Queens
We would like to continue our brief historical background with the formation of the
easternmost and largest in area of the five boroughs of New York City.
It is geographically adjacent to the borough of Brooklyn at the southwestern end of Long Island and to Nassau County farther east on Long Island. In addition, Queens shares water borders with the boroughs of Manhattan and the Bronx.
Coterminous with Queens County since 1899, the borough of Queens is the second-largest in population (after Brooklyn), with a census-estimated 2,358,582 residents in 2017 ("Population and Housing Unit Estimates". U.S. Census Bureau. Retrieved June 9, 2017.), approximately 48% of them foreign-born ("State & County QuickFacts - Queens County (Queens Borough), New York and New York City, New York". U.S. Census Bureau. Retrieved March 26, 2018.).
Queens was established in 1683 as one of the original 12 counties of New York. The settlement was presumably named for the Portuguese Princess Catherine of Braganza (1638–1705), Queen of England, Scotland and Ireland. Queens became a borough during the consolidation of New York City in 1898, and from 1683 until 1899, the County of Queens included what is now Nassau County.
There are the middle-class population owning private homes, although in such areas as Forest Hills apartments predominate. During colonial times a significant battle for religious freedom, the Flushing Remonstrance (1657), was fought in Queens; it was a first victory for the tolerance necessary in an urban centre. In the 19th century Queens had several racetracks and two shorelines that attracted the wealthy, and it served as the final resting place for deceased New Yorkers.The Long Island Rail Road (1836), originally intended to shorten the trip from New York to the Boston ferry, traversed land that was largely agricultural. That situation changed after 1870 when what essentially were company towns were established by William Englehardt Steinway (pianos) and Conrad Poppenhusen (rubber); the later development of the Newtown Creek area brought heavy industry and drew many immigrant workers into the county.
In a diverse and cosmopolitan city, Queens ranks as the most ethnically varied of all the boroughs. It is perhaps too simple to refer to Irish Woodside, Greek Astoria, Polish-Lithuanian Maspeth, or Italian Corona, but those groups do predominate. Vast numbers of Chinese, Koreans, and East Indians have transformed Flushing into the largest of New York’s three Asian centres and revived a once anemic local economy in the bargain. More than half of the city’s Latin Americans, from more than a dozen nations, live in Queens, and their restaurants and travel agencies dominate entire neighbourhoods. African Americans are more fully integrated in Queens than elsewhere in the metropolis, residing primarily in areas such as Hollis, Cambria Heights, St. Alban’s, and Springfield Gardens. The borough has no visible slum area, and its residents are united in rejecting low-income housing and high-rise apartments.
A pleasing mix of the urban and the rural, Queens was the centre of the silent-film industry until displaced by Hollywood in the late 1920s. It became an international arrival centre when La Guardia Airport opened in 1939 and Idlewild International Airport in 1948, the latter subsequently renamed to honour President John F. Kennedy in 1963. Access to transportation and a lower-density population made Flushing Meadows in Queens a natural site for the two world’s fairs held in New York City in 1939–40 and 1964–65. The borough also annually hosts the United States Open Tennis Championships.
In the 1940s, Queens was an important center of jazz; such jazz luminaries as Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker, and Ella Fitzgerald took up residence in Queens, seeking refuge from the segregation they found elsewhere in New York.
Queens hosts various museums and cultural institutions that serve its diverse communities. They range from the historical (such as the John Bowne House) to the scientific (such as the New York Hall of Science), from conventional art galleries (such as the Noguchi Museum) to unique graffiti exhibits (such as 5 Pointz).
Some main European ancestries in Queens as of 2000 include:
The Hispanic or Latino population increased by 61% to 597,773 between 1990 and 2006 and now accounts for 26.5% of the borough's population. Queens is now home to hundreds of thousands of Latinos and Hispanics.
Used sources: https://allthatsinteresting.com/new-york-immigrants-photos
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queens
https://www.stuytown.com/blog/stuycity/nychistory/the-history-of-queens-ny
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