HISTORY OF QUEENS
A LOOK BACK AT HOW THE “WORLD’S BOROUGH” WAS BORN
BY MARK HALLUM
Queens may only
have made it onto the
wider public’s radar
in recent years to the
discovery the borough
is a thriving immigrant
hub that offers cuisine
and other staples that
are not offered in other
parts of the city.
But historians know
that diversity is nothing
new to what is now
known as the “World’s
Borough” with many
of the old mainstays
of German, Dutch,
Catholic and protestant
cultural signatures left
through Queens that
we still see today.
Astoria Historical
Society President
Robert Singleton
looked back on the
German period
northwest Queens
where Steinway Street
sill bears the name
of the famous piano
manufacturers and
architecture still hold
some of the marks of
the period when the
Dulcken family of
music settled in Astoria
in 19th century.
But mostly,
Singleton spoke of
Queens as the working
person’s borough in
which members of
the blue collar class
from different cultural
backgrounds lived with
little conflict between
one another.
“The interesting
thing about working
people is working
people don’t fight
with each other.
They realize there
is a common cause,”
Singleton said,
explaining the
vibrant history of
craftsmen such as
silkmakers. “You can
put it down as the
American pageant.”
The “new world
man” emerged in
Queens, according
to Singleton who
used the term
Queens’ diversity started long ago, and many many of the old mainstays of German, Dutch, Catholic and
Protestant cultural signatures left through Queens that we still see today.
“man” with caution
acknowledging that
women were an
important part of the
framework of life in
the development of
Queens into what it
is today.
Not only did the mix
of people in the 19th and
20th centuries bring
new skills and activities,
but the culture of the
Dutch as merchants is
how Singleton believes
the United States grew
to embody the profile of
savvy entrepreneurs.
Jack Eichenbaum,
a historian with the
Queens Historical
Society, argues that
early immigration
to Queens was
just as clustered
into groups as the
emigre communities
of Manhattan
were because of
commonalities.
The Irish carving
out turf for themselves
in Woodside is one
example of this
prior to Hibernians
A me r i c a n i z i n g
and branching out,
Eichenbaum points
out.T
his was similar to
Germans who sought
companionship with
their own in Ridgewood,
Glendale and Astoria
— places that were
also known for
their breweries.
“Queens is in the
forefront of a process
that is comparatively
nascent in other
urban areas in the
USA and abroad,”
Eichenbaum told
TimesLedger. “Queens
had a head start in
the intensity, diversity
and interaction of
immigrants and
natives. It is in Queens
that the genesis of a
post-racist society is
being realized.”
H o w e v e r ,
Eichenbaum said these
communities came to
neighbor one another in
isolated bubbles at first,
drawn to Queens by
cheap living and jobs.
But later generations
began to gel with other
groups as well as the
White Anglo-Saxon
Protestants.
Eichenbaum refers
to this movement as
acculturation, a 19th
century term to describe
urban blending of
people.
But by the 20th
century, Eichenbaum
illustrates that
Queens skipped this
process altogether
with very little
direct immigration.
Courtesy of Greater Ridgewood Historical Society
Many of the groups
arriving were moving
out of Manhattan, a
period in which the
outer boroughs were
consolidated into the
city to relieve housing
congestion and with
the construction of the
7 train through the
mostly rural towns of
Queens in 1917.
But there was still
a long way to go for
diversity in Queens.
The development
of Flushing Meadows
Corona Park out of
a former landfill
made Queens an
attractive real estate
market where for
single family homes,
making neighborhood
racially segregated.
When the United
Nations established
its headquarters in
Queens in 1946, there
were few options for
ethnic workers who
came to work in the
area that Robert Moses
initially envisioned
as a campus for
government workers,
and additional
housing had to be
built to accommodate
non-white employees.
Parkway Village,
located on Main Street
north of the Grand
Central Parkway,
became an “unusually”
integrated community
for the time,
Eichenbaum claims.
Queens gained
299,000 inhabitants
from Manhattan,
Brooklyn and the
Bronx during the 1950’s
for the development
opportunities it
provided.
But while a 1924
quota on immigration
slowed new inhabitants
from anywhere other
than northwest
Europe down to what
Eisenbaum calls a
trickle, the Cold War
years sees the birth of
Roosevelt Avenue as we
know it.
Refugees from
communist countries
such as Cuba began
transforming the
section from Woodside
to Corona into a Latin
quarter, Eichenbach
said.
Further change
came in the 1960s, as the
World’s Fair attracted
workers from Taiwan
and China who settled
in Flushing, planting
the seed for the densely
Asian center of culture
we see today.
Eichenbach claimed
that an important
aspect to consider with
later immigration to
Queens in the 20th
century is many of
the people coming to
New York City were
not attracted to poorer
neighborhoods.
“The new
immigrants were
predominantly middle
class in their countries
of origin and had middle
class aspirations in
New York City. Rather
than settling in the
poorest parts of the city,
they found housing in
older parts of Queens,”
Eisenbach wrote in
a research paper,
“From the Ghetto to
an Interwoven Fabric,”
published in the Queens
Historical Society’s
newsletter.
And while Mayor
David Dinkins and Gov.
Mario Cuomo called
the city a “magnificent
mosaic,” Eichenbaum
believes the these tiles of
the mosaic lived isolated
from one another until
more recently.
“Yet as lovely as a
mosaic composed of
diverse tiles can be,
with its whole clearly
greater than the sum
of its parts, there is still
an impervious barrier
between the tiles,”
Eichenbach said. “And
in the reality of Queens
these barriers were
beginning to crumble.”
Roger Sanjek, an
anthropologist at
Queens College, began
to study Elmhurst
and Corona in the
late 1990s was one
of the first outsiders
to the community to
observe that different
nationalities were
beginning to work
together, at first
informally and then
later into a network
of community
organizations who
worked to address
social issues with
local government.
E i c h e n b a u m
attributes much of the
desegregating of Queens
to young people.
“Much of the
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