Queens - Neighborhoods

Neighborhoods

Four United States Postal Service post offices serve Queens, based roughly on those serving the towns in existence at the consolidation of the five boroughs into New York City: Long Island City (ZIP codes starting with 111), Jamaica (114), Flushing (113), and Far Rockaway (116). In addition the Floral Park post office (110), based in Nassau County, serves a small part of northeastern Queens. Each of these main post offices have neighborhood stations with individual ZIP codes, and unlike the other boroughs, these station names are often used in addressing letters. These ZIP codes do not always reflect traditional neighborhood names and boundaries; "East Elmhurst", for example, was largely coined by the USPS and is not an official community. Most neighborhoods have no solid boundaries. The Forest Hills and Rego Park neighborhoods, for instance, overlap.

Residents of Queens often closely identify with their neighborhood rather than with the borough or city. The borough is a patchwork of dozens of unique neighborhoods, each with its own distinct identity:

• Howard Beach Ozone Park, and Middle Village are home to large Italian American populations.
• Ozone Park also has a large Hispanic population.
• Rockaway Beach and Woodside have large Irish American populations.
• Astoria, in the northwest, is traditionally home to one of the largest Greek populations outside Greece, it also has large Croatian and Italian American communities, and is also home to a growing population of Arabs, South Asians, and young professionals from Manhattan. Nearby Long Island City is a major commercial center and the home to Queensbridge, the largest housing project in North America.
• Maspeth and Ridgewood are home to many Eastern European immigrants such as Romanian, Polish, Albanian, and other Slavic populations. Ridgewood also has a large Hispanic population.
• Jackson Heights, Elmhurst, East Elmhurst, and Corona make up an conglomeration of Hispanic, Asian-American, and South Asian communities. Woodside is also home to a large Filipino American community and has a "Little Manila".
• Flushing, one of the largest neighborhoods in Queens that has a large Asian community. The community consists of Chinese and Koreans, and Hispanics. The neighborhood historically contained Italians and Greeks.
• Richmond Hill, in the south, is often thought of as "Little Guyana" for its large Guyanese community.
• Rego Park, Forest Hills, Kew Gardens, and Kew Gardens Hills have traditionally large Jewish populations (many of these communities are Jewish immigrants from Israel, Iran and the former Soviet Union). Also known for large and growing Indian and Hispanic/Latino communities, mainly immigrants from India and South America.
• Jamaica Estates, Hillcrest, Fresh Meadows, and Hollis Hills are also populated with many people of Jewish background. Many Asian families reside in parts of Fresh Meadows as well.
• Jamaica is home to large African American and Caribbean populations. There are also middle-class African American and Caribbean neighborhoods such as Saint Albans, Queens Village, Cambria Heights, Springfield Gardens, Rosedale, Laurelton, and Briarwood along east and southeast Queens.
• Bellerose and Floral Park, originally home to many Irish-Americans, is home to a growing South-Asian population, predominantly Indian-Americans from the northern Indian state of Punjab and the southern Indian states of Tamil Nadu and Kerala. There are some less diverse, but still prosperous part of Queens, such as South Jamaica.
• Corona/Corona Heights - Once considered the "Little Italy" of Queens, Corona was a predominantly Italian community With a strong African American Community in the northern portion of Corona and adjacent East Elmhurst. From the 1920s throughout the 1960s Corona remained a tight close-knit neighborhood. Now an emerging Chinatown is developing in Corona.
• Bayside is home to many Italian-Americans, Greek-Americans, Irish-Americans and Asian-Americans.

Several of these neighborhoods are home to a diverse mix of many different ethnicities.