Queens Village is a mostly residential middle class neighborhood in the eastern part of the New York City borough of Queens.The Queens Village Post Office serves the ZIP codes of 11427 (Hollis Hills), 11428 (central Queens Village), and 11429 (Bellaire). The neighborhood is part of Queens Community Board 13.
Shopping in the community is located along Braddock Avenue, Hillside Avenue, Hempstead Avenue, and Jamaica Avenue (NY 25), as well as on Springfield Boulevard. Located just east of Queens Village, in Nassau County, is the Belmont Park race track.
Within the neighborhood is Cunningham Park and Alley Pond Park, as well as the historic Long Island Motor Parkway (LIMP), home of the turn of the century racing competition, the Vanderbilt Cup. The LIMP was built by William Kissam Vanderbilt, a descendant of the family that presided over the New York Central Railroad and Western Union; it is now part of the Brooklyn-Queens Greenway used by bicyclers, joggers and nature trail lovers.
HISTORY
Queens Village was founded as Little Plains in the 1640s. Homage to this part of Queens Village history is found on the sign above the Long Island Railroad Station there. In 1824, Thomas Brush established a blacksmith shop in the area. He prospered and built several other shops and a factory, and the area soon became known as Brushville. On March 1, 1837, the railroad arrived. The first station in the area was called Flushing Avenue in 1837, Delancy Avenue by June 20, 1837, and Brushville by November 27, 1837, likely about a mile west of the present station. In 1856, residents voted to change the name from Brushville to Queens.The name “Inglewood” also was used for both the village and the train station in the 1860s and 1870s.The name Brushville was still used in an 1860 New York Times article, but both “Queens” and “Brushville” are used in an 1870 article. Maps from 1873 show portions of Queens Village (then called Inglewood and Queens) in the town of Hempstead, but 1891 maps show it entirely in the town of Jamaica.
After the Borough of Queens became incorporated as part of the City of Greater New York in 1898, and the new county of Nassau was created in 1899, the border between the city and Nassau County was set directly east of Queens Village. A 1901 article in the Brooklyn Eagle already uses the full name Queens Village, a name that had been used as late as the 1880s for Lloyd’s Neck in present-day Suffolk County. In 1923, the Long Island Railroad added “Village” to its station’s name to avoid confusion with the county of the same name, and thus the neighborhood became known as Queens Village.
Queens Village was part of an overall housing boom that was spreading east through Queens from New York as people from the city sought the bucolic life afforded by the less-crowded atmosphere of the area. Today, many of those charming and well-maintained Dutch Colonial and Tudor homes built in Queens Village during the 1920s and 1930s currently continue to attract an interestingly diverse population.
DEMOGRAPHICS
Queens Village, like many parts of Queens, is diverse. Caribbean American, African, Asian, African American, Guyanese, Hispanic, Indian, Filipino, and Russian people all have significant populations among the 48,670 people living within the area.
Formerly, a very large Jewish community existed. However, many Jewish families have left for other parts of Queens and parts of Long Island. Still, there is a small Jewish presence in Queens Village that has recently been augmented by an increase of Middle Eastern Jews. There has also been an increase in the number of Asian American residents.
Queens Village is home to a large Filipino American community.
Queens Village is one of Queens County’s affluent neighborhoods. As of 2008, the median income is $66,290, and the median home sales price is around $467,764.
