Jackson Heights

Jackson Heights is a neighborhood in the northwestern portion of the borough of Queens in New York City. It was originally a vast marsh named Trains Meadow until 1909 when Edward A. MacDougall's Queensboro Corporation bought 325 acres (132 ha) of undeveloped land and farms. Jackson Heights was conceived as a planned development for middle- to upper-middle income workers looking to escape an overcrowded Manhattan. The neighborhood has an ethnically diverse community, with half the population having been foreign-born since the 2000s. Much of the neighborhood is part of a national historic district called the Jackson Heights Historic District, which was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1999. According to the 2010 U.S. Census, the neighborhood has a population of 108,152 and is located in Queens Community District 3. The zip code 11370 is co-named with East Elmhurst. Politically, Jackson Heights is represented by the New York city Council's 21st and 25th districts. It is patrolled by the NYPD's 115th Precinct and the Queensboro Bridge is a major thoroughfare that bisects the neighborhood. The name of this road is still retained in a short stretch between Queens Plaza and QueensMidtown Tunnel in Long Island City. Jackson Avenue was also originally named Jackson Avenue; the name of the road is now used for a stretch of Northern Boulevard between Northern Boulevard and Queens Plaza. The area is also known as "Heights" because of the prestige of the area of Brooklyn Heights.

History

Jackson Heights is the primary city name, but also Flushing, Jackson Hts are acceptable city names or spellings, Queens on the other hand no longer accepted or obsolete and are no longer used as a designation. Jackson Heights was conceived as a planned development for middle- to upper-middle income workers looking to escape an overcrowded Manhattan. Inspired by Sir Ebenezer Howard's garden city movement, it was laid out by Edward MacDougall's Queensboro Corporation in 1916 and began attracting residents after the arrival of the Flushing Line in 1917. Several of the buildings in Jackson Heights were built by the Queensboro corporation as part of a planned community located a few blocks off of the flushing line. The Hampton Gardens, the Château, and the Towers followed in the 1920s. On August 28, 1922, the Queensborough Corporation paid $50 to the WEAF radio station to broadcast a ten-minute sales pitch for apartments in the Jackson Heights neighborhood. The first Jackson Heights co-ops were the Ivy Court, Cedar Court, and Spanish Gardens, all designed by Thomas Thomas in 1924. The elegant Châau cooperative apartment complex, built in 1926, was built in the French Renaissance style with slate mansard roofs pierced by dormer windows, and diaperwork brick walls. At first, the first shared gardens were purely decorative, but later developments included paved spaces where people could meet or sit or sit in the paved spaces. There was leftover unused space, which was converted to parks, gardens, and recreational areas, including a golf course; much of this leftover space, including the golf course, no longer exists. The name of this road is still retained in a short stretch between Queens Plaza and QueensMidtown Tunnel in Long Island City.

Land use

Most of the original neighborhood, comprising the garden city apartment buildings, was made a National Register Historic District and a New York State Historic Register District. It comprises large apartment buildings with private communal gardens, as well as many groupings of private homes and many stores on the streets surrounding Roosevelt Avenue. The main retail thoroughfare is 37th Avenue from 72nd Street to Junction Boulevard, with more retail on 73rd, 74th, and 82nd streets between 37th and Roosevelt avenues. Stores and restaurants on and near 74th Street tend to cater to the large population from the Indian subcontinent in the neighborhood, with sari and jewelry stores, Indian and Bengali music and movie retailers and many restaurants. Along Roosevelt Avenue from 74th to 108th Streets, street food from all over the world is made and sold though food carts are "currently dominated by the Mexican community". Typical cart food includes Bengali fuchka (phuchka), Middle Eastern lamb over rice, Nepalese momo, Colombian chuzos and arepas, Greek souvlaki, Ecuadorian ceviche, Thai steamed chicken over rice and Mexican elotes (corn on a cob), tacos, homemade tamales filled with meats, cheese, fruits or even chilies, and fruit batidos or aguas frescas (smoothies) As well as South American sweet churros. Most housing units in Jackson Heights are apartments in multi-unit buildings, many of which are five or six stories. There are also a number of one- to three-family houses, most of whom are attached row houses.

Demographics

The population of Jackson Heights was 108,152, a decrease of 5,175 (4.6%) from the 113,327 counted in 2000. The neighborhood had a population density of 98.2 inhabitants per acre (62,800/sq mi; 24,300/km²) Most inhabitants are middle-aged adults and youth: 22% are between the ages of 017, 32% between 25 and 44, and 24% between 45 and 64. As of 2017, the median household income in Community Board 3 was $56,601. The entirety of Queens Community District 3, which comprises Jackson Heights as well as East Elmhurst and North Corona, had 179,844 inhabitants as of NYC Health's 2018 Community Health Profile. The 2020 census data from New York City Department of City Planning showed that there were 54,300 Hispanic residents, 27,600 Asian residents, there were between 10,000 to 19,999 White residents and less than 5000 Black residents. Based on this calculation, as of 2018, Jackson Heights is considered to be high-income relative to the rest of the city and not gentrifying.:7However, in 2017, nearly 11% of households in Jackson Heights were severely overcrowdeddefined as households in which there are more than 1.5 household members for each room (excluding bathrooms) in the unit. This is the second most overcrowded neighborhood in the city, behind only Elmhurst to the south. In 2018, an estimated 25% of Jackson. Heights residents lived in poverty, compared to 19% in all of Queens and 20% in New. York City.

Culture

Jackson Heights is home to large numbers of South Americans, Indians, Pakistanis, Tibetans, Nepalese, and Bangladeshis. Half of the population was foreign born by the 2000s. Most businesses are Asian- and Latino-owned, and there are restaurants, bakeries, specialty shops, legal offices, bars, and beauty salons. There is a year-round greenmarket every Sunday morning at Travers Park, as well as various family-oriented spring and summer concerts. The word game Scrabble was co-invented by former architect Alfred Mosher Butts, who lived in Jackson Heights. The LGBT community became a movement after the 1990 murder of Julio Rivera, a 29-year-old bartender who worked at the Magic Touch gay bar. The resulting activism led to the creation of the Anti-Violence Project, a social services agency that helps monitor any type of criminal acts against the citywide LGBT community. In Jackson Heights, the corner of 78th Street and 37th Avenue was renamed in his memory in 2000, and a documentary was made in his honor. The 2015 documentary In Jackson Height portrays Jackson Heights as a microcosm of the American melting pot. It has been called "the second (if unofficial) capital of the exile Tibetan world, after Dharamsala, India" for its large and vibrant Tibetan community. It is also home to the Jackson Heights Garden City Society, a historical society, whose founders include local historians, the Queens Borough Historian and local activists.

Economy

US-Bangla Airlines formerly had its U.S. offices in the Bangladesh Plaza building in Jackson Heights. The airline is now based in New York City's SoHo neighborhood. The company has a fleet of more than 1,000 Boeing 737s and Airbus A320s. It also operates the Bangladesh Airline Network, a low-cost carrier with more than 100 routes across the world. It is based in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, and has a hub in Chittagong, the country's second-largest city, with a population of 2.2 million. The network has a network of more that 1,200 flights a day, mostly to and from airports in the United States. It was founded in 1971 and is one of the largest airlines in the world, along with Air France-KLM and Ethiopian Airlines. It has a total fleet of 1,400 aircraft, the most of any airline in the U.N. and the world's second largest after Air Canada. It had its headquarters in the Bangladeshi Embassy in Washington, D.C., until it moved to a new building in 2007. It now has its own offices in Manhattan, in the same building as the Bangladesh Airways headquarters. The Bangladesh Airways network also has offices in Atlanta, Georgia, and Miami, Florida, as well as other locations in the Northeast and the Midwest. It operates a low cost carrier network, the Bangladesh Airlines Network, which has more than 200 routes. It began operations in 2007 and has been in operation since.

Parks and recreation

Travers Park has a variety of sports, including basketball, tennis, baseball, soccer, and handball. In recent years, a farmers' market was expanded to a year-round presence. Renovations completed in October 2020 eliminated much of the space previously used for sports, and replaced it with lawn and seating space. In 1998, P.S. 69 built an annex to compensate for the booming population of children in Jackson Heights and the public access to the school yard was removed. On November 30, 2011, then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg and other city officials opened the 200th "Schoolyard to Playground" at P.s. 69 as a part of the PlaNYC initiative to ensure all New Yorkers live within a 10-minute walk of a park or playground. The program is turning schoolyards into playgrounds in neighborhoods across the city.

Police and crime

The 115th Precinct was ranked 20th safest out of 69 patrol areas for per-capita crime in 2010. Crime has declined significantly since the late 20th century when the area was known as the "cocaine capital" of New York City. As of 2018, with a non-fatal assault rate of 33 per 100,000 people, Jackson Heights's rate of violent crimes per capita is less than that of the city as a whole.:8. The precinct reported 11 murders, 42 rapes, 246 robberies, 344 felony assaults, 125 burglaries, 520 grand larcenies, and 128 grand larsenies auto in 2019. The incarceration rate of 342 per 100, 000 people is lower than the city's overall incarceration rate. The Precinct has a lower crime rate than in the 1990s, with crimes across all categories having decreased by 85.0% between 1990 and 2019. It is located at 9215 Northern Boulevard in Jackson Heights, New York. The NYPD's Jackson Heights Precinct is patrolled by the NYPD's 115th Division, which covers Jackson Heights and parts of Queens, Brooklyn, Staten Island, and the Upper East Side. The 115th division is made up of officers from the Queens, Queens, and Staten Island Precincts. It has a crime-free crime rate of 0.8 per cent, the lowest of all NYPD precincts. It also has the lowest incarceration rate in the city, at 342 per cent of the overall rate.

Fire safety

Jackson Heights is served by two New York City Fire Department (FDNY) fire stations. Engine Co. 307/Ladder Co. 154 is located at 8119 Northern Boulevard. Another fire station is located in East Elmhurst, New York, at 2712 Kearney Street. Jackson Heights is located on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. It is located near the East River and East River on the East Side. It has a population of about 2,000 people. The area has a low crime rate and a high rate of home ownership. It also has a high percentage of first-time homebuyers and first-responders. The town has a history of high crime rates and a low rate of homeownership, according to the FDNY. The fire department has been in Jackson Heights for more than 50 years. It was founded in 1903 and is one of the oldest fire stations in the city. The city's first fire station was built in 1903. The current fire station dates back to the early 1900s. It opened in the 1880s and is on Northern Boulevard and Kearney St. The station is on the east side of Manhattan, near the West Side and East Side, on the west side of the Manhattan River. The community has a long history of homeownership and homeowner's association with the fire department. It began in the late 19th century and has been there since the mid-20th century. In the early 20th century, Jackson Heights was one of New York's first boroughs. The first fire stations opened.

Health

As of 2018, preterm births are about the same in Jackson Heights as in other places citywide, but births to teenage mothers are more common. In Jackson Heights, 20% of residents are obese, 13% are diabetic, and 29% have high blood pressure. In 2020, the neighborhoods of Corona, East Elmhurst, Elmhurst and Jackson Heights were most affected by the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City. As of August 10, these communities, with a cumulative 303,494 residents, had recorded 12,954 CO VID-19 cases and 1,178 deaths. The nearest large hospital in the Jackson Heights area is the Elmhurst Hospital Center in Elmhurst. Jackson Heights also has two farmer's markets. The concentration of fine particulate matter, the deadliest type of air pollutant, in the area is 0.0073 milligrams per cubic metre (7.3×109 oz/cu ft), lower than the city average. In 2018, 72% of Residents described their health as "good", "very good", or "excellent", lower thanThe city's average of 78%. In 2018 there were 17 bodegas in the community. The population of uninsured residents was estimated to be 28%, which is higher than theCitywide rate of 12%. Jackson Heights has a high population of residents who are uninsured. The area has two farmers' markets, one for fresh produce, and one for meat and two for meat/vegetarian.