It's old hat to hear that Queens is the most diverse borough, home to more immigrants from more countries than anywhere else in the U.S. (and maybe the world). But it gains a new meaning when you walk the heart of Elmhurst along Broadway from Roosevelt Avenue to Queens Boulevard and then over to Grand Avenue and the neighborhood's southern border. It really is the most diverse neighborhood of them all. And the great number of shops and restaurants makes it very clear than in more sedate climes like Briarwood.
Elmhurst has come a long way in the last 20 years. It's now more than ever a desirable place to live with lots of subways, but also one that's under a lot of stress from overcrowding and antiquated infrastructure. Here's what you need to know about real estate, history, and more in our new neighborhood profile of Elmhurst.
What do you like (or hate) about Elmhurst? What was it like in the 1960s? Please share in the comments.
Comments
Ethnic diversity, proximity to Manhattan, and
employment opportunities are just a few of the many attributes of Elmhurst, home of my birthplace:Horace Harding Hospital,(now St. John’s)in 1956. My wife Vemy and I raised our two kids there and they had many nice friends, grew up knowing people of different cultures, and were well prepared to face the real world as productive citizens.
Real estate values have fluctuated according to the overall economy, but you can’t lose investing in a home or rental property in Elmhurst. We bought our first home there in 1985, a 2-family frame house built in 1911. It was located one block west of Queens Blvd. near the old Elmwood Theater, approximately 1000 feet from the Grand Ave. subway entrance.
We never had a vacancy in the downstairs apartment, we might get 30 or more applications whenever we advertized, and we could pick and choose whichever tenants we liked best. We lived there for sixteen years,
then moved to a single family home and rented out the entire house in Elmhurst. The rent we collected more than paid for the house over the years, including the mortgage and city taxes, which were very reasonable.
Elmhurst has changed a lot over the years, but for me the most significant development has been the tremendous proliferation of new apartment construction, rentals as well as condos. With prices in Manhattan hovering around $2000 a month for a studio apartment,
many more affluent younger people are opting for Elmhurst as an affordable and relatively tranqil alternative to overcrowded and overpriced Manhattan real estate.
To me, Elmhurst represents the best of both worlds, a bustling multi-ethnic conglomerate of world-wide cultures, and a comfortable and convenient neighborhood in which to raise a family.
Hi, I live on Broadway right off Queens Blvd and the most disappointing feature is no super market in walking distance. As a native New Yorker and someone who has lived in other parts of Queens all my life I have never lived in a neighborhood that I couldn’t walk to a real super market. I have to lug my shopping from my job in New York City..soon I will retire and this will be a problem. Cannot buy good veal, good bread, product choice is limited to KamLum or the NY market. diane
People love Elmhurst! However, this nice neighborhood is going to be distroyed by a homeless HIV/AIDS shelter!!
Fight the elmhurst homeless shelter
The Bloomberg Administration is sending 29 homeless men and women to live in a converted 3-family house in the middle of a residential street in Elmhurst. There will be a rally at 86-18 58th Avenue on Saturday July 11 at 11am to protest this decision. Please come and show your support for the people of 58th Avenue.
http://queenscrap.blogspot.com/2009/07/bloomberg-dumps-homeless-shelter-in.html
Daily News:
http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/queens/2009/07/02/2009-07-02_elmhurst_residents_rip_nonprofits_plans_for_a_hivaids_shelter.html
My Ukrainian parents moved to Elmhurst from the LES in 1940. My brother and I attended 102, 73 and Newtown. In 1956 we moved from the 102 side to the 13 side – a different Elmhurst altogether. My parents lived in Elmhurst from 1940 through 1999. I retired from the Civil Service in NJ in 2006 and immediately bought a coop in Elmhurst, the only place in the entire world where I truly felt at home and wanted to live. There are at least a few hundred restaurants within walking distance from my apartment, which has a wonderful view of the Manhattan skyline. It’s true that English isn’t spoken on the streets, there are no tourists, no hipsters, no weekend bohemians, the Grand Ave. subway station is filthy, the streets are dirty, there is no gentrification, etc., and that it is extremely working class, but those are the very qualities that endear it to me. The City life is the best life for me. I ordinarily don’t think in terms of race but I like living in a place where only 14% of the population is white. When I was growing up in Elmhurst it was probably 99% white and fairly dull except of course for all the sports we played on the streets and in the schoolyards. If you had a Spalding there were probably 20 different games to play: slap ball (no chopping) , stickball, punchball, chinese handball, boxball, etc. And we always had baseball (the Spartans and Ralph DeFalco) and basketball. Life was sweet growing up in the 50’s and 60’s in Elmhurst and it is still sweet living there as an older man. I love Elmhurst.
I grew up in Elmhurst during the 50’s and 60’s. We played sports every spare minute we could. There was always enough guys around for one kind of game or another. When I lived on the Ascension side of Queens Boulevard we played many variations of stickball but the big game was basketball. All the best players in Elmhurst lived on the Ascension side of the boulevard and were on the Ascension parish school team. In fact, my grammar school team and my brother’s tyro team won the CYO championship of Brooklyn and Queens. There were quite a few guys in the neighborhood on the Ascension side of the boulevard that had basketball scholarships to colleges, including myself. However, when my family moved to the St. Bart’s side of the boulevard baseball was the sport of choice. They had really good baseball players on the St. Bart’s side of the boulevard but awful basketball players.
I love the diversity, the mom and pop shops, in Elmhurst. English isn’t widely spoken on the streets, and there is an auro of the exotic. However, what is getting to me is the filthy sidewalks and streets, especially between Queens Boulevard and Justice Avenue on Broadway. Although there are subway and bus stations on that block there is only one small wire garbage can. Every morning there is garbage all over the damn sidewalk. There should be at least 4 of those big fancy cans they have for the fancy tourists in mid-town. Another thing that bothers me is that there is a really disgusting bum who used to live adjacent to the Grand Ave. subway station and now lives on the sidwalk about a street or so below Elmhurst Hosp. on Broadway. He is full of lice and he has mange on his head. If that is not bad enough, one day I saw him masturbating in public and another day he was urinating on the sidewalk right on Broadway in broad daylight. I think Elmhurst deserves better than what we get in public services. Why is it that we don’t have Ready, Willing and Able people on our streets, specifically Broadway? I’ve made complaints about these conditions via 311 and our Congressman but nothing is done. I grew up here in Elmhurst, then lived in NJ for 25 years working in the Civil Service. After retirement I returned to my old neighborhood because I love NYC. There is no place other than Elmhurst that I would choose to live, certainly not Manhattan. However, the filth is getting to me.
It has happened to me a few times in my home town of Elmhurst. I’ve been asked “Do you speak English?” Yes, I reply. “Do you know where little Chinatown is?” Flushing? “No, no Elmhurst.” I get a kick out of this because my parents moved to Elmhurst in 1940 and I grew up here. The first time that I was questioned in this manner it kind of struck my as bizarre that I was still in the Elmhurst of my childhood but also in the Chinatown of today. I’m always seeing how things used to be in Elmhurst and comparing them with how they are now. It can’t be helped, drawing comparisons. Anyway, being caucasian in Elmhurst, I often draw looks, as if people wonder if I got off the wrong train station. But that is what I like about this community. One day while walking about with my wife two workman looked at us and said “Hey, Al, look, two white people.” I got a real laugh out of that. I’ve become friendly with some of the street vendors along Broadway, hard working Chinese and Asian Indians or Pakistanis. Since Elmhurst is such a closed community in the sense of it being so Asian, I often wonder if I am the street vendors primary contact with a white American. I find that to be something to think about. I say this because my Ukrainian grandparents that lived on the LES where in the same situation. They had no contact with Americans, only with their own countyman.
A little history about Elmhurst from the 1950’s: 1. The best place for winter sledding was Nanny Goat Hill, a hill that ran down from the crest of 83rd Place down through what is now the LIE. It was a small forest and you had to avoid hitting trees. 2. Across from Newtown field, where the Mall is now, was an empty lot, adjacent to Fairyland, is where the Elmhurst Spartans baseball teams practiced. 3. During the 1950’s the streets on Elmhurst was full of kids, something you no longer see except accompaned by parents. As early as the second grade groups of kids hung out in the school yards of P.S. 13 and P.S. 13 playing ball. 4. There was a graveyard at 86-15 Queens Boulevard, where the medical center now stands. 5. There were few cars parked on the streets. The spot in front of your home was your spot and nobody else dare park there. 6. We played punch ball, diamond ball, chinese hand ball, and a multiple styles of stickball. We roller skated in the streets. The roller skates had steel wheels and large clamps around the foot. 7. We went to the World’s Fair Grounds to go swimming at the Aquacade. It cost a dime.
This past summer I attended an Elmhurst Troop 17 Boy Scout renunion. Mostly older men, who at one time were kids in Elmhurst, came from all across America to attend. We all came with really one thing in mind, to honor and once again see the Scout Master that we all truly love – Ralph DeFalco. I personally became friendly with Ralph in about 1957, when I was 11 years old. Ralph coached all the Elmhurst Spartan baseball teams and I played first base and catcher on some of those teams. Besides my father, whom I revered like a god, Ralph DeFalco was really the only other adult that I really wanted to like me. The thing is, everybody felt the same way about Ralph and that is why old men trudged across the country to attend Troop 17’s 95th reunion.
Ralph, now I believe to be about 82, was a scout in Troop 17 and then as a young guy became the Scout Master. He has quietly provided adult leadership to thousands of kids in Elmhurst throughout the past 60 years. In 2010, from my high rise apartment window in Elmhurst I look down upon Ralph’s house and often see the young Asian and Hispanic kids gathering on Friday afternoons to go on camping trips, just like I did. Last year, while the kids were gathering to go on the 2 week summer trip to Ten Mile River in Upstate NY, I had tears in my eyes. I was 62 years old and was remembering how I gathered with my friends to do the same thing. And the thing is, I wanted to do it again. I wanted desperately to be a kid again and go on that trip.
Ralph DeFalco is, as I stated, beside my own dad, the finest man I ever met. He has given himself to the Elmhurst community for over 60 years and never asked for anything in return. He is as selfless of an individual as you’ll find on this earth.
I’ve contacted 311 and our congress person about the lack of garbage cans on the eastern side of Broadway between Queens Boulevard and Justice Avenue, especially on the corner of Justice, adjacent to the bus stop for the 58 and 59 and adjacent to the Grand Avenue/Newtown subway entrance. There has not been a response at all. There is one small can on the corner of Queens Boulevard and none at either the bus stop or subway entrance. Every morning as I go out for my daily walk there is garbage all over the sidewalk. You’d think that the sanitation department would do some kind of assessment of where the receptacles should be. But, obviously they don’t. Thousands of people move along this one street every day and yet there is not a single garbage can for them to deposit their trash. This problem could easily be fixed and yet it isn’t. What else can I do to get the problem fixed?
In the 1950’s there was a guy who rode around Elmhurst on his bike who we called “crazy george.” Crazy George had the most beautiful Black Beauty Schwinn that I ever saw. It had those wide white wall tires and chrome fenders that sparkled in the summer sun. Upon the wide handle bars he had perched in a basket an enormous portable radio. At the rear were panniers in which he carried his bucket and squeegee equipment to clean local store windows. George had girlish, long blond hair, which was quite odd for the times, at least in Elmhurst, Queens. To add to his unusual appearnce he wore skimpy short shorts. But that is not all that drew everyone’s attention to Crazy George. What made George appeal to all the young guys in the neighborhood was the fact that as he drove his large bike down the street and into the schoolyards with the radio blasting, he would sing out in a long drawn out way “you old fart you old windbag” to staid middle class people walking their dogs. That was enough to make him an odd sort of a rebel in our prebuscent eyes. So if you know anyone that lived in Elmhurst in the 1950’s ask them about crazy George, for they’ll be sure to recognize him by my description.
I find that most bicyclists are rude, dangerous and obnoxious. As a group they want all kinds of concessions regarding special bike lanes and parking areas, but they are unwilling to use their bikes in a safe manner as expected in the written traffic laws. It is rare to see a bicyclists stop at a red light or stop sign. It is common to see bicyclists going the wrong way on a one way street. It is common to see bicyclists roll down even the most crowded of sidewalks. And now to add to the dangers of pedestrians there are the electric bikes that are in every way the same as a motor powered scooter but unlicensed. They too use the sidewalks.
I would like to call for a day for pedestrians to declare war on bicyclists. On this day we will all carry stick ball bats and whenever we see a cyclist we will stick the bat in the spokes sending the rider for a short joy ride over their handlebars. Have you ever walked around the beautiful battery park? If you do be prepared to dodge bicyclists. Why bicyclists are allowed to share the same space as pedestrians is beyond me. We have nothing in common. We go slow and they go fast. If they hit us we will be hurt far more than they will be.
Elmhurst during the 50’s and early 60’s was quite different than 2011. For one thing the neighborhood was primarily caucasian. Back then the parking spot in front of your house was considered your parking spot. There were no 3-story brick houses. The streets were cleaner. The subway stop at Grand Avenue was often empty of travelers compared to the current crowds. Kids were all over the streets playing games during the after school hours and summer time. Parents didn’t walk their grade school kids to school. The school yards at P.S. 102 and 13 and the local parks were always busy with kids playing basketball and every variety of stickball and handball, all without parental supervision. There were only a handful of restaurants because we all ate home 3x’s a day, every day, every year. There were local candy stores like Charlie’s and Annie’s that served egg creams and cherry cokes and sold Spaldings and Seconds for stickball. We did not have bars on our home windows and doors. Our cars did not have alarms. There was little crime. We often left our home doors open. The kids did okay in school even though we often had 40 kids per class. Mother’s most often stayed home and often did not drive cars. We walked home from school for our lunch. Dog poop wasn’t picked up. We couldn’t wear dungarees to school. We would wear a red tie on Assembly Day in school. Most of us addressed our friends parents as Mr. or Mrs.
If you’ve read the Sunday Times you’ve got to be aware of all the “excitement” of so called “urban pioneers,” those supposedly brave folk that move into run-down or just plain old tenement or ethnic neighborhoods where other people already live and have lived for many years. These neighborhoods, like Williamsburg, the LES, Astoria, LIC, Carroll Gardens, etc. are transformed somehow into “hip” neighborhoods, places where the young and educated and financed live and play. The New York Times can’t get enough of these young folk and the quicksand contemporary art scenes they drag along with them. Now what’s my point? Well, my neighborhood is Elmhurst, the one where I grew up, left for a job in NJ and then returned when I retired. When I left Elmhurst it was predominantly white. Now it is 13% white and English is not spoken on the street but Asian and Spanish and Hindu and about 100 other ethnic variations thereof. And yet my wife and I have not considered ourselves “urban pioneers.” But why? Because it is an inane designation. It says nothing. The Times is a crock. And if you want an ETERNAL VISION of what NYC is, take a walk from Broadway and Queens Boulevard up Broadway and then down Roosevelt toward Citi-Field. Then you will have an ETERNAL VISION of NYC.
I hate that Elmhurst has brothels. The prostitutes and the people who visit them spread diseases and destroy families. They need to be all shut down.
Where but in Elmhurst/Jackson Heights would you see a Buddhist Monk in orange robes discussing the buying of a cell phone with an Indian Seek? Where would you see men in thobes or women walking along the street in a sari, burqa, niqab, jilbab, chador, abaya or a shalwar kameez? Compare a walk through colorful Elmhurst/Jackson Heights with the insipid mid-town area so favored by tourists? You wonder why tour buses frequent the LES and mid-town when the real life of New York is on the streets in places like Elmhurst.
The Daily News (right wing corporate News that is) recently listed Elmhurst as the 6th best community to retire in NYC, and best in Queens. We have subways, buses, affrordably priced homes, apartments and rentals and a plethora of good ethnic restaurants. This is a multiethnic community, very working class, and certainly not hip or cutting edge or full of transient suburbanites or hipsters from out of town like Williamburg or Manhattan. I retired back to Elmhurst and love it here. And by the way, I failed to mention the only tourists we ever have are the people who get off the train at the wrong stop, come out on to the street and then turn around and descend back into the bowels of the earth. The only thing I dislike about Elmhurst is the graffiti, garbage people throw on the streets and the panhandling.
We are viziting in April and staying with airbnb contact . Hope we are not disappointed in Queens. Question. Whats the best thing and the worst about this Elmhurst area. We are from Portland Oregon.