in the west-central portion of the borough of Queens in New York City. It is bounded by Cooper Avenue to the north, Woodhaven Boulevard to the east, Myrtle Avenue to the south and Fresh Pond Road to the West. The neighborhood is part of Queens Community Board 5.
It is characterized as a middle class residential community, in relation to the less developed neighborhoods directly surrounding it such as Forest Hills, Ridgewood, Woodhaven, Jamaica, and Kew Gardens, because of its relative isolation from the New York City Subway system and its bordering by various cemeteries and parks. The zip code of Glendale is 11385. It shares this zip code with nearby Ridgewood.
Originally named Fresh Ponds, Glendale was a swampy area of land with fresh water pools. It was part of 74,000 acres (300 km²) of land collectively called Newtown, chartered by the Dutch West India Company in 1642.
By the mid-nineteenth century, Fresh Ponds was a thriving German farming community. In 1860, George C. Schott, a developer, was given a large amount of land in Fresh Ponds as repayment for a debt. He renamed the land Glendale after his hometown in Ohio. Nine years later, one John C. Schooley, a real estate agent, bought a substantial amount of property and also called it Glendale. Schooley laid out streets and divided his property into 469 lots, measuring 25 x 100 ft (7.6 x 30 m), which he then sold off for $300 each.
In 1847, The State Rural Cemeteries Act was passed in New York, which by 1850 put an end to the establishment of any new cemeteries in Manhattan. Cemetery owners were however encouraged to build in Brooklyn and Queens. Glendale quickly became almost encircled by cemeteries, as seen in the accompanying map, being located in what is called the “Cemetery Belt”. Among the cemeteries that surround Glendale are Saint John’s, Cypress Hills, All Faith's Lutheran, Mount Lebanon, Mount Carmel, Beth-El, Mount Neboh, and Union Field. Some of these cemeteries are the resting places of many famous people, including Jackie Robinson, Mae West, and Harry Houdini, at whose tomb devotees gather each year on Halloween to see if he can pull off the ultimate escape trick and return from the grave.
In 1869, a railroad stop at 73rd Street was opened by the South Side Railroad, which was sold in 1874 to the North Side Railroad, which then was merged into the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) in 1876, becoming part of the Montauk Branch. In 1927, the station burned down and was never replaced. In 1998, service to the Glendale station was discontinued. However, freight trains still operate, although in recent years controversy over trains transporting radioactive waste through the community has arisen.
Farms continued to provide the backbone of the economy until World War I, though development was beginning along Myrtle Avenue, Glendale’s main thoroughfare, as many family-run stores began opening and steam powered trolleys were introduced on the avenue in 1891.
In Glendale, many ethnic groups are represented. Many residents of Glendale are White Americans of German, Irish, Italian, and other Western European descent. Like nearby Ridgewood and Maspeth, an influx of people of Polish, Romanian, and Puerto Rican descent have moved into Glendale in recent years.
Myrtle Avenue was greatly enjoyed for its parks often frequented by picnickers. With the Steam Trolley running along the Avenue, several investors bought a total of 500 acres (2 km²) of land in the eastern end of Glendale and opened a number of parks and beer gardens. "In the 1890’s on the north side of Myrtle Avenue from what is now 83rd Street to Woodhaven Boulevard, the following picnic parks opened: Schmidt’s Woods, Glendale Schuetzen Park, Greater New York Park and Casino and Tivoli Park. On the south side of Myrtle Avenue from 88th Place to Woodhaven Boulevard: El Dorado Park, Emerald Park and Florida Park opened." These parks drew large crowds, not only from Glendale but from Eastern Brooklyn, where there were no proper parks at the time. Roller hockey is popular at Mafera Park, as the 104th Precinct Roller Hockey League exists there. In the mid-nineteen-twenties, the parks closed as they were unable to financially weather Prohibition. The parks were incorporated by the city into what is known today as Forest Park.
After World War I, Glendale's economic base shifted from farming to textiles and breweries. The largest employer was the Atlas Terminal, a vast industrial park, consisting of 16 buildings (factories). It was demolished in 2004 and a massive shopping center called The Shops at Atlas Park, which opened in April 2006. Traditionally, Glendale was home to a large and active community of German immigrants. And while this group is still heavily represented in the neighborhood, most of the local businesses have become more Americanized over the generations.
While having always been part of Queens, until the late 1970s Glendale and neighboring Ridgewood were served by the Brooklyn post office in Bushwick. After the 1977 blackout, which was accompanied by riots and looting in Bushwick, Ridgewood and Glendale disassociated themselves from Bushwick. In 1979, the two areas were granted a Queens ZIP Code, 11385.
Glendale was renowned for its many authentic German restaurants, namely Zum Stammtisch (The Family Table), Von Westernhagen's, Gebhardt's, and Hans Gasthaus. However, in the last decade all but Zum Stammtisch have closed doors for good. Stammtisch can be found highly regarded in most New York City tour guides even though it is located in an outer borough.
The oldest operating business in Glendale dates to the 1830s. Originally called the Woods Inn, the Woods is a two-story house with a bar on the first floor and apartments, which were once rooms-for-rent, on the second floor. It had been conveniently located just half a block from the train station. However, with the station's closing, it is now an off-the-beaten-path watering hole for locals. Part of an episode of NYPD Blue was filmed here in the late 1990s. "A Stranger Is Watching" (1982) starring Rip Torn was also filmed here, and most of the crew ate lunch with the owner at that time, John Virga.
Another of Glendale’s bars, The Assembly, figured prominently in the 1996 film Trees Lounge, written, directed, and starring Steve Buscemi. It served as the set for the fictional bar for which the movie is named. Glendale is also home to Cooper's Ale House, which is featured in the show The King of Queens as a local bar. Cooper's was taken over by new ownership and is now called Yer Man's Irish Pub. It is on 88th Street right off Cooper Avenue. Glendale's newest addition, The Shops at Atlas Park, has a number of chain and independent restaurants, including California Pizza Kitchen, Chili's Grill & Bar, Johnny Rockets, Starbucks, Manor Oktoberfest, and Shiro of Japan.
Glendale is home to seven schools: P.S. 91 Elementary, P.S. 113 Elementary, I.S. 119 The Glendale Intermediate School, Saint John's Lutheran Elementary, Sacred Heart Elementary, Redeemer Lutheran Elementary, and Saint Pancras Elementary.
In 1896, Glendale's first fire department, the Ivanhoe Park Hose Company, a volunteer fire company, was established. It was funded by one Henry Meyer, a wealthy businessman, who owned a cigar factory, a lucrative holding of stocks, and a sizable amount of land, part of which would become the neighborhood of Liberty Park. The fire department's uniforms, a hose cart and the hose were subsidized by Meyer. He also undertook several construction projects, such as building pumping stations, to ensure water would be available anywhere long the major streets (i.e., Myrtle Avenue and Cypress Hills Street). Later that year, the first company was expanded with a hook and ladder and renamed Ivanhoe Fire Hook and Ladder Company and 2 months later became Company 10 in the Newtown Fire Department.
Today, the neighborhood is serviced by Fire Department Engine Company #286 and Ladder Company #135, housed on the south side of Myrtle Avenue between 66th Place and 67th Street and by the 104th Police Precinct located on Catalpa Avenue at 64th Street.
Forest Park has been a place for fun for the residents of Glendale. The park has a bandshell, which provides shows for the community; a golf course and the park is a popular spot for skaters. It also has a public golf course, as well as riding trails (stables are located off the park grounds).
Gowanus, New York:
Gowanus is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. The neighborhood is part of Brooklyn Community Board 6. The Gowanus area has been an active center of industrial and shipping activity since the 1860s. It is zoned for light to mid-level manufacturing (M1, M2, and M3). Recently, residential developers have been hindered by the industrial zoning and the problems of the sewage overflow through the canal water, but there have been rumors of rezoning by the New York City Department of City Planning. In 1636, Gowanus Bay was the site of the first settlement by Dutch farmers in what is now Brooklyn.
The water and much of the land along the banks of the Gowanus Canal have been severely polluted from a combination of CSO's (combined sewer outflows) along the canal designed to relieve sewage and storm water when the sewer treatment plant is overwhelmed as well as from decades of industrial use and extensive coal gas manufacturing during the late 19th century. The Gowanus Canal was also an alleged Mafia dumping ground.
The F, G, and R trains run through Gowanus. Bike routes cross the canal on the Union Street and 3rd Street bridges. The Carrol Street bridge is the oldest of the four remaining retractable bridges in the country. It was built in 1889. Also, in the early 1980s an old nineteenth century munitions factory at 230 3rd Street in Gowanus became the site of the massive Gowanus Memorial Artyard, the remains of which can still be seen today.
Greenwood Heights, New York:
Greenwood Heights is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Brooklyn that takes part of its name from the neighborhood proximity to the Green-Wood Cemetery. The much-debated borders are, roughly, the Prospect Expressway to the north, Third Avenue to the west, Eighth Avenue to the east and 36th Street to the south (southern boundary of The Green-Wood Cemetery).
A mixed neighborhood of working class Polish American and Italian American families, South American and Mexican immigrants, and middle class Brooklynites who have relocated from other higher-priced neighborhoods, Greenwood Heights' architectural mix of wood frame and brick homes gives the area an eclectic look and feel, different from its neighbors Park Slope to the north and Sunset Park to the south.
Recent new real estate development, curbed with the rezoning of the area in November 2005, has brought an influx of luxury condominium apartments into a residential area that was mainly made up of 1- and 2-family homes. Post-rezoning, while new development sites have occurred, there has been a new trend of home renovations (many of them "gut renovations"), taking many of the neglected circa 1900 wood frame homes and restoring them to their turn of the century historical look.
One of the sites of the sprawling Battle of Brooklyn (Battle of Long Island) in August of 1776, the area is steeped in a rich history from its identity as a pivotal battle site in the American Revolutionary War to famous residents of Green-Wood Cemetery and its history of families working the once vibrant Brooklyn waterfront. Greenwood Heights is a part of Brooklyn Community Board 7 along with Windsor Terrace, Sunset Park and South Park Slope.
Hammels, New York:
Hammels is a section of Rockaway Beach on the Rockaway Peninsula in the New York City borough of Queens. It is located west of Arverne and east of Seaside, and is centered on Beach 84th Street. Its main thoroughfare is Beach Channel Drive. The A train passes through the neighborhood. The Hammel Houses, a public housing project built in 1954, is located in the neighborhood.
Hammels was named for a local landowner, Louis Hammel (1836-1904). It originated as a summer community based on a series of boardwalks that ran between the Bay and Ocean shores. This was followed by a hotel — the Eldert House — that was kept by Garret Eldert, and faced the bay on the east side of what today is Beach 85th Street. In August 1869, Louis Hammel leased the hotel. The New York, Woodhaven & Rockaway Railroad ran within a few feet of the hotel as a trestle was erected across the bay in 1880. The hotel gave an easement for construction of the "Hammels" station, which was used as the name for the entire community.
A dock in front of the hotel on the Bay side, known as Fifth Landing, was a regular stop for boats of the Iron Steamboat Company. As the Rockaway resorts declined, residency changed to permanent residents. In 1897, Hammels merged with Hollands and was incorporated as the Village of Rockaway Beach. The following year, Rockaway Beach became part of the City of Greater New York when the five boroughs consolidated into a single city and New York City was created.
Hollis, New York:
Hollis is a neighborhood within the southeastern section of the New York City borough of Queens. A predominantly African American community, the boundaries are considered to be the Far Rockaway Branch of the Long Island Rail Road to the west, Hillside Avenue to the north, Francis Lewis Boulevard to the east (although parts of Queens Village are addressed as Hollis on Jamaica water bills) and Murdock Avenue to the south. Much of this area is considered to be within the St. Albans postal district. Hollis is close to Jamaica and Queens Village, Queens. The neighborhood is part of Queens Community Board 12. Hollis is patrolled by the NYPD's 113th Precinct.
The first European settlers were Dutch homesteaders in the 17th century. A century later, early in the American Revolutionary War, it was the site of part of the Battle of Long Island, a battle in which the rebel Brigadier General Nathaniel Woodhull was captured at a tavern on what is now Jamaica Avenue. Woodhull Avenue in Hollis is named after him.
The area remained rural until 1885, when developers turned 136 acres (55 ha) into houses, and the area is still developed primarily with single family houses. In 1898, it became a part of New York City with the rest of the borough of Queens. Since the end of the Korean War, the neighborhood has been settled primarily by African-American middle class families. In recent years, the area has seen a large influx of South Asians and West Indians. The area has a majority of working parents with many early childhood schools in Hollis. Hollis is mainly within zip code 11423.
Long Island Rail Road service is available at the Hollis station, located at 193rd Street and Woodhull Avenue. The station is served exclusively by Hempstead Branch trains.The Q2 and Q110 bus pass from Jamaica into Hollis and out to Queens Village.
Howard Beach, New York:
Howard Beach is a suburban neighborhood in the southwestern portion of the borough of Queens in New York City. It is bordered in the north by the Belt Parkway and South Conduit Avenue in Ozone Park, the south by Jamaica Bay in Broad Channel, the east by 102nd-104th streets, and the west by 78th Street. The neighborhood is part of Queens Community Board 10 and home to a large Italian population. The ZIP code of Howard Beach is 11414.
Howard Beach was established in the 1890s by William J. Howard, a Brooklyn glove manufacturer who operated a 150 acre (0.61 km²) goat farm on meadow land near Aqueduct Racetrack as a source of skin for kids' gloves. In 1897, he bought more land and filled it in and the following year, built 18 cottages and opened a hotel near the water, which he operated until it was destroyed by fire in October 1907. He gradually bought more land and formed the Howard Estates Development Company in 1909. He dredged and filled the land until he was able to accumulate 500 acres (2 km²) by 1914. He laid out several streets, water mains and gas mains, and built 35 houses that were priced in the $2,500-$5,000 range.
The Long Island Rail Road established a station named Ramblersville in 1905 and a Post Office by the same name opened soon thereafter. A casino, beach, and fishing pier were added in 1915 and the name of the neighborhood was changed to Howard Beach on April 6, 1916. Development continued and ownership was expanded to a group of investors who sold lots for about $690 each starting in 1922. Development, however, was limited to the areas east of Cross Bay Boulevard near the LIRR station known as Coleman Square. The rest of Howard Beach consisted of empty marsh land except for the area to the south of Coleman Square, which consisted of many small fishing bungalows that dotted alongside Hawtree Creek and Jamaica Bay. This area of Howard Beach would retain the name "Ramblersville" only to become more known later on as "Hamilton Beach." Despite its close proximity to the Howard Beach station at Coleman Square, the LIRR would establish a station a quarter of a mile down the line at Hamilton Beach in 1919.
After World War II, Queens and Long Island went through a major suburban building boom leading to the marsh land west of Cross Bay Boulevard to be filled in. This led to the development of many Cape-Cod and High-Ranch style houses on 50 and 60 x 100 lots. This area was officially named "Rockwood Park" or "New Howard Beach" while the area east of the boulevard became known as "Old Howard Beach." In the early 1950s, farm land north of Rockwood Park was developed with the building of many red bricked two-story garden style cooperative apartments along with some six story co-op and condo apartment buildings. A number of private two family houses were also built in this neighborhood, which was named Lindenwood. The various neighborhoods continued to be developed through the 1960s and 70's as Cross Bay Boulevard became the area's main shopping district. During the 1990s and 2000s, Rockwood Park would see even further high scale development as many of the area's old houses were torn down and replaced with upscale million dollar mini-mansions.
Like most Queens neighborhoods, Howard Beach is composed of several smaller neighborhoods — Howard Beach, Old Howard Beach, Hamilton Beach, Ramblersville, Rockwood Park, Lindenwood, and Howard Park. Howard Beach proper is a small peninsula bordered by the Belt Parkway and Conduit Avenue on the north, Jamaica Bay on the south, Hawtree Creek on the east separating it from Hamilton Beach and Shellbank Basin on the west that separates it from Cross Bay Boulevard.
Cross Bay Boulevard is the main commercial strip of Howard Beach and going northward it eventually turns into Woodhaven Boulevard after Ozone Park. Throughout the 1970s and 80s, the Boulevard was made up almost exclusively of locally-owned shops and restaurants. However, starting in the 1990s, chain stores and restaurants began moving in and now many well-known franchises are on the boulevard. Entertainment venues on Cross Bay Boulevard such as the Kiddie-Park and Cross-Bay Lanes were popular until their collapse in the 1970s and 1980s.
The Joseph P. Addabbo Memorial Bridge (named for a deceased member of the United States House of Representatives who once represented the district that includes Howard Beach) connects mainland Queens to Broad Channel.
Bernard Coleman Memorial Square (colloquially Coleman Square) is the small plaza at Howard Beach-JFK on the IND Rockaway Line of the New York City Subway (served by the A train) and AirTrain JFK. There is a memorial to servicemen from Howard Beach who died in World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War.
Joseph Addabbo, Jr., the son of former Congressman Joseph P. Addabbo, represents the area as member of the New York State Senate. Congressman Gregory W. Meeks (D-NY) represents that part of Howard Beach east of Cross Bay Boulevard and the west part of Cross Bay Boulevard currently has no representative in Congress. Former Congressman Anthony D. Weiner (D-NY) represented of the part west of Cross Bay Boulevard until he resigned from Congress. A special election to replace former Congressman Anthony D. Weiner will take place on September 13, 2011. Eric Ulrich (R-NY) is the New York City Councilman for Howard Beach.
Howard Beach - JFK Airport on the IND Rockaway Line was formely a Long Island Rail Road station on the Rockaway Beach Branch. Frequent fires on the trestle to Broad Channel forced the LIRR to file Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the 1950s, which allowed New York City Transit to purchase the line in 1956.
The station provides a connection between the A train and AirTrain JFK (and was the terminus of the former JFK Express, known colloquially as the "Train To The Plane"). Prior to the AirTrain JFK, the Port Authority provided a free shuttle bus to the terminals at JFK Airport. The AirTrain now provides these connections.
A movie was made based on the 1986 racial incident entitled "Howard Beach: Making A Case For Murder". On The Chris Rock Show, comedian Chris Rock proposed renaming Cross Bay Boulevard after Tupac Shakur, asking the predominantly white residents of the neighborhood to sign a petition. In the 1989 Spike Lee Movie "Do the Right Thing," in a riot scene near the end of the film, a chant rises up: "Howard Beach! Howard Beach! Howard Beach!" This immediately follows a scene wherein a young black man is killed by police using excessive force to break up a fight.
Hunters Point, New York:
Hunters Point is a neighborhood on the south side of Long Island City, in the New York City borough of Queens. The neighborhood is part of Queens Community Board 2.
On May 4, 1870, Hunters Point was incorporated with the villages of Astoria, Blissville, Ravenswood, Dutch Kills, Middletown, Sunnyside and Bowery Bay into Long Island City.
As a peninsula bounded by the commercial waterways of Newtown Creek and the East River, Hunters Point became a highly industrialized area in the 19th century. Deindustrialization in the 1970s and 80s left many abandoned warehouses and factories in the community. Gantry Plaza State Park was built in this neighborhood in the 1990s, with restored car float docks and an excellent view of Manhattan. There are new schools, businesses, playgrounds and high rise apartments. LaGuardia Community College is a short distance away. In 1998, the Queens Historical Society recognized Hunters Point's historical architecture with a "Queensmark" award to encourage landmark preservation. The neighborhood is currently undergoing substantial gentrification, with condominiums being built along the East River waterfront.
The Hunters Point Historic District is a national historic district that includes 19 contributing buildings. They are a set of townhouses built in the late-19th century. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973.
Hunters Point has two Long Island Rail Road stations: Long Island City and Hunterspoint Avenue at the intersection of Hunterspoint Avenue and Skillman Avenue. They are the termini of the Montauk Branch and Hunterspoint Branch of the LIRR City Terminal Zone. LIRR commuters at Hunterspoint Avenue can connect to the nearby Hunters Point Avenue station of the 7 subway line, the Q67 bus, or take New York Water Taxi ferries from the nearby docks.
During the summer the New York Water Taxi Company operates Water Taxi Beach, a public beach artificially created on a wharf along the East River, accessible at the corner of Second Street and Borden Avenue.
Inwood, New York:
Inwood is a hamlet and census-designated place (CDP) in Nassau County, New York, United States. The population was 9,792 at the 2010 census. Inwood is included among the Five Towns, an informal grouping of villages and hamlets in Nassau County on the South Shore of western Long Island adjoining the border with Queens County in New York City. Despite the name, none of the communities are towns. In addition to Inwood, the Five Towns is usually said to be composed of the villages of Lawrence and Cedarhurst, the hamlet of Woodmere, and "The Hewletts", which consist of the villages of Hewlett Bay Park, Hewlett Harbor and Hewlett Neck and the hamlet of Hewlett, along with Woodsburgh. The "towns" most commonly included as constituents of the "Five Towns" are all within the Town of Hempstead.
According to the United States Census Bureau, the CDP has a total area of 2.1 square miles (5.4 km2), of which, 1.7 square miles (4.4 km2) of it is land and 0.4 square miles (1.0 km2) of it (20.19%) is water.
Inwood was first settled c. 1817 and was originally called North West Point, named after its geographic position in relation to the more central part of Far Rockaway, of which it was then a part. Its original settlers were Jamaica Bay fishermen, generally lawless and troublesome to other Rockaway residents. Soon after the American Civil War, the area became known as Westville. The first true road in the area, the Inwood end of Lord Avenue, was built when the neighboring village of Lawrence was developed.
When the first post office in the village was established on February 25, 1889, the name of the village was changed to Inwood; a post office named Westville already existed in New York State. By the time of World War I, a large part of Inwood's population was of Italian and Albanian extraction. Inwood is home to the famous Inwood Country Club which was the site of the 1921 PGA Championship as well as the 1923 U.S. Open. Inwood was the birthplace of Nassau County's first County Executive, J. Russell Sprague as well as Olympian Ray Barbuti.
Students attend Lawrence Public Schools, which also serves students from Lawrence Cedarhurst and Atlantic Beach, and sections of North Woodmere and Woodmere.
The Inwood station on Long Island Rail Road's Far Rockaway Branch provides service to Penn Station in Midtown Manhattan.
Jamaica, New York:
Jamaica is a neighborhood in the borough of Queens in New York City, New York, United States. It was settled under Dutch rule in 1656 in New Netherland as Rustdorp. Under British rule, the Village of Jamaica became the center of the "Town of Jamaica". Jamaica was the county seat of Queens County from the formation of the county in 1683 until March 7, 1788, when the town was reorganized by the state government and the county seat was moved to Mineola (now part of Nassau County). When Queens was incorporated into the City of Greater New York in 1898, both the Town of Jamaica and the Village of Jamaica were dissolved, but the neighborhood of Jamaica regained its role as county seat. The neighborhood is part of Queens Community Board 12. Jamaica is patrolled by the NYPD's 103rd Precinct.
Previously known as one of the predominantly African American neighborhoods in the borough of Queens, Jamaica in recent years has been undergoing a sharp influx of other ethnicities. It has a substantial concentration of West Indian immigrants, Indians, Arabs, Russians, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Filipinos as well as many long-established African American families.
The neighborhood of Jamaica is completely unrelated to the Caribbean nation of Jamaica (although many residents are immigrants from Jamaica); the name similarity is a coincidence. The Lenape were the Native Americans living in the area when the English took it over in 1664, and named it "Jameco" after a Lenape language word for "beaver".
Jamaica is the location of several government buildings including Queens Civil Court, the civil branch of the Queens County Supreme Court, the Queens County Family Court and the Joseph P. Addabbo Federal Building, home to the Social Security Administration's Northeastern Program Service Center. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration's Northeast Regional Laboratory as well as the New York District Office are also located in Jamaica. Jamaica Center, the area around Jamaica Avenue and 165th Street, is a major commercial center, as well as the home of the Central Library of the Queens Borough Public Library.
Some locals group Jamaica's surrounding neighborhoods into an unofficial Greater Jamaica, roughly corresponding to the former Town of Jamaica, including Richmond Hill, Woodhaven, St. Albans, Rosedale, Springfield Gardens, Hollis, Laurelton, Cambria Heights, Queens Village, Howard Beach and Ozone Park. The New York Racing Association, based at Aqueduct Racetrack in South Ozone Park, lists its official address as Jamaica (Central Jamaica once housed NYRA's Jamaica Racetrack, now the massive Rochdale Village housing development).
Jamaica Avenue was an ancient trail for tribes from as far away as the Ohio River and the Great Lakes, coming to trade skins and furs for wampum. It was in 1655 that the first settlers paid the Native Americans with two guns, a coat, and some powder and lead, for the land lying between the old trail and "Beaver Pond" (later Baisley Pond). Dutch Director-General Peter Stuyvesant dubbed the area "Rustdorp" in granting the 1656 land patent.
The English took over in 1664, renamed it "Jameco" (or Yamecah) after the name they gave to the local Native Americans that lived in the area, and made it part of the county of Yorkshire. In 1683, when the British divided the Province of New York into counties, Jamaica became the county seat of Queens County, one of the original counties of New York.
Colonial Jamaica had a band of 56 Minutemen that played an active part in the Battle of Long Island, the outcome of which led to the occupation of the New York City area by British troops during most of the American Revolutionary War. In Jamaica, "George Washington slept here" is indeed true — in 1790, in William Warner's tavern. Rufus King, a signer of the United States Constitution, relocated here in 1805. He added to a modest 18th-century farmhouse, creating the manor which stands on the site today. King Manor has recently been restored to its former glory, and now houses King Manor Museum.
By 1776, Jamaica had become a trading post for farmers and their produce. For more than a century, their horse-drawn carts plodded along Jamaica Avenue, then called King's Highway. The Jamaica Post Office opened September 25, 1794, and was the only post office in the present-day Boroughs of Queens or Brooklyn before 1803. Union Hall Academy for boys, and Union Hall Seminary for girls, were chartered in 1787. The Academy eventually attracted students from all over the United States and the West Indies. The public school system was started in 1813 with funds of $125. Jamaica Village, the first village on Long Island, was incorporated in 1814 with its boundaries being from the present-day Van Wyck Expressway (on the west) and Jamaica Avenue (on the north, later Hillside Avenue) to Farmers Boulevard (on the east) and Linden Boulevard (on the south) in what is now St.Albans. By 1834, the Brooklyn and Jamaica Railroad company had completed a line to Jamaica.
In 1850, the former Kings Highway (now Jamaica Avenue) became the Brooklyn and Jamaica Plank Road, complete with toll gate. In 1866, tracks were laid for a horsecar line, and 20 years later it was electrified, the first in the state. On January 1, 1898, Queens became part of the City of New York, and Jamaica became the county seat.
The present Jamaica station of the Long Island Rail Road was completed in 1913, and the BMT Jamaica Line arrived in 1918, followed by the IND Queens Blvd. Line in 1936. The 1920s and 1930s saw the building of the Valencia Theatre (now restored by the Tabernacle of Prayer), the "futuristic" Kurtz furniture store and the Roxanne Building.
Economic development was long neglected. In the 1960s and 1970s, many big box retailers moved to suburban areas where business was more profitable. Such retailers included brand name stores, commercial strips and movie theaters that once thrived in Jamaica's busiest areas. Macy's and the Valencia theater were the last companies to move out in 1969. The 1980s brought in the crack epidemic which created even more hardship and crime. Prime real estate spaces were filled by hair salons and 99 cents stores. Furthermore, existing zoning patterns and inadequate infrastructure did not anticipate future development. Since then, the decrease of the crime rate has encouraged entrepreneurs who plan to invest in the area. The Greater Jamaica Development Corporation (GJDC) is a long-standing nonprofit organization that has done an excellent job in promoting development. They have acquired valuable real estate and sold them to national chains in order to expand neighborhood opportunities for advancement. As well they have completed underway proposals by allocating funds and providing loans to potential investors who have already established something in the area. One Jamaica Center is a mixed-use commercial complex that was built in 2002 by The Mattone Group housing Old Navy, Bally Total Fitness, Walgreens, Subway (restaurant), Dunkin' Donuts, a 15-screen multiplex theater and once a Gap. Banking has also made a strong revival as Bank of America, Sterling National Bank, Chase Bank, and Carver Federal Savings Bank have each created at least one branch along various major streets: Jamaica Avenue, Parsons Boulevard, Merrick Boulevard, and Sutphin Boulevard. A $75 million deal between the developers, The Mattone Group and Ceruzzi Enterprises, and Home Depot cleared the way for a new location at 168th St. and Archer Ave. All approvals were obtained within three months of the application dates.
The most prominent piece of development has been the creation of the Sutphin Boulevard transit hub aka "Jamaica Station" which was fully completed in 2003. It includes the Sutphin Blvd. E, J, and Z subway subway station, LIRR, and the Airtrain JFK which provides a 5-7 minute direct ride from Jamaica to John F. Kennedy International Airport. The Airtrain station remains the central figure for ongoing economic progress. With the growing number of riders each day passing through this station, the city is providing some major changes to the surrounding blocks of this massive hub of transport.
Currently Jamaica has great potential to be a premier business center in New York City following the examples of major redevelopment occurring in Long Island City, Flushing, and Downtown Brooklyn. In 2005, the New York City Department of City Planning drafted a plan that would rezone 368 blocks of Jamaica in order to stimulate new development, relieve traffic congestion, and shift upscale amenities away from low-density residential neighborhoods. The plan includes up-zoning the immediate areas around Jamaica Station to accommodate passengers traveling through the area. To improve infrastructure the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation has agreed to create more greenery and open spaces to allow pedestrians to enjoy the scenery. At the same time, the city has reserved the right to protect the suburban/residential charm of neighboring areas. Several blocks will be down-zoned to keep up with the existing neighborhood character. On September 10, 2007 the City Council overwhelmingly approved the plan. Structures of up to 28 stories can be built around the main transit hub as well as residential buildings of up to 7 stories can be built on Hillside Ave. As of today, there are a few up and coming projects. The New York City Economic Development Corporation has issued an RFP for redevelopment of a 45,000 sq ft (4,200 m2). abandoned garage located at 168th St. and 93rd Ave. Plans are underway to convert this space into retail and parking spots. "TechnoMart Queens" has been the first ever declared approved project. Located at Sutphin Blvd. and 94th Ave., Korean Based Prime Construction Corp., Greater Jamaica Development Corporation, and several other partners have signed a deal to create a 13-story Mega-mall. 9 floors will be dedicated towards wholesale electronics, 3 floors to retail space for shopping, and it is estimated to contain parking for up to 800 cars. Groundbreaking on this site will initiate in late 2008 and is slated for completion by mid-2011. The GJDC has announced in their newsletter that another site adjacent to the mall will be converted into a hotel for Airtrain passengers. Official groundbreaking information has not been released nor declared yet its completion is set for 2010.
North American Airlines has its corporate headquarters in Building 141 on the grounds of John F. Kennedy International Airport. Grupo TACA operates a Jamaica-area TACA Satellite at 149-16 Jamaica Avenue. When Tower Air existed, its headquarters were in Hangar 17 on the grounds of Kennedy Airport.
Jamaica Station is a central transfer point on the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR), which is headquartered in a building adjoining the station; all but one of the commuter railroad's lines (the exception being the Port Washington Branch) run through Jamaica.
The New York City Subway's IND Queens Boulevard Line (E F trains) terminates at 179th Street station, at the foot of Jamaica Estates, a neighborhood of mansions east of Jamaica's central business district. The Archer Avenue Line, which opened in 1988 (E J Z trains), terminates at Jamaica Center – Parsons/Archer station. Jamaica Center is not just a transit hub; it is also the name of a business and government center that includes a federal office building, and a shopping mall and theater multiplex (One Jamaica Center), and is adjacent to various other businesses and agencies, such as the main forensic laboratory facility for the New York City Police Department.
Jamaica's bus network provides extensive service across eastern Queens, as well as to destinations as distant as Hicksville in Nassau County, the Bronx, the Rockaways, and Midtown Manhattan. Nearly all bus lines serving Jamaica terminate there; most do so at the 165th Street Bus Terminal or the Jamaica Center subway station.
Jamaica, a large, sprawling neighborhood, is also home to John F. Kennedy International Airport—one of the busiest international airports in the United States and the world— public transportation passengers are connected to airline terminals by AirTrain JFK, which operates as both an airport terminal circulator and rail connection to central Jamaica at the integrated LIRR and bi-level subway station located at Sutphin Blvd and Archer Avenue.
Major streets include Archer Avenue, Hillside Avenue, Jamaica Avenue, Liberty Avenue, Merrick Boulevard, Parsons Boulevard, Guy R. Brewer Boulevard (formerly known as New York Boulevard), and Sutphin Boulevard, as well as the Van Wyck Expressway (I-678) and the Grand Central Parkway.
Neighboring areas are Jamaica Estates, Jamaica Hills, Briarwood, Cambria Heights, St. Albans, Hollis, Queens Village, South Ozone Park, Kew Gardens, Richmond Hill, Laurelton, Rosedale, Brookville, Rochdale, South Jamaica, Springfield Gardens, Hillcrest, Kew Gardens Hills, Fresh Meadows. South Flushing, and Woodhaven.
Jamaica Avenue or sometimes known as the "Ave" is Jamaica's busiest thoroughfare. The route actually begins at Broadway Junction in Brooklyn, near the boundary of the East New York neighborhood. The Avenue enters Jamaica east of the Van Wyck Expressway, and it brings the traveler to the Joseph Addabbo Social Security Administration Building, courthouses and the main building of the Queens Library, along with many discount stores offering a variety of goods. Jamaica Avenue also sets the tone for historical and cultural amenities. The 200-year-old King Manor Museum, once home to Rufus King, a founding father of America, is located at the corner of 153rd St. and Jamaica Ave. It includes a 2-story museum with over an acre of land and a public park. Directly across from the Museum is the Jamaica Performing Arts Center, part of the JCAL, represents a long sought adaptive reuse of the landmark, 150 year old former Dutch Reformed Church. It was completed in 2007.
Hillside Avenue is located along the northern boundary of Jamaica. It is served by the F train, which runs all the way from Sutphin Boulevard to 179th Street, where it terminates. Hillside Avenue starts off in the Richmond Hill area and runs east bypassing Ozone Park, running throughout Jamaica, and into Queens Village and Long Island. It consists of a wide 6 lane street with numerous commercial activities. The Q43 Bus runs its entire length starting off in Sutphin Boulevard. Today, Hillside Avenue is actually the line that separates Jamaica from Jamaica Hills, Jamaica Estates and Brairwood on the southern boundary and Union Turnpike from Flushing on the northern boundary. ". The enormous cultural diversity is well foreseeable in this region. Within every couple or so blocks, there is a unique transition of one ethnic group to another. From 148th Street to 150th Street, one will find numerous wholesale and merchandise shops with a well amount of family oriented restaurants of South American descent. From 151st Street and into 164th Street, there is an unprecedented amount of groceries and restaurants pertaining to the West Indies. Mainly of Guyanese and Trinidadian origin, these stores serve their respective population living in and around the Jamaica Center area. Lastly, advancing east from 167th Street to 171st Street, there is an enormous amount of East Indian shops. Mainly invested by the ever growing Bangladeshi population, hundreds of South Asians come here to shop for Eastern goods not found anywhere else in Queens. Also restaurants such as "Sagar" and "Ghoroa" countless more resemble the Bangladeshi stronghold here. Some people actually refer to this area as being another "Little South Asia" similar to that of Jackson Heights.
Sutphin Boulevard is Jamaica's second busiest throughfare. It is home to the E, F, J and Z trains, the LIRR, AirTrain JFK, and two Queens Courthouses. It begins at Hillside Avenue and 147th Place in the north and works its way downward connecting with Jamaica Avenue, Archer Avenue, Liberty Avenue, South Road, Linden Boulevard, and finally terminates at Rockaway Boulevard. At first it is a small four-lane street, but when reaching the downtown area it curves into a complete six-lane passageway. At 95th Avenue, it reemerges from the LIRR underpass and becomes a four-lane street once more until its endpoint.
Several colleges and universities make their home in Jamaica proper or in its close vicinity, most notably: York College, a Senior College of the City University of New York, and St. John's University (Queens Campus), A private, Roman Catholic University founded by the Vincentian Fathers (Lazarists).
Jamaica's public schools are operated by the New York City Department of Education. Private schools in Jamaica include: Al-Iman School, an Islamic PK-12 school; Archbishop Molloy High School. Formerly an all-boys Catholic high school, now co-ed; Immaculate Conception School[disambiguation needed], a co-ed Catholic school from pre-K to 8th grade. The school is a local landmark located on the property of Immaculate Conception Church and Monastery, run by The Passionist Congregation of Priests; St. Nicholas of Tolentine a co-ed Catholic school from pre-K to 8th grade, run by The Sisters of Charity; and The Mary Louis Academy, a private, Catholic, girls' high school run by the Sisters of St. Joseph. United nations international school, a private school in Jamaica estate The Catholic schools are administered by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn.
The Central Library of the Queens Borough Public Library, the nation's highest circulation public library system, is in Jamaica. The Baisley Park Branch and the South Jamaica Branch are also located in Jamaica.
On January 18, 2003, Armando Magtalas Balajadia went to New York City, New York to spend a three day vacation there thru United Airlines. Since January 20, 2003 is Martin Luther King Day, he decided to visit in New York City for 3 days to visit his relatives and to visit the main landmarks there especially the Statue of Liberty. This is his first time to visit in New York. New York City is approximately 2,985 miles from San Francisco, California. The flight took about 6 hours straight from San Francisco International Airport (SFO) to John Fitzgerald Kennedy International Airport (JFK). JFK is the main airport of New York City but the airport is located in Jamaica, New York. After his arrival, he went to Pan American Hotel in Elmhurst, New York and stayed there for three days. Pan American Hotel has a free shuttle bus from John Fitzgerald Kennedy International Airport (JFK) and La Guardia Airport (LGA) to the hotel. The hotel was recommended by his aunt, Silvia Arpa Balajadia because it is close to their house in Rego Park, New York. Anyway, the hotel is good and clean but they don't have a complimentary breakfast. There are many fastfood restaurants besides the hotel. The weather condition there was so cold with snow. The temperature was 20°F to 30°F. Later, his brother, Addison Magtalas Balajadia, followed to the hotel and stayed there for a night. Since his brother is a US Air Force and he came from New Jersey where their military camp is located, he went to the hotel by riding in a Subway. Subway is a well-known train in New York City. The time difference in New York is three hours ahead from California. Because of his jet log, he slept in the hotel immediately after his arrival.
Kew Gardens Hills, also sometimes incorrectly referred to as Kew Garden Hills, is a one-square mile sub-neighborhood of Flushing in the New York City borough of Queens. The western border is Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, on the north is Jewel Avenue, on the south is Union Turnpike and to the east is Parsons Boulevard (or 164th Street). Kew Gardens Hills roughly encompasses ZIP code 11367. The neighborhood is part of Queens Community Board 8.
Main arteries through the neighborhood are Main Street, Jewel Avenue, and Kissena Boulevard. Main arteries around the perimeter of the neighborhood are Union Turnpike, Horace Harding Expressway, Kissena Boulevard and Parsons Boulevard. Highways to the neighborhood include the Long Island Expressway, Grand Central Parkway, Van Wyck Expressway, and the Jackie Robinson Parkway (Interborough).
Kew Gardens Hills is made easily accessible thanks to the expressways surrounding it and the quick commute on the Q46 bus to the Union Turnpike-Kew Gardens subway station. Adjacent neighborhoods include Forest Hills to the west, Hillcrest to the east, Briarwood to the south, and te sub-neighborhood of Queensboro Hill to the north.
Kew Gardens Hills is a relatively young Queens community, when compared to other neighborhoods in the borough, with its earliest homes built in 1917 off of Union Turnpike.
In the 19th century, the area was farmland and in the early 20th century, the neighborhood was known as Queens Valley and consisted of golf courses. One road that runs through present-day Kew Gardens Hills is 73rd Avenue, which had been called Blackstump Road since colonial days. Presently, it has a bike lane. Kissena Boulevard, which runs from downtown Flushing, ends its run in Kew Gardens Hills at Parsons Boulevard. In the 19th century and early 20th century, both thoroughfares were known as Jamaica Road. It was the most direct route from the towns of Flushing and Jamaica at that time.
Growth to Kew Gardens Hills came when Kew Gardens, Queens, to the south, gained a subway line at Queens Boulevard in 1936 and Flushing Meadows Corona Park, directly to the northwest of the neighborhood, hosted the 1939 New York World's Fair. Early residents were mostly German, Irish and Italian. Many were relocating from Brooklyn and Manhattan. The area was hilly and Kew Gardens was known as a prestigious Queens neighborhood and so developers changed its name from Queens Valley to Kew Gardens Hills. The first Queen of Peace mass took place in 1939. Main Street Cinemas opened in 1940. Property along 144th street, now known as Main Street, was seized by the city to complete the building of Main Street from northern Flushing. Main Street was paved and bus routes began to serve the area in 1941. The Jewish Center of Kew Gardens Hills was established in 1941. The Queens County Savings Bank opened its branch in 1949 and local school, P.S. 164, also known as the Queens Valley School, also opened its doors that year.
Parkway Village, between Parsons Boulevard, Union Turnpike and Grand Central Parkway, was built to house United Nations employees in the late 1940s. Some owners are seeking landmark historic status for the co-op. Parkway Village was developed as a rental community with 685 units on 37 acres (150,000 m2) of rolling parkland in 1947. Today the buildings are in need of maintenance and upgrading, and the vegetation needs some management.
Established in 1941, the Jewish Center of Kew Gardens Hills is the only traditional Conservative synagogue located in the heart of Kew Gardens Hills. By the 1950s, the Orthodox Jewish community began to take root and formed the Young Israel Congregation of Kew Gardens Hills in 1951 with 15 families. That congregation now consists of 450 families. At Vleigh Place and Main Street, the City of New York developed and constructed a small park in 1957-58. In March 1960, the City Council named it Freedom Square to commemorate the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of Theodor Herzl, founder of present-day Zionism.
It is a mixed neighborhood of single-family homes (detached or in rows) as well as three to six-story garden apartment buildings mostly built during the years immediately following World War II) in the 1940s, such as Regency Gardens. These are characterized by their lawns and internal pathways that give the complexes a small-neighborhood feel. There are several homes in Kew Gardens Hills that predate Main Street, whose property was subject to eminent domain in the 1930s to widen 144th Street into the Main Street extension from northern Flushing. A few public housing projects in one part of the neighborhood were also built. Other buildings in that area were built to house employees of certain unions, like the Electchester Co-operative Building built to house electrical employees in 1949 on what used to be the grounds of the Pomonok Country Club. That building no longer houses electrical employees exclusively.
The Opal, a mid-rise luxury building built on the site of long-time vacant lots, opened in Kew Gardens Hills in November 2004. The neighborhood contains an established and continually growing Orthodox and Haredi Jewish population and some Israelis, as well as smaller groups of Latinos, Koreans, Chinese, Indians, Afghanis and African Americans.
The commercial areas of the neighborhood include Main Street, Union Turnpike, Parsons Boulevard and Kissena Boulevard. Fran Drescher reportedly worked at the Main Street Cinemas in Kew Gardens Hills in the early 1970s. Main Street, in particular, is home to many Jewish-themed stores and Kosher restaurants. Many of the businesses along Main Street in Kew Gardens Hills close for Shabbat Friday Evenings and Saturdays until sundown. Many businesses along Kissena Blvd. on the other hand have closed permanently.
On September 16, 2010 a tornado touched down in Queens, causing widespread damage to cars and homes in the Kew Gardens Hills area. See 2010 Brooklyn/Queens tornadoes for more information. John Bowne High School located along Main Street at the edge of the CUNY Queens College campus, directly across from Mt. Hebron Cemetery, was the only New York City Public School building to sustain physical damage related to the storm and was subsequently closed the day following the storm.
Following a storm the evening of July 13, 2011, a double rainbow could be seen from Kew Gardens Hills. Scenes from the 2000 movie Boiler Room were shot in Kew Gardens Hills.
Kew Gardens Hills is home to Max and Mina's Ice Cream, named number 1 of the top 10 unique Ice Cream Parlors in America in Everybody Loves Ice Cream, the Whole Scoop on America's favorite treat by Shannos Jackson Arnold, Emmis Books, July 2004. Some Manhattan restaurants offer Max & Mina's Ice Cream on their dessert menus.
Kew Gardens Hills is home to the Queens County Savings Bank building, constructed in 1954, and modeled after Philadelphia's Independence Hall. The building also houses a full-size replica of the Liberty Bell. There are two cemeteries in Kew Gardens Hills, Mount Hebron Cemetery and Cedar Grove, whose main entrances are located on the Horace Harding Expressway.
There are several dozen houses of worship in Kew Gardens Hills, many of them Jewish. The Roman Catholic Church Queen of Peace is located on Main Street at 77th Road.
This neighborhood has a large Orthodox Jewish population, including immigrants from Israel, Russia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, France, Africa, and the Middle East. Many residents have also moved from neighborhoods such as Crown Heights in Brooklyn. The Jewish population in Kew Gardens Hills have contributed to naming of four streets in the neighborhood.
These include Haym Salomon Square (geometrically a triangle), across from the Kew Gardens Hills branch of the Queens Borough Public Library, named for the Revolutionary; Rabbi Kirshblum Triangle named for the first Rabbi of the Kew Gardens Hills Jewish Center; Freedom Square named in honor of Theodor Herzl's quest for a Jewish homeland; Rabbi Avraham Schechter Way named for a prominent resident of the community is located between 147 Street and 150 Street along 72nd Drive; and Abe Wolfson Triangle named for an environmental activist and one of the founders of the Queens Historical Society is located along Kissena Boulevard near 75th Avenue.
A sizable Muslim and Sikh population exists in areas of Kew Gardens Hills as well, most notably on the northern side with several stores catering to that population.
Two university campuses are located in Kew Gardens Hills. Located in the northern portion of Kew Gardens Hills is Queens College, a liberal arts college that is part of the City University of New York (CUNY) system. The CUNY Law School is also in Kew Gardens Hills, on Main Street. Queens College also serves as an important cultural institution for neighborhood residents with Colden Center for the Performing Arts and the Godwin-Ternbach Museum.
Notable graduates of Queens College include native son Jerry Seinfeld, who was awarded an honorary doctorate in 1994, Ron Jeremy, and Paul Simon. Lander College, the men's college of Touro College, has a large campus on 150th Street at 75th Road.
Public schools located in Kew Gardens Hills include P.S. 164, P.S 219 The Paul Klapper School, P.S. 165, Robert F. Kennedy Community High School, John Bowne High School and Townsend Harris High School at Queens College. Townsend Harris High School serves academically gifted students. North Queens Community High School, which serves troubled New York City youths who wish to obtain their high school diploma has been in the area since 2007.
Yeshiva Chofetz Chaim (76th Road & 147th Street) and Yeshiva Ohr Hachaim (71st Avenue & Main Street, a division of Touro College) are large yeshivas located in Kew Gardens Hills.
Other religious schools located in Kew Gardens Hills include St. Nicholas of Tolentine, Shevach High School (Main Street at 75th Road), Mesivta Yesodei Yeshurun, Yeshiva of Central Queens (70th Road at 150th Street), Yeshiva Ketana (Parsons Boulevard & 78th Road) and Solomon Schechter School of Queens (76-26 Parsons Blvd.) Queens Library operates the Kew Gardens Hills Branch at 72-33 Vleigh Place.
Lawrence, New York:
Lawrence is a village in Nassau County, New York in the USA. As of the United States 2010 Census, the village population was 6,483. The Village of Lawrence is in the southwest corner of the Town of Hempstead, adjoining the border with the New York City borough of Queens to the west and near the Atlantic Ocean to the south. Lawrence is one of the "Five Towns", which consists of the villages of Lawrence and Cedarhurst, the hamlets (unincorporated areas) of Woodmere and Inwood, and "The Hewletts", which is made up of the hamlet of Hewlett together with the villages of Hewlett Bay Park, Hewlett Harbor and Hewlett Neck, along with Woodsburgh.
Old Lawrence or Back Lawrence is a part of the Village of Lawrence, comprising many enormous mansions, beachside luxury villas and former plantations with very large property (and corresponding prices), some dating back to the time of the American Revolution. One of the finest pre-Revolutionary homes on Long Island, Rock Hall, was home to two prominent families, the Martins and Hewletts and is now an active museum. The huge golf courses, vast wetlands and nature preserves with historic battlefields enrich this beautiful area making it one of the most exclusive areas in all of Long Island.
Old Lawrence is commonly referred to by historians as the "First Hamptons." During the second half of the 19th century, it was a main vacation spot for the rich families of the highest social scale until the 1890s. A series of hurricanes and nor'easters altered the coastline considerably and destroyed a large beachfront hotel. Lawrence could no longer boast direct access to the sands along the Atlantic Ocean. At the same time, Lawrence began to become more like a modern suburb, a village with schools, public facilities, better roads and a large town area that expanded into what is now today.
Lawrence, or most notably Old Lawrence, was formerly home to a large upper class of White Anglo-Saxon Protestant families that lived there since the time of the American Revolution. From the 1940s to 1980s, it became a center of Reform and Conservative Jewish life that included the largest Reform synagogue on Long Island (Temple Israel). Many noteworthy residents grew up in Lawrence during this period.
In the late 1980s, it saw a large migration of Modern Orthodox Jews. The Orthodox Jewish communities are close to the more Haredi nearby center of Far Rockaway which has more yeshivas for the children and younger members as well as a variety of kosher restaurants and communal organizations. Central Avenue in Lawrence (and its continuation in Cedarhurst) has a large and growing number of kosher restaurants and other business catering to the Orthodox community.
According to the United States Census Bureau, the village has a total area of 4.7 square miles (12.1 km2), of which, 3.8 square miles (10.0 km2) of it is land and 0.8 square miles (2.2 km2) of it (17.91%) is water.
The Lawrence Public Schools, School District 15, serve the communities of Atlantic Beach, Cedarhurst, Inwood, Lawrence, and sections of Woodmere and North Woodmere. The Hebrew Academy of the Five Towns and Rockaway, is a K-12 Modern Orthodox school where students study Jewish and secular subjects in a dual curriculum. The Pre-School, Kindergarten and Elementary schools are located on one campus on Frost Lane and Washington Avenue.
The Brandeis School is a conservative Jewish Day School located in Lawrence. Mesivta Ateres Yaakov is a yeshiva located in Lawrence. Rambam Mesivta is also located in Lawrence on Frost ave. It is for grades 9-12 where students learn a dual curriculum of Jewish and Secular studies. Lawrence is also home to the Shor Yoshuv Institute , a Rabbinical College with several hundred students.
The Lawrence station provides Long Island Rail Road service on the Far Rockaway Branch to Penn Station in Midtown Manhattan and Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn with connections at Jamaica to other parts of Long Island. The N31 and N32 (Long Island bus) buses of MTA Long Island Bus (Metropolitan Suburban Bus Authority) runs down Central Avenue extending southwest into Far Rockaway (with a connection to the A Line of the New York City Subway) and northeast to the Hempstead Transit Center in central Nassau County with connections to other parts of Long Island. A short drive (about 5 miles) up Rockaway Turnpike takes you to the Belt Parkway, the Van Wyck Expressway, the Cross Island Parkway, Southern State Parkway and John F. Kennedy International Airport. Lawrence is connected to Atlantic Beach to the south, across Reynolds Channel via the Atlantic Beach Bridge.
The Nassau County Police Department provides police services in Lawrence and most of Nassau County. Lawrence is part of the force's Fourth Precinct. Lawrence is served by the Lawrence-Cedarhurst Fire Department. The LCFD consists of 85 volunteer firefighters and emergency medical technicians and provides fire protection to the villages of Lawrence and Cedarhurst, as well as the North Lawrence Fire District and East Lawrence Fire District. The LCFD also responds to alarms such as car accidents and aided cases on the Atlantic Beach Bridge. Lawrence is also served by the Rockaway/Lawrence chapter of Hatzalah, a volunteer emergency medical service (EMS) organization.
Long Island City, New York:
Long Island City (often referred to as L.I.C.) is the westernmost neighborhood of the borough of Queens in New York City. L.I.C. is notable for its rapid and ongoing gentrification, its waterfront parks, and its thriving arts community. L.I.C. has among the highest concentration of art galleries, art institutions, and studio space of any neighborhood in New York City. The neighborhood is bounded on the north by the Queens neighborhood of Astoria; on the west by the East River; on the east by Hazen Street, 31st Street, and New Calvary Cemetery; and on the south by Newtown Creek, which separates Queens from Greenpoint, Brooklyn. It originally was the seat of government of Newtown Township, and remains the largest neighborhood in Queens. The area is part of Queens Community Board 1 north of the Queensboro (59th Street) Bridge and Queens Community Board 2 south of the Bridge.
Long Island City, as its name suggests, was formerly a city, created in 1870 from the merger of the Village of Astoria and the hamlets of Ravenswood, Hunters Point, Blissville, Sunnyside, Dutch Kills, Steinway, Bowery Bay and Middleton in Newtown Township. It was a separate city until 1898. The last mayor of Long Island City was a notorious Irishman named Patrick Jerome "Battle-Axe" Gleason.
The city surrendered its independence in 1898 to become part of the City of Greater New York. However, Long Island City survives as ZIP code 11101 and ZIP code prefix 111 (with its own main post office) and was formerly a Sectional center facility (SCF). Since 1985, the Greater Astoria Historical Society, a non-profit cultural and historical organization, has been preserving the past and promoting the future of the neighborhoods that are part of historic Long Island City.
The Common Council of Long Island City in 1873 adopted the coat of arms as "emblematical of the varied interest represented by Long Island City." It was designed by George H. Williams, of Ravenswood. The overall composition was inspired by New York City's Coat of Arms. The shield is rich in historic allusion, including Native-American, Dutch, and English symbols.
Long Island City is the eastern terminus of the Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge, also known as the 59th Street Bridge, which is the only non-toll automotive route connecting Queens and Manhattan.
Northwest of the bridge terminus are the Queensbridge Houses, development of the New York City Housing Authority and the largest public housing complex in North America. Major thoroughfares include Vernon Boulevard, 21st Street, which is mostly industrial and commercial; Queens Boulevard, which leads westward to the bridge and eastward follows New York State Route 25 through Long Island; and the western-most portion of Northern Boulevard, which becomes Jackson Avenue (the former name of Northern Boulevard) west of Queens Plaza.
Long Island City was once home to many factories and bakeries, some of which are finding new uses. The former Silvercup bakery is now home to Silvercup Studios, which produced notable works such as HBO's Sex and the City. The Silvercup sign is visible from the IRT Flushing Line trains going into and out of Queensboro Plaza. The former Sunshine Bakery is now one of the buildings which houses LaGuardia Community College. Other buildings in the campus originally served as the location of the Ford Instrument Company, which was at one time a major producer of precision machines and devices. Artist Isamu Noguchi converted a photo-engraving plant into a workshop; the site is now the museum, a collection dedicated to his work.
High-rise housing is being built on a former Pepsi-Cola site on the East river. From June 2002 to September 2004, the former Swingline Staplers plant was the temporary headquarters of the Museum of Modern Art. Other former factories in Long Island City include Fisher Electronics and Chiclets Gum. Long Island City's turn-of-the-century district of residential towers, called Queens West, is located along the East River, just north of the main LIRR Long Island City Station. Redevelopment in Queens West reflects the intent to have the area as a major residential area in New York City, with its high-rise residences very close to public transportation, making it convenient for commuters to travel to Manhattan by ferry or subway. The first tower, the 42-floor Citylights, opened in 1998 with an elementary school at the base. Others have been completed since then and more are being planned or under construction.
Today, the most prominent structure, other than Queensboro Bridge, is the community's green skyscraper, the 658-foot (201 m) Citicorp Building built in 1989 on Courthouse Square. It is the tallest building on Long Island and in any of the New York City boroughs outside Manhattan. Socioeconomic diversity is very visible in Long Island City; the Queensbridge Houses are composed of over three thousand units, making it the largest public housing complex in North America.
Long Island City is home to a large and dynamic artistic community. Long Island City is the home of 5 Pointz, a building housing artists' studios, which has been legally painted on by a number of graffiti artists and is visible near the Court House Square station on the 7 train. The Fisher Landau Center for Art is a private foundation that offers regular exhibitions of contemporary art.
Across the street from Socrates Sculpture Park is the Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Museum, founded in 1985 by Japanese-American sculptor Isamu Noguchi in 1985. After undergoing a two and a half year renovation, the museum opened in 2004 with newer and advanced facilities. MoMA PS1, an affiliate of the Museum of Modern Art, is the oldest and second-largest non-profit arts center in the United States solely devoted to contemporary art. It is named after the former public school in which it is housed.
SculptureCenter is New York City's only non-profit exhibition space dedicated to contemporary and innovative sculpture. SculptureCenter re-located from Manhattan's Upper East Side to a former trolley repair shop in Long Island City, Queens renovated by artist/designer Maya Lin in 2002. Founded by artists in 1928, SculptureCenter has undergone much evolution and growth, and continues to expand and challenge the definition of sculpture. SculptureCenter commissions new work and presents exhibits by emerging and established, national and international artists. The museum also hosts a diverse range of public programs including lectures, dialogues, and performances. Socrates Sculpture Park is an outdoor sculpture park located one block from the Noguchi Museum at the intersection of Broadway and Vernon Boulevard.
City Ice Pavilion, with 33,000 square feet (3,100 m2) of skating surface, opened in Long Island City in late 2008. The skating rink is on the roof of a two-story storage facility. Water Taxi Beach (NOW CLOSED), NYC's first non-swimming urban beach, is located on the East River in LIC. New York City plans to build 5,000 moderate income apartments in this area, a 30-acre (120,000 m2) development called Hunter's Point South.
Eagle Electric, now known as Cooper Wiring Devices, was one of the last major factories in the area. They have moved production to the People's Republic of China, and Plant #1, which was the largest of their factories and housed their corporate offices, is being converted to residential luxury lofts.
Long Island City is currently home to the largest fortune cookie factory in the United States, owned by Wonton Foods and producing four million fortune cookies a day. Lucky numbers included on fortunes in the company's cookies led to 110 people across the United States winning $100,000 each in a May 2005 drawing for Powerball.
Online grocery company FreshDirect, serves the Greater New York area via deliveries from a warehouse and administrative offices on Borden Avenue in LIC. A customer can also order online and come to the warehouse for pickup. The city has been the home since 1999 to the Brooks Brothers tie manufacturing factory, which employs 122 people and produces more than 1.5 million ties per year.
Long Island City is the new home of independent film studio, Troma. To accommodate new families, Long Island City Kids Enrichment Center opened its doors in December 2008. On March 22, 2010, JetBlue Airways announced it was moving its headquarters from Forest Hills to Long Island City, also incorporating the jobs from its Darien, Connecticut, office. The airline, which operates its largest hub at JFK Airport also operates from LaGuardia Airport, and will make The Brewster Building in Queens Plaza its home. The airline plans to move around mid-2012.
Long Island City is served by the elevated BMT Astoria Line (N Q trains) and IRT Flushing Line (7 <7> trains) of the New York City Subway. It is also served by the underground IND 63rd Street Line (F train), IND Queens Boulevard Line (E F M R trains) and IND Crosstown Line (G train). The Long Island City and Hunterspoint Avenue stations of the Long Island Rail Road are here, and a commuter ferry service operated by NY Waterway at the East River Wharf. Cars enter by way of the Queensboro Bridge, the Queens Midtown Tunnel and the Pulaski Bridge. The Roosevelt Island Bridge also connects Long Island City to Roosevelt Island. Queens Boulevard, Northern Boulevard (New York 25A) and the Long Island Expressway all pass through the area.
Long Island City serves as the inspiration, backdrop, and production site for numerous forms of media. Numerous films and televisions shows have been produced at Silvercup Studios, the largest film and television production facility in New York City. Gantry Park in Hunter's Point was used as background for the final scenes of Steven Spielberg's film Munich and The Interpreter (starring Sean Penn and Nicole Kidman). An opening scene in Spider-Man 2 (2004) was also filmed in Gantry Park. Julie Powell of the Julie/Julia Project lived in Long Island City. Her character as played by Amy Adams in Julie & Julia is shown taking the 7 train from the 45th Rd/Court Square station in an opening scene. The Queensboro Bridge is seen in the background during a rooftop dinner scene. Long Island City was featured more prominently in the 1997 film, Sunday, with David Suchet and Lisa Harrow, which was filmed on location.
Scenes featuring Dan's Coffee Shop on the television series Gossip Girl were filmed at Communitea, located at 47-02 Vernon Blvd. The Long Island City Firehouse for FDNY Engine 258/Ladder 115 located at 10-40 47th Avenue, Long Island City, New York City, NY was used for exterior shots for the television show Third Watch. The Badge Building, a luxury condominium building across the street, was used on the show for exterior shots of NYPD Precinct 55. The first season of What Not to Wear was filmed in Long Island City.
The videogame Grand Theft Auto IV, which takes place in a fictionalized version of New York City called "Liberty City", features a neighborhood called "East Island City" that resembles Long Island City in architecture and ambiance. Many signs and awnings from local Long Island City businesses are used as graphical elements for stores in the East Island City area. The Silvercup sign (changed to "Silverback"), Citicorp Building, the P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, and the gantry cranes in Gantry Plaza State Park, among other Long Island City landmarks, also appear in some form in the East Island City environment. Gantry Park was referred to as "The Black Towers" or simply Hobart, which used to have a factory at the end of 49th avenue.
Malba, New York:
Malba is an upper middle-class neighborhood in the New York City borough of Queens. A small area on the waterfront home to some of the largest and most expensive private houses in New York City, Malba is bounded to the north by the East River, to the east by the Whitestone Expressway, to the south by 14th Avenue, and to the west by 138th Street. Its name is derived from the first letters of the surnames of its five founders of the Malba Land Company: Maycock, Alling, Lewis, Bishop, and Avis. Malba is considered part of Whitestone, one of the most affluent communities in Queens. Demographically, the population is mostly white and of European descent (Greek, Irish, Italian, and Jewish), with a small minority of Asian Americans. Most of the residential properties in Malba are large homes. The neighborhood is part of Queens Community District 7, served by Queens Community Board 7.
The first known resident of the area known as present-day Malba was David Roe, who arrived from England in the 1640s. According to Clarence Almon Torrey's book, David Roe Of Flushing And Some Of His Descendants, Roe became a resident of Flushing circa 1666. In 1683, Roe was taxed upon owning 35 acres (140,000 m2) and thereafter increased his holdings substantially, ultimately acquiring the upland around what was to become Malba. Roe's farm was on the east side of the bay, which was then known as "Roe's Cove". He was among the most well-to-do citizens of Flushing, owning lands, farm stock, carpenter's tools and two slaves.
In 1786, John Powell purchased Roe’s 87-acre (350,000 m2) parcel for 1,685 pounds, 6 shillings, and 8 pence. It has been reported that Roe lost his lands for his allegiance to the crown during the American War of Independence. Powell thereafter built a home and the cove was renamed “Powell’s Cove”, the name it bears today. During the 19th century, some of Powell's land passed into the hands of Harry Genet, a member of the Tammany Hall, New York City's infamous political machine. Powell's house was destroyed by fire in the 1890s.
During the second half of the 19th century, the Roe/Powell land passed to a succession of owners. A map dating from 1873 lists the Smiths, Biningers and Nostrands as landowners in the area. The Nostrand and Smith farms represented a large portion of what is Malba today. The area around Hill Court and 14th Avenue was known as "Whitestone Heights". In 1883 railroad service to Manhattan was extended on the "Whitestone and Westchester Railroad", later the Long Island Rail Road. The terminus of the Whitestone line was at “Whitestone Landing” (154th Street), a popular summer resort area during the late-19th century and early-20th century.
William Ziegler, a self-made industrialist and president of the Royal Baking Powder Company bought all these parcels in or about 1883 and his holdings became known as the "Ziegler Tract". Ziegler died on May 24, 1905, leaving his wife, Electa Matilda Ziegler (a philanthropist for the blind, among other things) and son, William, Jr., then 14 years of age.
William S. Champ (Ziegler's former secretary) and W.C. Demarest (Mrs. Ziegler's nephew) (both to become among the first families residing in Malba) formed a Realty Trust to purchase the Ziegler tract from his estate for development purposes. Champ was vice president of the Realty Trust, and also one of the executors of Ziegler’s estate. The Ziegler Tract had been appraised for $100,000 shortly after Ziegler’s death. In the spring of 1906, the Realty Trust secured over 100 investors from New Haven, Guilford, Bridgeport, and other Connecticut towns, to the planned purchase of the Ziegler Tract. Based on a review of early maps of the area, the developers, at one point, planned a very densely populated community; with homes on lots no bigger than 20 feet (6.1 m) wide. Obviously, this plan was modified and much larger properties were developed. The trust represented to the investors that the property could be purchased from the Ziegler estate for $640,000. In fact, the 163 acres (0.66 km2) which ultimately became Malba, had been earlier purchased from the Ziegler estate for $350,000. Thereafter such Connecticut residents as Samuel R. Avis, Noble P. Bishop, George W. Lewis, David R. Alling and George Maycock were elected trustees (altogether these were the five names that combined to form the MALBA name) of the Malba Land Company. The true, lesser, amount paid to Ziegler’s estate was not uncovered until 1912.
Development slowly began in 1908. A railroad station on the Whitestone line was added where 11th Avenue sits today. The Champs and Demarests were among Malba's first families to own homes in Malba. There were thirteen houses by the time of World War I and more than a hundred were built in the 1920s. The railroad station closed in 1932. The triangle by Malba Drive and 11th Avenue was dedicated as “Jane Champ Park” on November 16, 1969 and was renovated by the Malba Field and Marine Club in 2005.
Manhattan, New York:
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York. The borough and county consist of Manhattan Island and several small adjacent islands: Roosevelt Island, Randall's Island, Wards Island, Governors Island, Liberty Island, part of Ellis Island, Mill Rock, and U Thant Island; as well as Marble Hill, a very small area on the mainland bordering the Bronx. The original city of New York began at the southern end of Manhattan, expanded northwards, and then between 1874 and 1898, annexed land from surrounding counties.
The County of New York is the most densely populated county in the United States, and one of the most densely populated areas in the world, with a 2008 population of 1,634,795 living in a land area of 22.96 square miles (59.5 km2), or 71,201 residents per square mile (27,485/km²). It is also one of the wealthiest counties in the United States, with a 2005 personal income per capita above $100,000. Manhattan is the third-largest of New York's five boroughs in population, and its smallest borough in size.
Manhattan is a major commercial, financial, and cultural center of both the United States and the world. Anchored by Wall Street in Lower Manhattan, New York City vies with the City of London as the financial capital of the world and is home of both the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ. Many major radio, television, and telecommunications companies in the United States are based here, as well as many news, magazine, book, and other media publishers.
Manhattan is home to many famous landmarks, tourist attractions, museums, and universities. It is also home to the United Nations Headquarters. It is the center of New York City and the New York metropolitan region, hosting the seat of city government and a large portion of the area's employment, business, and entertainment activities. As a result, residents of New York City's other boroughs such as Brooklyn and Queens often refer to a trip to Manhattan as "going to the city", despite the comparable populations between those boroughs.
The name Manhattan derives from the word Manna-hata, as written in the 1609 logbook of Robert Juet, an officer on Henry Hudson's yacht Halve Maen (Half Moon). A 1610 map depicts the name as Manna-hata, twice, on both the west and east sides of the Mauritius River (later named the Hudson River). The word "Manhattan" has been translated as "island of many hills" from the Lenape language.
The area that is now Manhattan was long inhabited by the Lenape Indians. In 1524, some Lenape in canoes met the Florentine Giovanni da Verrazzano, the first European explorer to pass New York Harbor, although he may not have entered the harbor past the Narrows. It was not until the voyage of Henry Hudson, an Englishman who worked for the Dutch East India Company, that the area was mapped. Hudson came across Manhattan Island and the native people living there in 1609, and continued up the river that would later bear his name, the Hudson River, until he arrived at the site of present day Albany.
A permanent European presence in New Netherland began in 1624 with the founding of a Dutch fur trading settlement on Governors Island. In 1625 construction was started on a citadel and a Fort Amsterdam on Manhattan Island, later called New Amsterdam (Nieuw Amsterdam). Manhattan Island was chosen as the site of Fort Amsterdam, a citadel for the protection of the new arrivals; its 1625 establishment is recognized as the birth date of New York City. According to the document by Pieter Janszoon Schagen our people (ons Volck)—Peter Minuit is not mentioned explicitly there—acquired Manhattan in 1626 from Native American Lenape people in exchange for trade goods worth 60 guilders, often said to be worth 24 US$, though (by comparing the price of bread and other goods) actually amounts to around $1000 in modern currency (calculation by the International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam). The price was actually paid to the Canarsees, living in Brooklyn, while the true local people, the Weckquaesgeeks, were not party of the transaction.
In 1647, Peter Stuyvesant was appointed as the last Dutch Director General of the colony. New Amsterdam was formally incorporated as a city on February 2, 1653. In 1664, the English conquered New Netherland and renamed it "New York" after the English Duke of York and Albany, the future King James II. Stuyvesant and his council negotiated with the English to produce 24 articles of provisional transfer that sought to guarantee New Netherlanders liberties, including freedom of religion, under English rule.
The Dutch Republic regained it in August 1673 with a fleet of 21 ships, renaming the city "New Orange". New Netherland was ceded permanently to the English in November 1674 by treaty.
At prelude to organized colonial opposition to British rule, the Stamp Act Congress of representatives from across the Thirteen Colonies was held in New York City in 1765. The Congress resulted in the Declaration of Rights and Grievances, the first document by a representative body of multiple colonies to assert the concept popularly known as "no taxation without representation". It was also the first time the colonies cooperated for a unified political aim, and laid the foundation for the Continental Congresses that followed years later.
The Sons of Liberty developed on Manhattan in the days following the Stamp Act protests. The organization participated in a long-term confrontation with British authorities over liberty poles that were alternately raised by the Sons of Liberty and cut down by British authorities. The skirmishes ended when the revolutionary New York Provincial Congress took power in 1775.
Manhattan was at the heart of the New York Campaign, a series of major battles in the early American Revolutionary War. The Continental Army was forced to abandon Manhattan after the disastrous Battle of Fort Washington on November 16, 1776. The city became the British political and military center of operations in North America for the remainder of the war. Manhattan was greatly damaged by the Great Fire of New York during the British military rule that followed. British occupation lasted until November 25, 1783, when George Washington returned to Manhattan, as the last British forces left the city.
From January 11, 1785 to the fall of 1788, New York City was the fifth of five capitals under the Articles of Confederation, with the Continental Congress meeting at New York City Hall (then at Fraunces Tavern). New York was the first capital under the newly enacted Constitution of the United States, from March 4, 1789 to August 12, 1790 at Federal Hall. The United States Supreme Court sat for the first time, the United States Bill of Rights were drafted and ratified, and the first steps of adding states to the Union with the passage of the Northwest Ordinance all took place there.
New York grew as an economic center, first as a result of Alexander Hamilton's policies and practices as the first Secretary of the Treasury and, later, with the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825, which connected the Atlantic port to the vast agricultural markets of the Midwestern United States and Canada.
Tammany Hall, a Democratic Party political machine, began to grow in influence with the support of many of the immigrant Irish, culminating in the election of the first Tammany mayor, Fernando Wood, in 1854. Tammany Hall dominated local politics for decades. Central Park, which opened to the public in 1858, became the first landscaped park in an American city and the nation's first public park.
During the American Civil War, the city's strong commercial ties to the South, its growing immigrant population (prior to then largely from Germany and Ireland), anger about conscription and resentment at those who could afford to pay $300 to avoid service, led to resentment against Lincoln's war policies, culminating in the three-day long New York Draft Riots of July 1863, one of the worst incidents of civil disorder in American history, with an estimated 119 participants and passersby massacred.
The rate of immigration from Europe grew steeply after the Civil War, and New York became the first stop for millions seeking a new and better life in the United States, a role acknowledged by the dedication of the Statue of Liberty on October 28, 1886, a gift from the people of France. The new European immigration brought further social upheaval. In a city of tenements packed with poorly paid laborers from dozens of nations, the city was a hotbed of revolution, syndicalism, racketeering, and unionization.
In 1883, the opening of the Brooklyn Bridge established a surface connection across the East River. In 1874, the western portion of the present Bronx County was transferred to New York County, and in 1895 the remainder of the present Bronx County was annexed. The City of Greater New York was formed in 1898, when four counties consolidated to form a single city of five boroughs. Manhattan and the Bronx, though still one county, were established as two separate boroughs. On January 1, 1914, the New York state legislature created Bronx County, and New York County was reduced to its present boundaries.
The construction of the New York City Subway, which opened in 1904, helped bind the new city together, as did additional bridges to Brooklyn. In the 1920s, Manhattan experienced large arrivals of African-Americans as part of the Great Migration from the American South, and the Harlem Renaissance, part of a larger boom time in the Prohibition era that included new skyscrapers competing for the skyline. New York City became the most populous city in the world in 1925, overtaking London, which had reigned for a century.
On March 25, 1911, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in Greenwich Village killed 146 garment workers. The disaster eventually led to overhauls of the city's fire department, building codes, and workplace regulations.
The period between the World Wars saw the election of reformist mayor Fiorello La Guardia and the fall of Tammany Hall after 80 years of political dominance. As the city's demographics stabilized, labor unionization brought new protections and affluence to the working class, the city's government and infrastructure underwent a dramatic overhaul under La Guardia. Despite the Great Depression, some of the world's tallest skyscrapers were completed in Manhattan during the 1930s, including numerous Art Deco masterpieces that are still part of the city's skyline today, most notably the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, and the GE Building.
Returning World War II veterans created a postwar economic boom, which led to the development of huge housing developments targeted at returning veterans, including Peter Cooper Village—Stuyvesant Town, which opened in 1947. In 1951, the UN relocated from its first headquarters in Queens, to the East Side of Manhattan.
Like many major U.S. cities, New York suffered race riots and population and industrial decline in the 1960s. By the 1970s, the city had gained a reputation as a graffiti-covered, crime-ridden relic of history. In 1975, the city government faced imminent bankruptcy, and its appeals for assistance were initially rejected, summarized by the classic October 30, 1975 New York Daily News headline as "Ford to City: Drop Dead". The fate was avoided through a federal loan and debt restructuring, and the city was forced to accept increased financial scrutiny by New York State.
The 1980s saw a rebirth of Wall Street, and the city reclaimed its role at the center of the worldwide financial industry. The 1980s also saw Manhattan at the heart of the AIDS crisis, with Greenwich Village at its epicenter. Gay Men's Health Crisis (GMHC) and AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) were founded to advocate on behalf of those stricken with the disease.
Starting in the 1990s, crime rates dropped drastically, with murder rates that had reached 2,245 in 1990 plummeting to 537 by 2008, and the crack epidemic and its associated drug-related violence under greater control. The outflow of population turned around, as the city once again became the destination of immigrants from around the world, joining with low interest rates and Wall Street bonuses to fuel the growth of the real estate market.
On September 11, 2001, two of four hijacked planes were flown into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. The towers collapsed, resulting in the eventual collapse of World Trade Center 7 due to fire damage. The other buildings of the World Trade Center complex were damaged beyond repair and soon after demolished. The collapse of the Twin Towers caused extensive damage to surrounding buildings and skyscrapers in Lower Manhattan, and resulted in the deaths of 2,606 people, plus those on the planes. Since September 11, most of Lower Manhattan has been restored; many rescue workers and residents of the area have developed several life threatening illnesses, and some have already died.
A memorial at the site was opened to the public on September 11, 2011. A museum is currently under construction at the memorial and scheduled to open in September 2012. One World Trade Center, formerly known as the Freedom Tower, is also under construction, as well as the other planned buildings on the site.
Modern New York City is familiar to many people around the globe thanks to its popularity as a setting for films and television series. Notable television examples of shows set in Manhattan include such award-winning shows and franchises as White Collar, 30 Rock, I Love Lucy, Friends, Gossip Girl, The Jeffersons, How I Met Your Mother, The Law & Order series (most spin-offs included), Mad About You, NYPD Blue, The Odd Couple, Saturday Night Live, Seinfeld, Sex and the City, Spin City, Sports Night, Ugly Betty, and Will & Grace.
Notable examples of films set in Manhattan include Miracle on 34th Street, The Godfather, Wall Street, You've Got Mail, Ghostbusters, The In-Laws, Little Manhattan, and many of Woody Allen's films, such as Annie Hall, Bananas, and Manhattan. The city was also the backdrop and location for numerous crime and drama films in the 1940s and 1950s.
Manhattan is loosely divided into Downtown, Midtown, and Uptown, with Fifth Avenue dividing Manhattan's east and west sides. Manhattan Island is bounded by the Hudson River to the west and the East River to the east. To the north, the Harlem River divides Manhattan Island from The Bronx and the mainland United States. Several small islands are also part of the borough of Manhattan, including Randall's Island, Wards Island, and Roosevelt Island in the East River, and Governors Island and Liberty Island to the south in New York Harbor. Manhattan Island is 22.7 square miles (59 km2) in area, 13.4 miles (21.6 km) long and 2.3 miles (3.7 km) wide, at its widest (near 14th Street). New York County as a whole covers a total area of 33.77 square miles (87.5 km2), of which 22.96 square miles (59.5 km2) are land and 10.81 square miles (28.0 km2) are water.
One Manhattan neighborhood is contiguous with The Bronx. Marble Hill at one time was part of Manhattan Island, but the Harlem River Ship Canal, dug in 1895 to improve navigation on the Harlem River, separated it from the remainder of Manhattan as an island between the Bronx and the remainder of Manhattan. Before World War I, the section of the original Harlem River channel separating Marble Hill from The Bronx was filled in, and Marble Hill became part of the mainland.
Marble Hill is one example of how Manhattan's land has been considerably altered by human intervention. The borough has seen substantial land reclamation along its waterfronts since Dutch colonial times, and much of the natural variation in topography has been evened out.
Early in the 19th century, landfill was used to expand Lower Manhattan from the natural Hudson shoreline at Greenwich Street to West Street. When building the World Trade Center, 1.2 million cubic yards (917,000 m³) of material was excavated from the site. Rather than dumping the spoil at sea or in landfills, the fill material was used to expand the Manhattan shoreline across West Street, creating Battery Park City. The result was a 700-foot (210-m) extension into the river, running six blocks or 1,484 feet (450 m), covering 92 acres (37 ha), providing a 1.2-mile (1.9 km) riverfront esplanade and over 30 acres (12 ha) of parks.
Geologically, a predominate feature of the sub-strata of Manhattan is that the underlying bedrock base of the island rises considerably closer to the surface near the midtown district, dips down lower between 29th street and Canal street, then rises towards the surface again under the Financial district; this feature is the underlying reason for the clustering of skyscrapers in the Midtown and Financial district areas, and their absence over the intervening territory between these two areas, as their foundations can be sunk more securely into solid bedrock.
Manhattan has fixed vehicular connections with New Jersey to the west by way of the George Washington Bridge, Holland Tunnel and Lincoln Tunnel, and to three of the four other New York City boroughs—the Bronx to the northeast and Brooklyn and Queens on Long Island to the east and south. Its only direct connection with the fifth New York City borough is the Staten Island Ferry across New York Harbor, which is free of charge. The ferry terminal is located near Battery Park at its southern tip. It is possible to travel to Staten Island by way of Brooklyn, using the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge.
The Commissioners' Plan of 1811, called for twelve numbered avenues running north and south roughly parallel to the shore of the Hudson River, each 100 feet (30 m) wide, with First Avenue on the east side and Twelfth Avenue in the west. There are several intermittent avenues east of First Avenue, including four additional lettered avenues running from Avenue A eastward to Avenue D in an area now known as Alphabet City in Manhattan's East Village. The numbered streets in Manhattan run east-west, and are 60 feet (18 m) wide, with about 200 feet (61 m) between each pair of streets. With each combined street and block adding up to about 260 feet (79 m), there are almost exactly 20 blocks per mile. The typical block in Manhattan is 250 by 600 feet (180 m).
According to the original Commissioner's Plan there were 155 numbered crosstown streets, but later the grid has been extended up to the Northernmost corner of Manhattan, where the last numbered street is 220th Street (Manhattan). Moreover, the numbering system continues even in The Bronx, North of Manhattan, despite the fact that there the grid plan is not so regular; there the last numbered street is 263rd Street.
Fifteen crosstown streets were designated as 100 feet (30 m) wide, including 34th, 42nd, 57th and 125th Streets, some of the borough's most significant transportation and shopping venues. Broadway is the most notable of many exceptions to the grid, starting at Bowling Green in Lower Manhattan and continuing north into the Bronx at Manhattan's northern tip. In much of Midtown Manhattan, Broadway runs at a diagonal to the grid, creating major named intersections at Union Square, Herald Square (Sixth Avenue and 34th Street), Times Square (Seventh Avenue and 42nd Street), and Columbus Circle (Eighth Avenue/Central Park West and 59th Street).
A consequence of the strict grid plan of most of Manhattan, and the grid's skew of approximately 28.9 degrees, is a phenomenon sometimes referred to as Manhattanhenge (by analogy with Stonehenge). On separate occasions in late May and early July, the sunset is aligned with the street grid lines, with the result that the sun is visible at or near the western horizon from street level. A similar phenomenon occurs with the sunrise in January and December.
The Wildlife Conservation Society, which operates the zoos and aquariums in the city, is currently undertaking The Mannahatta Project, a computer simulation to visually reconstruct the ecology and geography of Manhattan when Henry Hudson first sailed by in 1609, and compare it to what we know of the island today.
Manhattan's many neighborhoods are not named according to any particular convention. Some are geographical (the Upper East Side), or ethnically descriptive (Little Italy). Others are acronyms, such as TriBeCa (for "TRIangle BElow CAnal Street") or SoHo ("SOuth of HOuston"), or the far more recent vintages NoLIta ("NOrth of Little ITAly"). and NoMad ("NOrth of MADison Square Park "). Harlem is a name from the Dutch colonial era after Haarlem, a city in the Netherlands. Alphabet City comprises Avenues A, B, C and D, to which its name refers.
Some neighborhoods, such as SoHo, are commercial and known for upscale shopping. Others, such as Greenwich Village, the Lower East Side, Alphabet City and the East Village, have long been associated with the "Bohemian" subculture. Chelsea is a neighborhood with a large gay population, and recently a center of New York's art industry and nightlife. Washington Heights is a vibrant neighborhood of immigrants from the Dominican Republic. Chinatown has a dense population of people of Chinese descent. Koreatown is roughly bounded by 5th and 6th Avenues, between 31st and 36th Streets. The Upper West Side is often characterized as more intellectual and creative, in contrast to the old money and conservative values of the Upper East Side, one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the United States.
In Manhattan, uptown means north (more precisely north-northeast, which is the direction the island and its street grid system is oriented) and downtown means south (south-southwest). This usage differs from that of most American cities, where downtown refers to the central business district. Manhattan has two central business districts, the Financial District at the southern tip of the island, and Midtown Manhattan. The term uptown also refers to the northern part of Manhattan above 59th Street and downtown to the southern portion below 14th Street, with Midtown covering the area in between, though definitions can be rather fluid depending on the situation.
Fifth Avenue roughly bisects Manhattan Island and acts as the demarcation line for east/west designations (e.g., East 27th Street, West 42nd Street); street addresses start at Fifth Avenue and increase heading away from Fifth Avenue, at a rate of 100 per block in most places. South of Waverly Place in Manhattan, Fifth Avenue terminates and Broadway becomes the east/west demarcation line. Though the grid does start with 1st Street, just north of Houston Street (pronounced HOW-stin), the grid does not fully take hold until north of 14th Street, where nearly all east-west streets are numerically identified, which increase from south to north to 220th Street, the highest numbered street on the island. Streets in Midtown are usually one way with a few exceptions (14th, 34th and 42nd to name a few). The rule of thumb is odd numbered streets run west while evens run east.
Although located at around 41°N, Manhattan has a humid subtropical climate. The city's coastal position keeps temperatures relatively warmer than those of inland regions during winter, helping to moderate the amount of snow, which averages 25 to 35 inches (63.5 to 88.9 cm) each year. New York City has a frost-free period lasting an average of 220 days between seasonal freezes. Spring and fall in New York City are mild, while summer is very warm and humid, with temperatures of 90 °F (32 °C) or higher recorded from 18 to 25 days on average during the season. The city's long-term climate patterns are affected by the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, a 70-year-long warming and cooling cycle in the Atlantic that influences the frequency and severity of hurricanes and coastal storms in the region.
Temperature records have been set as high as 106 °F (41 °C) on July 9, 1936 and as low as −15 °F (−26 °C) on February 9, 1934. Temperatures have hit 103 °F (39 °C) as recently as July 2010 and dropped to just 1 above zero as recently as January 2004. Summer evening temperatures are elevated by the urban heat island effect, which causes heat absorbed during the day to be radiated back at night, raising temperatures by as much as 7 °F (4 °C) when winds are slow.
Since New York City's consolidation in 1898, Manhattan has been governed by the New York City Charter, which has provided for a strong mayor-council system since its revision in 1989. The centralized New York City government is responsible for public education, correctional institutions, libraries, public safety, recreational facilities, sanitation, water supply, and welfare services in Manhattan.
The office of Borough President was created in the consolidation of 1898 to balance centralization with local authority. Each borough president had a powerful administrative role derived from having a vote on the New York City Board of Estimate, which was responsible for creating and approving the city's budget and proposals for land use. In 1989 the Supreme Court of the United States declared the Board of Estimate unconstitutional because Brooklyn, the most populous borough, had no greater effective representation on the Board than Staten Island, the least populous borough, a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause pursuant to the high court's 1964 "one man, one vote" decision.
Since 1990, the largely powerless Borough President has acted as an advocate for the borough at the mayoral agencies, the City Council, the New York state government, and corporations. Manhattan's Borough President is Scott Stringer, elected as a Democrat in 2005.
Cyrus Vance, a Democrat, has been the District Attorney of New York County since 2010. Manhattan has ten City Council members, the third largest contingent among the five boroughs. It also has twelve administrative districts, each served by a local Community Board. Community Boards are representative bodies that field complaints and serve as advocates for local residents. As the host of the UN, the borough is home to the world's largest international consular corps, comprising 105 consulates, consulates general and honorary consulates. It is also the home of New York City Hall, the seat of New York City government housing the Mayor of New York City and the New York City Council. The mayor's staff and thirteen municipal agencies are located in the nearby Manhattan Municipal Building, completed in 1916, one of the largest governmental buildings in the world.
The Democratic Party holds most public offices. Registered Republicans are a minority in the borough, only constituting approximately 12% of the electorate. Registered Republicans are more than 20% of the electorate only in the neighborhoods of the Upper East Side and the Financial District. The Democrats hold 66.1% of those registered in a party. 21.9% of the voters were unaffiliated (independents).
The United States Postal Service operates post offices in Manhattan. The James A. Farley Post Office in Midtown Manhattan is New York City's main post office. It is located at 421 Eighth Avenue, between 31st Street and 33rd Street. The post office stopped 24-hour service beginning on May 9, 2009 due to decreasing mail traffic. The U.S. Postal Service does not consider "Manhattan, NY" an acceptable address, and recommends the usage of New York, New York".
Starting in the mid-19th century, the United States became a magnet for immigrants seeking to escape poverty in their home countries. After arriving in New York, many new arrivals ended up living in squalor in the slums of the Five Points neighborhood, an area between Broadway and the Bowery, northeast of New York City Hall. By the 1820s, the area was home to many gambling dens and brothels, and was known as a dangerous place to go. In 1842, Charles Dickens visited the area and was appalled at the horrendous living conditions he had seen. The area was so notorious that it even caught the attention of Abraham Lincoln, who visited the area before his Cooper Union Address in 1860. The predominantly Irish Five Points Gang was one of the country's first major organized crime entities.
As Italian immigration grew in the early 20th century many joined ethnic gangs, including Al Capone, who got his start in crime with the Five Points Gang. The Mafia (also known as Cosa Nostra) first developed in the mid-19th century in Sicily and spread to the East Coast of the United States during the late 19th century following waves of Sicilian and Southern Italian emigration. Lucky Luciano established La Cosa Nostra in Manhattan, forming alliances with other criminal enterprises, including the Jewish mob, led by Meyer Lansky, the leading Jewish gangster of that period. From 1920–1933, Prohibition helped create a thriving black market in liquor, upon which the Mafia was quick to capitalize.
New York City experienced a sharp increase in crime during the 1960s and 1970s, with a near fivefold jump in the total number of police-recorded crimes, from 21.09 per thousand in 1960 to a peak of 102.66 in 1981. Homicides continued to increase in the city for another decade, with murders recorded by the NYPD jumping from 390 in 1960, to 1,117 in 1970, 1,812 in 1980, and reaching its peak of 2,262 in 1990 mainly because of the crack epidemic. Starting circa 1990, New York City saw record declines in homicide, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, violent crime, burglary, larceny, motor vehicle theft, and property crime, a trend that has continued to today.
Based on 2005 data, New York City has the lowest crime rate among the ten largest cities in the United States. The city as a whole ranked fourth nationwide in the 13th annual Morgan Quitno survey of the 32 cities surveyed with a population above 500,000. The New York City Police Department, with 36,400 officers, is larger than the next four largest U.S. departments combined. The NYPD's counter-terrorism division, with 1,000 officers assigned, is larger than the FBI's. The NYPD's CompStat system of crime tracking, reporting and monitoring has been credited with a drop in crime in New York City that has far surpassed the drop elsewhere in the United States.
Since 1990, crime in Manhattan has plummeted in all categories tracked by the CompStat profile. A borough that saw 503 murders in 1990 has seen a drop of nearly 88% to 62 in 2008. Robbery and burglary are down by more than 80% during the period, and auto theft has been reduced by more than 93%. In the seven major crime categories tracked by the system, overall crime has declined by more than 75% since 1990, and year-to-date statistics through May 2009 show continuing declines.
The skyscraper, which has shaped Manhattan's distinctive skyline, has been closely associated with New York City's identity since the end of the 19th century. From 1890–1973, the world's tallest building was in Manhattan, with nine different buildings holding the title. The New York World Building on Park Row, was the first to take the title in 1890, standing 309 feet (91 m) until 1955, when it was demolished to construct a new ramp to the Brooklyn Bridge. The nearby Park Row Building, with its 29 stories standing 391 feet (119 m) high took the title in 1899. The 41-story Singer Building, constructed in 1908 as the headquarters of the eponymous sewing machine manufacturer, stood 612 feet (187 m) high until 1967, when it became the tallest building ever demolished. The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower, standing 700 feet (213 m) at the foot of Madison Avenue, wrested the title in 1909, with a tower reminiscent of St Mark's Campanile in Venice. The Woolworth Building, and its distinctive Gothic architecture, took the title in 1913, topping off at 792 feet (241 m).
The Roaring Twenties saw a race to the sky, with three separate buildings pursuing the world's tallest title in the span of a year. As the stock market soared in the days before the Wall Street Crash of 1929, two developers publicly competed for the crown. At 927 feet (282 m), 40 Wall Street, completed in May 1930 in an astonishing eleven months as the headquarters of the Bank of Manhattan, seemed to have secured the title. At Lexington Avenue and 42nd Street, auto executive Walter Chrysler and his architect William Van Alen developed plans to build the structure's trademark 185-foot (56 m)-high spire in secret, pushing the Chrysler Building to 1,046 feet (319 m) and making it the tallest in the world when it was completed in 1929. Both buildings were soon surpassed, with the May 1931 completion of the 102-story Empire State Building with its Art Deco tower soaring 1,250 feet (381 m) to the top of the building. The 203 ft (62 m) high pinnacle was later added bringing the total height of the building to 1,453 ft (443 m).
The former Twin Towers of the World Trade Center were located in Lower Manhattan. At 1,368 ft (417 m) and 1,362 ft (415 m), the 110-story buildings were the world's tallest from 1972, until they were surpassed by the construction of the Willis Tower in 1974 (formerly known as the Sears tower located in Chicago). One World Trade Center, a replacement for the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, is currently under construction and is slated to be ready for occupancy in 2013.
In 1961, the Pennsylvania Railroad unveiled plans to tear down the old Penn Station and replace it with a new Madison Square Garden and office building complex. Organized protests were aimed at preserving the McKim, Mead, and White-designed structure completed in 1910, widely considered a masterpiece of the Beaux-Arts style and one of the architectural jewels of New York City. Despite these efforts, demolition of the structure began in October 1963. The loss of Penn Station—called "an act of irresponsible public vandalism" by historian Lewis Mumford—led directly to the enactment in 1965 of a local law establishing the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission, which is responsible for preserving the "city's historic, aesthetic, and cultural heritage". The historic preservation movement triggered by Penn Station's demise has been credited with the retention of some one million structures nationwide, including nearly 1,000 in New York City.
The theatre district around Broadway at Times Square, New York University, Columbia University, Flatiron Building, the Financial District around Wall Street, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Little Italy, Harlem, the American Museum of Natural History, Chinatown, and Central Park are all located on this densely populated island.
The city is a leader in energy-efficient green office buildings, such as Hearst Tower, owned by Englishman Samuel Fox, and the rebuilt 7 World Trade Center.
Central Park is bordered on the north by West 110th Street, on the west by Eighth Avenue, on the south by West 59th Street, and on the east by Fifth Avenue. Along the park's borders, these streets are usually referred to as Central Park North, Central Park West, and Central Park South, respectively (Fifth Avenue retains its name along the eastern border). The park was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux. The 843 acres (3.41 km2) park offers extensive walking tracks, two ice-skating rinks, a wildlife sanctuary, and grassy areas used for various sporting pursuits, as well as playgrounds for children. The park is a popular oasis for migrating birds, and thus is popular with bird watchers. The 6-mile (9.7 km) road circling the park is popular with joggers, bicyclists and inline skaters, especially on weekends and in the evenings after 7:00 pm, when automobile traffic is banned.
While much of the park looks natural, it is almost entirely landscaped and contains several artificial lakes. The construction of Central Park in the 1850s was one of the era's most massive public works projects. Some 20,000 workers crafted the topography to create the English-style pastoral landscape Olmsted and Vaux sought to create. Workers moved nearly 3,000,000 cubic yards (2,300,000 m3) of soil and planted more than 270,000 trees and shrubs.
While much of the park looks natural, it is almost entirely landscaped and contains several artificial lakes. The construction of Central Park in the 1850s was one of the era's most massive public works projects. Some 20,000 workers crafted the topography to create the English-style pastoral landscape Olmsted and Vaux sought to create. Workers moved nearly 3,000,000 cubic yards (2,300,000 m3) of soil and planted more than 270,000 trees and shrubs.
The African Burial Ground National Monument at Duane Street preserves a site containing the remains of over 400 Africans buried during the 17th and 18th centuries. The remains were found in 1991 during the construction of the Foley Square Federal Office Building.
Manhattan is home to some of the nation's most valuable real estate, and has a reputation as one of the most expensive areas in the United States. Manhattan is the economic engine of New York City, with its 2.3 million workers drawn from the entire New York metropolitan area accounting for almost two-thirds of all jobs in New York City. Manhattan's daytime population swells to 2.87 million, with commuters adding a net 1.34 million people to the population. This commuter influx of 1.46 million workers coming into Manhattan was the largest of any other county or city in the country, and was more than triple the 480,000 commuters who headed into second-ranked Washington, D.C.
Its most important economic sector is the finance industry, whose 280,000 workers earned more than half of all the wages paid in the borough. The securities industry, best known by its center in Wall Street, forms the largest segment of the city's financial sector, accounting for over 50% of the financial services employment. Before the financial crisis of 2008, the five largest securities-trading firms in the U.S. had their headquarters in Manhattan.
In 2006, those in the Manhattan financial industry earned an average weekly pay of about $8,300 (including bonuses), while the average weekly pay for all industries was about $2,500. This was the highest in the country's 325 largest counties, and the salary growth of 8% was the highest among the ten largest counties. Pay in the borough was 85% higher than the $784 pay earned weekly nationwide and nearly double the amount earned by workers in the outer boroughs. The health care sector represents about 11% of the borough's jobs and 4% of total compensation, with workers taking home about $900 per week.
New York City is home to the most corporate headquarters of any city in the nation, the overwhelming majority based in Manhattan. Midtown Manhattan is the largest central business district in the United States. Lower Manhattan is the nation's third-largest central business district (after Chicago's Loop) and is home to the New York Stock Exchange, the American Stock Exchange (Amex), the New York Board of Trade, the New York Mercantile Exchange (Nymex) and NASDAQ.
Seven of the world's top eight global advertising agency networks are headquartered in Manhattan. "Madison Avenue" is often used metonymously to refer to the entire advertising field, after Madison Avenue became identified with the advertising industry after the explosive growth in the area in the 1920s.
Manhattan's workforce is overwhelmingly focused on white collar professions, with manufacturing (39,800 workers) and construction (31,600) accounting for a small fraction of the borough's employment. Historically, this corporate presence has been complemented by many independent retailers, though a recent influx of national chain stores has caused many to lament the creeping homogenization of Manhattan.
Manhattan has been the scene of many important American cultural movements. In 1912, about 20,000 workers, a quarter of them women, marched on Washington Square Park to commemorate the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, which killed 146 workers on March 25, 1911. Many of the women wore fitted tucked-front blouses like those manufactured by the Triangle Shirtwaist Company, a clothing style that became the working woman's uniform and a symbol of female independence, reflecting the alliance of labor and suffrage movements.
The Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s established the African-American literary canon in the United States. Manhattan's vibrant visual art scene in the 1950s and 1960s was a center of the American pop art movement, which gave birth to such giants as Jasper Johns and Roy Lichtenstein. Perhaps no other artist is as associated with the downtown pop art movement of the late 1970s as Andy Warhol, who socialized at clubs like Serendipity 3 and Studio 54.
A popular haven for art, the downtown neighborhood of Chelsea is widely known for its galleries and cultural events, with more than 200 art galleries that are home to modern art from both upcoming and established artists.
Broadway theatre is often considered the highest professional form of theatre in the United States. Plays and musicals are staged in one of the 39 larger professional theatres with at least 500 seats, almost all in and around Times Square. Off-Broadway theatres feature productions in venues with 100–500 seats. A little more than a mile from Times Square is the Lincoln Center, home to one of the world's most prestigious opera houses, that of the Metropolitan Opera.
Manhattan is also home to some of the most extensive art collections, both contemporary and historical, in the world including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the Frick Collection, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Guggenheim Museum.
Manhattan is the borough most closely associated with New York City by non-residents; even some natives of New York City's boroughs outside Manhattan will describe a trip to Manhattan as "going to the city".
The borough has a place in several American idioms. The phrase a New York minute is meant to convey a very short time, sometimes in hyperbolic form, as in "perhaps faster than you would believe is possible". It refers to the rapid pace of life in Manhattan. The term "melting pot" was first popularly coined to describe the densely populated immigrant neighborhoods on the Lower East Side in Israel Zangwill's play The Melting Pot, which was an adaptation of William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet set by Zangwill in New York City in 1908. The iconic Flatiron Building is said to have been the source of the phrase "23 skidoo" or scram, from what cops would shout at men who tried to get glimpses of women's dresses being blown up by the winds created by the triangular building. The "Big Apple" dates back to the 1920s, when a reporter heard the term used by New Orleans stablehands to refer to New York City's racetracks and named his racing column "Around The Big Apple." Jazz musicians adopted the term to refer to the city as the world's jazz capital, and a 1970s ad campaign by the New York Convention and Visitors Bureau helped popularize the term.
Today, Manhattan is home of the NBA's New York Knicks, the NHL's New York Rangers, and the WNBA's New York Liberty, who all play their home games at Madison Square Garden, the only major professional sports arena in the borough. The New York Jets proposed a West Side Stadium for their home field, but the proposal was eventually defeated in June 2005, leaving them at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey.
Today, Manhattan is the only borough in New York City that does not have a professional baseball franchise. The Bronx has the Yankees (American League) and Queens has the Mets (National League) of Major League Baseball. The Minor League Baseball Brooklyn Cyclones play in Brooklyn, while the Staten Island Yankees play in Staten Island. Yet three of the four major league teams to play in New York City played in Manhattan. The New York Giants played in the various incarnations of the Polo Grounds at 155th Street and Eighth Avenue from their inception in 1883—except for 1889, when they split their time between Jersey City and Staten Island, and when they played in Hilltop Park in 1911—until they headed west with the Brooklyn Dodgers after the 1957 season. The New York Yankees began their franchise as the Hilltoppers, named for Hilltop Park, where they played from their creation in 1903 until 1912. The team moved to the Polo Grounds with the 1913 season, where they were officially christened the New York Yankees, remaining there until they moved across the Harlem River in 1923 to Yankee Stadium. The New York Mets played in the Polo Grounds in 1962 and 1963, their first two seasons, before Shea Stadium was completed in 1964. After the Mets departed, the Polo Grounds was demolished in April 1964, replaced by public housing.
The first national college-level basketball championship, the National Invitation Tournament, was held in New York in 1938 and remains in the city. The New York Knicks started play in 1946 as one of the National Basketball Association's original teams, playing their first home games at the 69th Regiment Armory, before making Madison Square Garden their permanent home. The New York Liberty of the WNBA have shared the Garden with the Knicks since their creation in 1997 as one of the league's original eight teams. Rucker Park in Harlem is a playground court, famed for its street ball style of play, where many NBA athletes have played in the summer league.
Though both of New York City's football teams play today across the Hudson River in Meadowlands Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, both teams started out playing in the Polo Grounds. The New York Giants played side-by-side with their baseball namesakes from the time they entered the National Football League in 1925, until crossing over to Yankee Stadium in 1956. The New York Jets, originally known as the Titans, started out in 1960 at the Polo Grounds, staying there for four seasons before joining the Mets in Queens in 1964.
The New York Rangers of the National Hockey League have played in the various locations of Madison Square Garden since their founding in the 1926–1927 season. The Rangers were predated by the New York Americans, who started play in the Garden the previous season, lasting until the team folded after the 1941–1942 NHL season, a season it played in the Garden as the Brooklyn Americans.
The New York Cosmos of the North American Soccer League played their home games at Downing Stadium for two seasons, starting in 1974. In 1975, the team signed Pelé, officially recorded by FIFA as the world's greatest soccer player, to a $4.5 million contract, drawing a capacity crowd of 22,500 to watch him lead the team to a 2–0 victory. The playing pitch and facilities at Downing Stadium were in dreadful condition though and as the team's popularity grew they too left for Yankee Stadium, and then Giants Stadium. The stadium was demolished in 2002 to make way for the $45 million, 4,754-seat Icahn Stadium, which includes an Olympic-standard 400-meter running track and, as part of Pele's and the Cosmos' legacy, includes a FIFA-approved floodlit soccer stadium that hosts matches between the 48 youth teams of a Manhattan soccer club.
Manhattan is served by the major New York City dailies, including The New York Times, New York Daily News, and New York Post, which are all headquartered in the borough. The nation's largest financial newspaper, The Wall Street Journal, is also based there. Other daily newspapers include AM New York and The Villager. The New York Amsterdam News, based in Harlem, is one of the leading African American weekly newspapers in the United States. The Village Voice is a leading alternative weekly based in the borough.
The television industry developed in New York and is a significant employer in the city's economy. The four major American broadcast networks, ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC are all headquartered in Manhattan, as are many cable channels, including MSNBC, MTV, Fox News, HBO and Comedy Central. In 1971, WLIB became New York's first black-owned radio station and the crown jewel of Inner City Broadcasting Corporation. A co-founder of Inner City was Percy Sutton, a former Manhattan borough president and long one of the city's most powerful black leaders. WLIB began broadcasts for the African-American community in 1949 and regularly interviewed civil rights leaders like Malcolm X and aired live broadcasts from conferences of the NAACP. Influential WQHT, also known as Hot 97, claims to be the premier hip-hop station in the United States. WNYC, comprising an AM and FM signal, has the largest public radio audience in the nation and is the most-listened to commercial or non-commercial radio station in Manhattan. WBAI, with news and information programming, is one of the few socialist radio stations operating in the United States.
The oldest public-access television cable TV channel in the United States is the Manhattan Neighborhood Network, founded in 1971, offers eclectic local programming that ranges from a jazz hour to discussion of labor issues to foreign language and religious programming. NY1, Time Warner Cable's local news channel, is known for its beat coverage of City Hall and state politics.
In the early days of Manhattan, wood construction and poor access to water supplies left the city vulnerable to fires. In 1776, shortly after the Continental Army evacuated Manhattan and left it to the British, a massive fire broke out destroying one-third of the city and some 500 houses.
The rise of immigration near the turn of the 20th century left major portions of Manhattan, especially the Lower East Side, densely packed with recent arrivals, crammed into unhealthy and unsanitary housing. Tenements were usually five-stories high, constructed on the then-typical 25x100 lots, with "cockroach landlords" exploiting the new immigrants. By 1929, stricter fire codes and the increased use of elevators in residential buildings, were the impetus behind a new housing code that effectively ended the tenement as a form of new construction, though many tenement buildings survive today on the East Side of the borough.
Today, Manhattan offers a wide array of public and private housing options. There were 798,144 housing units in Manhattan as of the 2000 Census, at an average density of 34,756.7 per square mile (13,421.8/km²). Only 20.3% of Manhattan residents lived in owner-occupied housing, the second-lowest rate of all counties in the nation, behind The Bronx. Although the city of New York has the highest average cost for rent in the United States, it simultaneously hosts a higher average of income per capita. Since the higher average of income affects how much rent payers spend percentage wise on rent, NYC is still above the 10 most difficult American cities in which to pay rent.
Manhattan is unique in the United States of America for intense use of public transportation and lack of private car ownership. While 88% of Americans nationwide drive to their jobs and only 5% use public transportation, mass transit is the dominant form of travel for residents of Manhattan, with 72% of borough residents using public transportation and only 18% driving to work. According to the United States Census, 2000, more than 77.5% of Manhattan households do not own a car.
In 2007, Mayor Bloomberg proposed a congestion pricing system. The state legislature rejected the proposal in June 2008. The New York City Subway, the largest subway system in the world by track mileage and the largest by number of stations, is the primary means of travel within the city, linking every borough except Staten Island. There are 147 subway stations in Manhattan. A second subway, the Port Authority Trans-Hudson (PATH) system, connects six stations in Manhattan to northern New Jersey. Passengers pay fares with pay-per-ride MetroCards, which are valid on all city buses and subways, as well as on PATH trains. A one-way fare on the bus or subway is $2.25, and PATH costs $1.75. There are 7-day and 30-day MetroCards that allow unlimited trips on all subways (except PATH) and MTA bus routes (except for express buses). The PATH QuickCard is being phased out, and both PATH and the MTA are testing "smart card" payment systems to replace the MetroCard. Commuter rail services operating to and from Manhattan are the Long Island Rail Road (which connects Manhattan and other New York City boroughs to Long Island), the Metro-North Railroad (which connects Manhattan to Upstate New York and Southwestern Connecticut) and New Jersey Transit trains to various points in New Jersey.
The MTA New York City Bus offers a wide variety of local buses within Manhattan. An extensive network of express bus routes serves commuters and other travelers heading into Manhattan. The bus system served 740 million passengers in 2004, the highest in the nation, and more than double the ridership of the second-place Los Angeles.
New York's iconic yellow cabs, which number 13,087 city-wide and must have the requisite medallion authorizing the pick up of street hails, are ubiquitous in the borough. Manhattan also sees tens of thousands of bicycle commuters. The Roosevelt Island Tramway, one of two commuter cable car systems in North America, whisks commuters between Roosevelt Island and Manhattan in less than five minutes, and has been serving the island since 1978. (The other system in North America is the Portland Aerial Tram.) The Staten Island Ferry, which runs 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, annually carries over 19 million passengers on the 5.2-mile (8.4 km) run between Manhattan and Staten Island. Each weekday, five vessels transport about 65,000 passengers on 110 boat trips. The ferry has been fare-free since 1997, when the then-50-cent fare was eliminated.
The metro region's commuter rail lines converge at Penn Station and Grand Central Terminal, on the west and east sides of Midtown Manhattan, respectively. They are the two busiest rail stations in the United States. About one-third of users of mass transit and two-thirds of railway passengers in the country live in New York and its suburbs. Amtrak provides inter-city passenger rail service from Penn Station to Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington, D.C.; Upstate New York, New England; cross-border service to Toronto and Montreal; and destinations in the South and Midwest.
The Lincoln Tunnel, which carries 120,000 vehicles a day under the Hudson River between New Jersey and Manhattan, is the busiest vehicular tunnel in the world. The tunnel was built instead of a bridge to allow unfettered passage of large passenger and cargo ships that sailed through New York Harbor and up the Hudson to Manhattan's piers. The Queens Midtown Tunnel, built to relieve congestion on the bridges connecting Manhattan with Queens and Brooklyn, was the largest non-federal project in its time when it was completed in 1940. President Franklin D. Roosevelt was the first person to drive through it.
The FDR Drive and Harlem River Drive are two routes with limited access that skirt the east side of Manhattan along the East River, designed by controversial New York master planner Robert Moses. Manhattan has three public heliports. US Helicopter offered regularly scheduled helicopter service connecting the Downtown Manhattan Heliport with John F. Kennedy International Airport in Queens and Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey before going out of business in 2009. New York has the largest clean-air diesel-hybrid and compressed natural gas bus fleet in the country. It also has some of the first hybrid taxis, most of which operate in Manhattan.
Gas and electric service is provided by Consolidated Edison to all of Manhattan. Con Edison's electric business traces its roots back to Thomas Edison's Edison Electric Illuminating Company, the first investor-owned electric utility. The company started service on September 4, 1882, using one generator to provide 110 volts direct current (DC) to 59 customers with 800 light bulbs, in a one-square-mile area of Lower Manhattan from his Pearl Street Station. Con Edison operates the world's largest district steam system, which consists of 105 miles (169 km) of steam pipes, providing steam for heating, hot water, and air conditioning by some 1,800 Manhattan customers. Cable service is provided by Time Warner Cable and telephone service is provided by Verizon Communications, although AT&T is available as well.
Manhattan, surrounded by two brackish rivers, had a limited supply of fresh water. The supply dwindled as the city grew rapidly after the American Revolutionary War. To satisfy the growing population, the city acquired land in Westchester County and constructed the Croton Aqueduct system, which went into service in 1842. The system took water from a dam at the Croton River, and sent it down through the Bronx, over the Harlem River by way of the High Bridge, to storage reservoirs in Central Park and at 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue, and through a network of cast iron pipes on to consumer's faucets.
Today, the New York City Department of Environmental Protection provides water to residents fed by a 2,000-square-mile (5,200 km2) watershed in the Catskill Mountains. Because the watershed is in one of the largest protected wilderness areas in the United States, the natural water filtration process remains intact. As a result, New York is one of only five major cities in the United States with drinking water pure enough to require only chlorination to ensure its purity at the tap under normal conditions. Water comes to Manhattan through New York City Water Tunnel No. 1 and Tunnel No. 2, completed in 1917 and 1936, respectively. Construction started in 1970 continues on New York City Water Tunnel No. 3, which will double the system's existing 1.2 billion gallon-a-day capacity while providing a much-needed backup to the two other tunnels.
The New York City Department of Sanitation is responsible for garbage removal. The bulk of the city's trash ultimately is disposed at mega-dumps in Pennsylvania, Virginia, South Carolina and Ohio (via transfer stations in New Jersey, Brooklyn and Queens) since the 2001 closure of the Fresh Kills Landfill on Staten Island. A small amount of trash processed at transfer sites in New Jersey is sometimes incinerated at waste-to-energy facilities. Like New York City, New Jersey and much of Greater New York relies on exporting its trash to far-flung places.
Education in Manhattan is provided by a vast number of public and private institutions. Public schools in the borough are operated by the New York City Department of Education, the largest public school system in the United States. Charter schools include Harlem Success Academy and Girls Prep.
Some of the best-known New York City public high schools, such as Stuyvesant High School, Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School, High School of Fashion Industries, Murry Bergtraum High School, Manhattan Center for Science and Mathematics, Hunter College High School and High School for Math, Science and Engineering at City College are located in Manhattan. Bard High School Early College, a new hybrid school created by Bard College, serves students from around the city. Manhattan is home to many of the most prestigious private prep schools in the nation including the Upper East Side's Brearley School, Dalton School, Browning School, Spence School, Chapin School, Nightingale-Bamford School, Convent of the Sacred Heart, Regis High School, The Hewitt School, and Loyola School (New York City). Along with the Upper West Side's Collegiate School and Trinity School. The borough is also home to two private schools that are known as the most diverse in the nation, Manhattan Country School and United Nations International School. Manhattan is home to the only official Italian American school in the U.S., La Scuola d'Italia.
As of 2003, 52.3% of Manhattan residents over age 25 have a bachelor's degree, the fifth highest of all counties in the country. By 2005, about 60% of residents were college graduates and some 25% had earned advanced degrees, giving Manhattan one of the nation's densest concentrations of highly educated people.
Manhattan has various colleges and universities including Columbia University, Cooper Union, Fordham University, New York University (NYU), The Juilliard School, Pace University, Berkeley College, The New School, and Yeshiva University. Other schools include Bank Street College of Education, Boricua College, Jewish Theological Seminary of America, Marymount Manhattan College, Manhattan School of Music, Metropolitan College of New York, New York Institute of Technology, Pace University, St. John's University, School of Visual Arts, Touro College and Union Theological Seminary. Several other private institutions maintain a Manhattan presence, among them The College of New Rochelle and Pratt Institute.
The City University of New York (CUNY), the municipal college system of New York City, is the largest urban university system in the United States, serving more than 226,000 degree students and a roughly equal number of adult, continuing and professional education students. A third of college graduates in New York City graduate from CUNY, with the institution enrolling about half of all college students in New York City. CUNY senior colleges located in Manhattan include: Baruch College, City College of New York, Hunter College, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and the CUNY Graduate Center (graduate studies and doctoral granting institution). The only CUNY community college located in Manhattan is the Borough of Manhattan Community College.
The State University of New York is represented by the Fashion Institute of Technology, State University of New York State College of Optometry and Stony Brook University – Manhattan. Manhattan is a world center for training and education in medicine and the life sciences. The city as a whole receives the second-highest amount of annual funding from the National Institutes of Health among all U.S. cities, the bulk of which goes to Manhattan's research institutions, including Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Rockefeller University, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, Weill Cornell Medical College and New York University School of Medicine.
Manhattan is served by the New York Public Library, which has the largest collection of any public library system in the country. The five units of the Central Library—Mid-Manhattan Library, Donnell Library Center, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Andrew Heiskell Braille and Talking Book Library and the Science, Industry and Business Library—are all located in Manhattan. More than 35 other branch libraries are located in the borough.
Maspeth, New York:
Maspeth is a small community in the borough of Queens in New York City. Neighborhoods sharing borders with Maspeth are Woodside and Sunnyside to the north, Long Island City to the northwest, Greenpoint to the west, East Williamsburg to the southwest, Fresh Pond and Ridgewood to the south, and Middle Village and Elmhurst to the east.
The area known today as Maspeth was chartered by Dutch and English settlers in the mid-17th century. The Dutch had purchased land in the area known today as Queens in 1635, and within a few years began chartering towns. In 1642 they settled Maspat, under a charter granted to Rev. Francis Doughty. Maspat became the first European settlement in Queens. The settlement was leveled the following year in an attack by Native Indians, and the surviving settlers returned to Manhattan. It wasn't until nine years later, in 1652, that settlers ventured back to the area, settling an area slightly inland from the previous Maspat location. This new area was called Middleburg, and eventually developed into what is now the town of Elmhurst, bordering Maspeth. Following the immigration waves of the 19th century, Maspeth was home to a shanty town of Boyash (Ludar) Gypsies between 1925 and 1939, though this was eventually bulldozed.
The name "Maspeth" is derived from the name of Mespeatches Indians, one of the 13 main Indian tribes that inhabited Long Island. It is translated to mean "at the bad waterplace" relating to the many stagnant swamps that existed in the area.
Columbusville was the name formerly applied to a section of Maspeth. It was a development of Edward Dunn that took place on 69th Place (Originally known as Firth Avenue) between Grand Avenue and Caldwell Avenue during 1854-55, and was subsequently absorbed into Maspeth. The name fell into disuse in the 1890s.
The Metropolitan Avenue Bridge carries Grand Street (Brooklyn) eastward across English Kills from Williamsburg where it becomes Grand Avenue, Maspeth's main street for dining and business. Grand Avenue continues eastward to end in Elmhurst. Cemeteries take up a large part of this small neighborhood although they are separated from residential areas for the most part. Single home houses and multiple dwelling homes make up most of Maspeth and there are hardly any apartment buildings, except for the co-ops on 65th Place, also known as The Plateau.
Forty-Third Street through 58th Street, including the former Furman Island, is industrial lowlands, and from 60th Street to 72nd Street is residential. The Phelps Dodge Corporation was present from 1920–1983. The Phelps Dodge mining company heavily contaminated Newtown Creek, which separates northern Brooklyn from western Queens and serves barge traffic. Other freight moves on the Long Island Railroad Montauk Branch and the lightly used Bushwick Branch. A new West Maspeth rail freight station has been proposed in connection with a Cross-Harbor Rail Tunnel to diminish truck traffic across New York City. It is opposed by residents who don't want more trucks in Maspeth.
There is access to the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and the Long Island Expressway. The former road crosses Newtown Creek on the Kosciuszko Bridge. These expressways are accessible at 69th and Grand Street, and also at 48th Street, where the two expressways cross.
For many years a well known landmark in Maspeth was a pair of cylindrical natural gas tanks. These tanks were considered "sister tanks" to similar (but differently operating) gas holders at the Newtown Holder Station in Elmhurst (Queens) NY. There were many similarities: both were visible from major roadways, both were painted in an FAA-required red/white checkered color scheme, and both pairs of tanks have since been demolished. However, The Maspeth holders were fixed above-ground structures, whereas the Elmhurst ones were rising/falling gasometers.
Maspeth was the first English settlement in Queens County. However, conflicts with the Mespet tribe forced many settlers to move to what is now Elmhurst in 1643. Most people who live in Maspeth are of Polish, Slavic, Italian, Irish, German, Hispanic or Chinese descent. Holy Cross R.C. Church, is the focal point of the three parishes in Maspeth. It has weekly masses, in English and Polish. It also conducts the yearly Stations of the Cross, which the procession on the streets every Good Friday, starts from Holy Cross, go to St. Stans., and than finally ends at Transfiguration. These three parishes are only 2 blocks apart from each other. The Polish go to Holy Cross, the Irish & Spanish go to St. Stans., and Lithuanians go to Transfiguration. Only the parish of St. Stans is currently running a Catholic school for the city of Maspeth. The Catholic school for Holy Cross, has closed its doors in June of 2005, as to a lack of funding. But, Holy Cross still runs its weekend Polish School along with CCD classes. Maspeth is also home to the Metropolitan Oval. The "unofficial" mayor of Maspeth is Queens resident and local Stop and Shop manager Joe Kilcoyne, a favorite amongst the residents in the area.
Schools in the area include: Holy Cross R.C. Church - Maspeth : Polish School and CCD classes on the weekends; IS 73 The Frank Sansivieri Intermediate School in Maspeth is where most of the community's children attend grades 6 through 8; PS 58, The School of Heroes, was dedicated in 2002 in honor of the 9/11 victims on Grand Avenue at the site of the original Finast supermarket.It is named one of the best schools in the Maspeth community; PS 153, Maspeth Elementary School; Saint Stanislaus Kostka School (Nursery - 8 Catholic School under the auspices of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn); Martin Luther High School (9-12 private school); and Maspeth High School (Temporarily located at the campus of Metropolitan High School) is the first public high school in Maspeth. It is expected to open on September 2012.
Although there is no subway station in Maspeth, several bus routes make subway connections, including: B57 to Flushing Avenue (J M Z trains), Flushing Avenue (G train), Jay Street – MetroTech (A C F N R trains); Q18 bus to Woodside – 61st Street (7 <7> trains), Northern Boulevard (E M R trains), or 30th Avenue (N Q trains); Q39 bus to Forest Avenue (M train), Queensboro Plaza (7 <7> N Q trains) or Court Square (7 <7> E G M trains); Q47 bus to 69th Street or 74th Street – Broadway (7 train), Jackson Heights – Roosevelt Avenue (E F M R trains), or LaGuardia Airport; Q58 bus to Grand Avenue – Newtown (E M R trains), Flushing – Main Street (7 <7> trains), Fresh Pond Road (M train), Forest Avenue (M train), Myrtle–Wyckoff Avenues (L M trains); Q59 bus to Grand Avenue – Newtown (E M R trains), Woodhaven Boulevard (E M R trains), 63rd Drive – Rego Park (E M R trains), or Grand Street (L train); and Q67 bus to Middle Village – Metropolitan Avenue (M train), Hunters Point Avenue (7 <7> trains), 21st Street – Van Alst (G train), Queensboro Plaza (7 <7> N Q trains), Queens Plaza (E M R trains) or Court Square (7 <7> E G M trains).
Middle Village, New York:
Middle Village is a neighborhood in central Queens, a borough of New York City. The neighborhood is located in the western central section of Queens, bounded to the north by Eliot Avenue, to the east by Woodhaven Boulevard, to the south by Cooper Avenue, and to the west by Fresh Pond Road. Middle Village borders Elmhurst to the North, Maspeth and Ridgewood to the West, Glendale to the South, and Rego Park to the East. In 2003, "South Elmhurst", an area between Eliot Avenue and the Long Island Expressway, was added to Middle Village's ZIP code (11379). The neighborhood is part of Queens Community District 5, served by Queens Community Board 5. Housing in the neighborhood is largely single-family homes with many attached homes, and small apartment buildings.
The neighborhood is served by the M train of the New York City Subway which terminates at Metropolitan Avenue. Five bus lines serve Middle Village: the Q29, the Q38, the Q47, the Q54, and the Q67.
The area was settled around 1816 by people of English descent and was named in the early nineteenth-century for its location as the mid-point between the then towns of Williamsburg, Brooklyn and Jamaica, Queens on the Williamsburgh and Jamaica Turnpike (now Metropolitan Avenue), which opened in 1816. In 1852, a Manhattan Lutheran church purchased the farmland on the western end of the hamlet that would become the Lutheran Cemetery. The St. John's Roman Catholic Cemetery was laid out on the eastern side of the town in 1879. After the Civil War, the area became predominantly German. Hotels and other services appeared to meet the needs of cemetery visitors. A housing boom which began in the 1920s eventually consumed the surrounding farmland and became continuous with neighboring towns and neighborhoods.
Middle Village is served by Juniper Valley Park, a large public park built on what was once called Juniper Swamp (filled in 1915). Homes along the southern side of the park enjoy breathtaking views of the NYC skyline. Four national historic districts were listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983: Forest-Norman Historic District; Grove-Linden-St. John's Historic District; Seneca-Onderdonk-Woodward Historic District; and Woodbine-Palmetto-Gates Historic District.
St. John's Cemetery, Queens, a cemetery located in Middle Village, holds many famed mobsters, including John Gotti, Lucky Luciano, Joe Gallo, Carlo Gambino, Joseph Profaci, Joe Colombo, Vito Genovese and Carmine Galante. Also buried here are fitness guru Charles Atlas, politician Geraldine Ferraro, and photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. The General Slocum Steamboat Fire Mass Memorial, commemorating one of the worst disasters in NYC's history, is at Lutheran All Faiths Cemetery (67-29 Metropolitan Avenue).
PS/IS 49 is an elementary school in Middle Village with grades K to 8. PS 128 and PS 87 are elementary and junior high schools with grades K to 8. Our Lady of Hope and St. Margaret are two Catholic K-8 schools in the area. Christ The King Regional High School is a private school. It is also nationally-known as the home of the Royals Boy's and Girl's basketball teams, with a total of 13 Federation Championships spanning the last 16 years.
Mill Basin, New York:
Mill Basin is a neighborhood in New York City in the southern portion of the borough of Brooklyn lying along Jamaica Bay and bounded to the north by Avenue U, and to the east, south, and west by the Mill Basin/Mill Island Inlet. The area is part of Brooklyn Community Board 18.
The area was called Equandito (Broken Lands) by the local Lenape Native Americans who sold it in 1664 to John Tilton Jr. and Samuel Spicer. During the seventeenth century it became part of Flatlands, and tide mills were built on it; the land was owned from 1675 by Jan Martense Schenck and between 1818 and 1870 by the wife of General Philip S. Crooke. The Crooke-Schenck House, which stood at East 63rd Street, was dismantled in 1952 and later reassembled as a museum exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum. The area retained its rural character until Robert L. Crooke built a lead-smelting plant in 1890. The Crooke Smelting Company was bought out by the National Lead Company, and Crooke sold the remainder of the land to the firm of McNulty and Fitzgerald, which erected bulkheads and filled in the marshes.
Until the early twentieth century, the chief resources were the abundant crabs, oysters, and clams in Jamaica Bay. In 1906 the Flatbush Improvement Company brought marshland and engaged the firm of Atlantic, Gulf and Pacific to dredge creeks and fill in meadows. Eventually the parcel had an area of 332 acres (1.34 km2) and was fit for industrial development, and within a decade National Lead, Gulf Refining, and other leading firms engaged in heavy industry opened plants there. Atlantic, Gulf and Pacific bought the land in 1909 and built three large drydocks employing a thousand workers; it also began promoting Jamaica Bay as a major harbor but failed to attract a large volume of shipping. A project begun in 1913 and completed in 1923 to extend Flatbush Avenue to the Rockaway Inlet provided an additional 2,700 feet (820 m) of dock facilities and a strip of land for a road across the marshes. In 1915 a channel was dredged to the main channel of Jamaica Bay, and a bulkhead and wharfage platform were built on the mainland side of Mill Creek. By 1919, Mill Island was the site of at least six manufacturing and commercial concerns. During the late 1920s and 1930s the docks were rented to a number of small industrial firms. The neighborhood remained a grimy industrial area for thirty years, but its further development was hindered when plans for rail service to the rest of Brooklyn went unrealized.
Residential development began after World War II, when Atlantic, Gulf and Pacific sold to the firm of Flatbush Park Homes the land bounded to the north by Avenue U, to the east by East 68th Street and East Mill Basin / Mill Island, to the south by Basset Avenue, and to the west by Strickland Avenue and Mill Avenue. Brick bungalows were built in the late 1940s and early 1950s, many of which were later replaced by large, custom-built, detached one-family houses on lots measuring fifty by a hundred feet.
The Mill Basin Bridge is a double leaf trunnion bascule bridge supporting the Belt Parkway over Mill Basin. Each leaf carries six lanes of traffic - three in each direction. There is a sidewalk on each side of the leaf; the eastern or downstream one being part of the Shore Parkway Greenway. Built in the 1940s, the bridge, which cost $1.4 million, is the only drawbridge on the Belt Parkway.
The New York City Department of Transportation reconstructed the Belt Parkway Bridge over Mill Basin in late 2006. The bridge was constructed in 1942 and has outlived its useful service life. Due to the effects of age, weather and increased traffic volume, reconstruction was deemed necessary. The reconstruction work was accomplished in 2 stages. Mill Basin is served by the B100 local bus and BM1 express bus on East 66th Street.
Murray Hill, New York:
Murray Hill is a small neighborhood within Flushing in the New York City borough of Queens. Traditionally the home of families of Irish and Italian immigrants, many Korean and Chinese immigrants have since moved into the area in recent years. Murray Hill is often confused with the larger Murray Hill neighborhood on the East Side of Manhatt
