Neighborhoods in Queens

Best Queens Borough Neighborhoods

Queens has 91 distinct neighborhoods, the most of any borough in New York.  Queens is home to a treasure trove of museums, gardens, and performing arts venues. With a distinct personality and charm, all its own, many parts of Queens offer terrific access to Manhattan via a quick subway ride.

While every neighborhood has something to offer, here are a few of our favorites, based on different lifestyles.

Astoria

Astoria is a unique part of the borough that is growing rapidly. Especially its nightlife and dining have given Queens residents second thoughts about going to Manhattan for a fun night out. Astoria has the biggest Greek community outside of Athens as well as a large number of Arabs.

Long Island City

Long Island City offers the artistic side of Queens. Here you will find P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, The Noguchi Museum, the Museum of the Moving Image, and Socrates Sculpture Park. When it’s nice out you could relax in a faux beach setting while having a martini and a burger at Water Taxi Beach with a beautiful view across the east river looking at midtown Manhattan.

Flushing

Flushing is home to LaGuardia Airport and the biggest Chinatown on the East coast. Major League Baseball team New York Mets’ home Citi Field (former Shea) is located along the #7 train as well as U.S. Open’s USTA Billie Jean National Tennis Center where the best tennis players from around the world come to compete every September. The commercial district is intensely crowded with national chain stores, as well as locally-owned shops and restaurants. In addition to Main Street, other retail areas in Flushing are located on Roosevelt Avenue, Kissena Boulevard, and Northern Boulevard, the site of the historic Flushing Town Hall.

Forest Hills

Forest Hills is an old established New York neighborhood. Forest Hills has a lot to offer when it comes to shopping. You could walk down Austin Street for boutiques and chain stores and Metropolitan Avenue for antique stores. Austin Street, with national chain stores, movie theaters, locally-owned businesses as well as restaurants, and outdoor cafes, is the principal shopping hub in Forest Hills. Other neighborhood shopping hubs are located along Metropolitan Avenue, 71st Avenue/Continental Avenue, and Queens Boulevard as well as along 108th street which has become a destination shopping street for many Russian Americans. Economic development issues include traffic and pedestrian safety along Queens Boulevard and the desires of merchants along Continental Avenue for capital improvements.

Bayside

Bayside, named after Little Neck Bay is in the Northeastern part of Queens. Its suburban surroundings include golf courses, boating, Civil War-era Fort Totten, Alley Pond Environmental Center, and Queens County Farm Museum. Bayside’s main commercial area is on Bell Boulevard from Northern Boulevard to the Bay Terrace Shopping Center at 26th Avenue. Bayside is home to Queensborough Community College and adjacent to the 655-acre Alley Pond Park.

Jackson Heights

Jackson Heights is one of Queens’ most diverse neighborhoods. It’s an Indian-Latino fusion. You’ll enjoy delicious Indian dishes at Jackson Diner or you could go Peruvian and go to Pio Pio for roasted chicken. Reflecting on its ethnic diversity, Jackson Heights is renowned for its international restaurants. The retail mix along 37th Avenue, Roosevelt Avenue, and Northern Boulevard also reflects the area’s ethnic diversity. Its concentration of South Asian stores has contributed to Jackson Heights’ status as “little India,” drawing customers from a wide regional base.

Elmhurst

Elmhurst is one of the most diverse neighborhoods in the most diverse borough in New York City. It consists of a large number of Asian, South Asian, and Latino residents. Queens Center Mall with more than 70 stores is where you want to go if you’re looking to shop.

Sunnyside

Sunnyside is an astonishingly diverse neighborhood, typical of the borough of Queens.  It has Irish Americans and Immigrants, Koreans, Colombians, Turks, Dominicans, Eastern Europeans, Ecuadorians, and Mexicans.  It is home to the Thalia Spanish Theatre and the Museum of African Art.  Sunnyside Gardens is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Woodside

Woodside is home to Calvary Cemetery, the largest cemetery in the United States in terms of the number of graves. Come to Woodside for a drink in a nice Irish pub and have a nice authentic meal at a nearby Thai restaurant.

Kew Gardens

Kew Gardens is both residential and commercial. Here you will find Queens Borough President’s office along with other municipal offices blocks away from million-dollar houses. You could visit “The Austin” also known as Kew Gardens Cinemas a classy fifteen-screen multiplex theater showing foreign, independent, and revival movies. To find out more about Queens you could stop by the cool Redbird Subway car, an actual old #7 subway car located next to Borough Hall.

Jamaica

Jamaica has the largest African-American community in the borough. It is also home to JFK International Airport. The Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning and Cultural Collaborative Jamaica both offer classes and organize programs and community events. You can also enjoy shopping down Pedestrian Mall at 165th St. for jewelry, sneakers, urban health and beauty products, and hip-hop fashion.

Ridgewood

A Historic part of Queens is Ridgewood. With 2,980 landmarked buildings listed on the National Register of Historic Places, it is the largest historical district not only in New York but the entire United States. Here you will find early-twentieth-century attached houses and many Eastern European bakeries, restaurants, and delis.

Rego Park

Queens Center Mall and 63rd street drive make Rego Park one of the most popular shopping destinations in Queens.  Long having a significant Jewish population today Immigrant populations from Albania, Israel, Romania, Iran, Colombia, and South Korea are also well-represented.  Rego Park is one of the most diverse neighborhoods in Queens.

Middle Village

Located in Central Queens, Middle Village is defined by Metropolitan Avenue. Abuzz with small chains and mom-and-pop stores, but is so quiet on the stretches through St. John’s Cemetery and the Lutheran Cemetery. Juniper Valley Park is a gem with 55 acres of baseball and soccer fields, a track, a roller hockey rink, playgrounds, and courts for tennis, handball, and bocce. The track and a few fields are new and some of the best in Queens. Come by any day, even a cold Monday morning in October, to see how bocce is played by the pros. Or come in September for the annual NYC Bocce Tournament.

Douglaston

Douglaston boasts a number of independently-owned and operated restaurants and shops, many of which are located in the area around the intersection of Douglaston Parkway and Northern Boulevard. Douglaston Park contains a mixture of large, older homes as well as Capes, Tudors, and ranch-style homes dating from the 1960s.

Glendale

Once renowned for its many authentic German restaurants, though most have since closed their doors, still open are Zum Stammtisch (The Family Table) and Von Westernhagen’s, Glendale is a residential community.  Glendale is also home to Cooper’s Ale House, which is featured in the show The King of Queens local bar. Cooper’s was taken over by new ownership and is now called Yer Man’s Irish Pub. It’s on 88th Street right off Cooper Avenue.

Whitestone

Bounded by the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge on the west and the Throgs Neck Bridge on the east Whitestone is a largely residential neighborhood with largely a European diverse community, a majority of its residents being of Croatian, Italian, Polish, Irish, German, and Greek descent.

Rockaways

The Rockaways is known for its beautiful beaches and national parklands. If you want to get away for the day or even half a day from the city just hop on the “A” train down to Broadway Channel and enjoy the Atlantic Ocean and Jamaica Bay.

Maspeth

Maspeth is old-school Queens at its best, a neighborhood of families, small shops, and restaurants. Maspeth has great views of the Manhattan skyline, but the city feels a world away from homey Grand Avenue’s Polish delis and Irish bars.

Hunters Point

Hunters Point is defined by the East River waterfront which provides its residents brilliant views of the Manhattan skyline. It is also home to P.S. 1 Contemporary Arts Center, one of the largest and oldest institutions in the U.S. dedicated solely to Contemporary Arts. In the summer the New York Water Taxi Company operates Water Taxi Beach a public beach artificially created on the wharf along the East River.

Corona

Corona is bordered on the east by Flushing-Meadows Corona Park, one of the largest parks in New York City and the site of the 1939 and 1964 World’s Fairs. Located within the park are great attractions such as CitiField – home of the New York Mets, USTA National Tennis Center, Queens Museum of Art, Queens Wildlife Center, and the NY Hall of Science.

Richmond Hill

A middle-class neighborhood in central-southern Queens, Richmond Hill is rich in history. The Battle of Long Island, one of the bloodiest battles of the American Revolution, was fought in 1776 along the ridge now in Forest Park, near what is now the golf course clubhouse. Protected by its thickly wooded area, American riflemen used guerrilla warfare tactics to attack and defeat the Hessians. The area is well known for its large-frame single-family houses, many of which have been preserved since the turn of the twentieth century. Many of the Queen Anne Victorian homes of old Richmond Hill still stand in the area today.

College Point

A largely diverse community with European roots, college point is a working-middle-class Queens neighborhood. Home to several notable Queens structures, it holds a storied place in Queens and New York History.

Ozone Park

Named “Ozone Park” to lure buyers with the idea of refreshing breezes blowing in from the Atlantic Ocean to a park-like community, Ozone Park has been largely populated by different groups of immigrants. Germans and Irish in the late 1800s, and early 1900s. By 1910 the Italians, who were one of the largest ethnic groups in the neighborhood from 1915-1983, At the turn of the 21st century immigrants from Latin America, South Asia, the West Indies, and South America have moved in, adding a diverse atmosphere to the neighborhood. These new arrivals have made Ozone Park become one of the fastest-growing and ethnically diverse neighborhoods in New York City.

Queens Village

Queens Village, like many parts of Queens, is an extremely diverse community made up of Caribbean American, African, African American, Guyanese, Hispanic, Indian, Filipino, and Russians. Queens Village was founded as Little Plains in the 1640s. After several name changes, it became Queens Village in 1856 and became incorporated as part of the City of Greater New York after the consolidation of 1898 and the partition of Queens into Queens and Nassau counties.

Howard Beach

A suburban neighborhood of Queens, Howard Beach is home to a strong and close-knit Italian community.

St. Albans

St. Albans is a residential community in southeast Queens. The neighborhood and the surrounding area are considered the heart of Queens’ African-American community. Notable residents include; Jackie Robinson, Babe Ruth, Ella Fitzgerald who lived in Addisleigh Park around the 1950s, John Coltrane, and Al Roker who was born and grew up in St. Albans. Count Basie moved to the new neighborhood of Addisleigh Park in 1946.

Hollis

A suburban neighborhood of Queens, Hollis has quaint One and Two-family Colonial homes. Hollis is especially noted for being the home to several world-famous Hip Hop artists or groups; Run-DMC, Russell Simmons, and Ja Rule.

Auburndale

Found between Murray Hill and Bayside, Auburndale may be utopian for residents and visitors alike; Vast open spaces that include extensive sports and recreation opportunities, convenient access to both downtown and beaches, all the shopping that you need on a recurring basis, and neat and affordable homes that families love.

South Ozone Park

South Ozone Park is home to a diverse population, with many African Americans, Trinidadians, Bangladeshis, Guyanese, and Hispanics living in the area. There has been a recent surge of development in South Ozone Park that rivals many of the surrounding communities in terms of home value.

Cambria Heights

A suburban neighborhood in the southeastern portion of Queens, Cambria Heights was once home to notables such as Jackie Robinson and Lena Horne.  The present neighborhood has a large middle-class Caribbean and African American population. In recent years Jewish families have settled along Francis Lewis Boulevard and 121st Avenue to be near the grave of Chasidic leader Menachem Mendel Schneerson of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement in Montefiore Cemetery.

Springfield Gardens

Located in the southeastern area of Queens, Springfield Gardens is home to a varied mix of city employees, professionals, and service workers with Victorian wood-frame homes, single-family brick homes, and newer two-family dwellings. Springfield Gardens is a predominantly African-American community.

Sections of Queens Map

Final Word

Queens is a dynamic borough filled with an array of vibrant areas that offer something for everyone. From the hustle and bustle of downtown Flushing to the laid-back atmosphere of Rockaway Beach, Queens has it all. The neighborhoods provide diverse experiences that make exploring the borough a fun and rewarding experience. Whether you’re interested in nightlife or relaxing walks through scenic parks, Queens is brimming with opportunity and adventure.