Since the 1960s, downtown Flushing has been a favorite destination for many Asian groups. Tribune Photo by Ira Cohen
|
Wave After Wave Fill Queens’ Streets
By Ellen Thompson
Emerging from the Queens Midtown Tunnel heading east, the 20-mile stretch before you slowly morphs into other parts of the world. At one moment you could swear you are driving through Ireland, then the next thing you know you feel like you are in Colombia or India. As you reach Flushing it looks like you might actually be near Hong Kong, not Main Street, USA.
But actually, that’s exactly where you are.
Since the Dutch sailed their way into New York City’s harbors and the Patriots overtook the Loyalists, immigrants from Western Europe to as Far east as Korea have molded the borough named for Catherine of Braganza, wife of Charles II, into their home. They have released their essence into the air, filling the streets with their colors for every New Yorker to take in along the journey.
The Earliest Settlers
What we know today as Queens began to take form in 1642 when Dutch immigrants established the first township, Newtown, which included an area within the limits of present-day Corona, Forest Hills, Middle Village, Glendale, Maspeth, Ridgewood, Newtown Creek, the East River and Flushing Bay. Three years later land that was once raised by the Algonquin people became known as Flushing when a group of Englishmen received the patent from the Dutch Governor William Kieft.
The last original township made its mark as Jamaica in 1655 according to a public Indian deed signed by settlers Daniel Denton and Roger Linas and chiefs of the Rockaway and Canarsie tribes. The Fishermen and farmers from Hempstead came to the Jamaica lowlands in 1644, then known as Jameco or Yemacah, and lived without the aid of government sanction until 1656.
Immigrant groups have long fought for equality in Queens. Tribune Photo by Ira Cohen |
An Irish Refuge
While the Dutch and English were settling into their thriving towns, across the Atlantic the population within Ireland was exploding and a famine was spreading through the country wiping potato crops clean.
In the early years of Irish immigration close-kit communities began to spring up throughout the five boroughs, but unlike many of the communities that have dissolved throughout the generations Queens boasts one of today’s largest and original Irish enclaves, Woodside where families still gather at the Butcher Block.
German Craftsmen
Shops were taking shape throughout Woodside when more than half a million Germans saw their first glimpse of the Statue of Liberty between 1852 and 1854. It wasn’t until 1859 when perhaps the best-known German family name in Queens arrived aboard a steamer from the city of Bremen.
The Steinways made it to Queens and they brought their love of music with them establishing a piano factory at the tip of Astoria. In an area adjacent to the factory the family built up the first residential units, creating Steinway Village for new immigrants.
The Next Wave
A flood of immigration soon followed in 1892, as Italians and Russians passed through the gates of Ellis Island and made their way to Queens. Long Island City was only two decades old, and Jacob Riis was discovering how the other half lived documenting the poor conditions of immigrant tenement dwellers, but the Italians were determined to call New York city theirs.
A thriving Italian population could be found in 1910 on Manhattan’s east side, but by 1930 they congregated in one or two family attached homes in Maspeth, Middle Village and Corona looking for a more suburban life that would still be close to their factory jobs.
While not the largest immigrant group, only making up 1.7 percent of our population, Russians found themselves settling in Middle Village and decades later, when refugees arrived from the former Soviet Union, they called Forest Hills, Rego Park and Kew Gardens Hills home.
Moving North
More diverse communities were taking shape throughout Western Queens when a new group of immigrants and African Americans from Harlem and the South claimed Eastern Queens as home.
As part of the Great Migration, masses of African Americans in the 1920s looked north towards the dueling skyscrapers along the New York City skyline and found themselves forming communities in Jamaica, St. Albans and South Ozone Park. The Southeast Queens neighborhoods became the homes of the great jazz musicians working in Harlem.
Political Refuge
Close to a decade and half later social turmoil in the rest of the world as World War II approached sparked a fresh wave of people seeking refuge in the United States. But new laws were aimed at reducing the arrival of Southern and Eastern Europeans as well as East Asians and Asian Indians, who were prohibited from immigrating entirely.
After the Holocaust the doors to New York City were opened once again as Eastern Europeans started calling Bayside, Douglaston and Whitestone home. Years later another surge of immigrants from war-torn countries like Yugoslavia and Kosovo would make their way over.
The Greek cooks, maids and shoemakers of Manhattan in the 1940s decided to cross bridges into Queens setting up communities throughout Astoria and Long Island City. Thirty years later a stronger scent of Souvlaki began to fill the streets of Astoria as immigration from Greece grew once again.
Asians & Latinos
Queens had resembled a miniature Europe from West to East for decades, but that was all about to change when the Immigration Act of 1965 abolished national origin quotas and laid the basis for Queens modern Asian American communities.
Queens was cheering for the Mets and endured the blackout of 1965 as Chinese and Korean families took interest in Flushing. Koreans were immigrating to Queens at an annual rate of 32,500 a year making Flushing a well-known destination.
By the 1980s Queens witnessed unparalleled growth, as newcomers from South Asia and Central and South America were entering communities such as Jackson Heights, Corona and Elmhurst. Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis were transforming 74th Street and its surrounding blocks into a jewel of their own as Columbians, Ecuadorians and Dominicans lined Roosevelt Avenue from Jackson Heights to Corona with specialty shops, medical offices and restaurants.
Caribbean Queens
South Queens in the 1990s was about to experience its own cultural boom as African and Caribbean communities began to solidify. Some families consisted of grandparents, aunts and uncles in the same house where others shared apartments with people from the same cultures.
When stores like the House of a million Earrings in Jamaica and Le Jardin in Cambria Heights opened, Haitians and Jamaicans began to feel more at home along the bustling streets.
Over time, immigration to Queens has circled the globe, running eastward, starting in Western Europe, making its way to Central Europe and Asia, crossing into South Asia, across the ocean to South and Central America and into the Caribbean.
We patiently await the next lap around the globe.
