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About Forest Hills
Forest Hills is a neighborhood in central part of the New York City borough
of Queens. It is bordered to the north by Rego Park, to the east by Flushing
Meadows Park, the Grand Central Parkway and Kew Gardens, to the west by Middle
Village and to the south by Forest Park. The neighborhood is part of Queens
Community Board 6.
Neighborhood
The neighborhood is home to a mix of middle to upper-class residents, the latter
of whom often live in the neighborhood's prestigious Forest Hills Gardens area.
Forest Hills has historically had a very large Jewish population with more than
10 synagogues located in the area.
The community was founded in 1906, but before that it was known as Whitepot. In
1909, Margaret Olivia Slocum Sage, who founded the Russell Sage Foundation,
bought 142 acres (0.6 kmē) of land from the Cord Meyer Development Company. The
original plan was to build good low-income housing and improve living conditions
of the working poor. Grosvenor Atterbury, a renowned architect, was given the
commission to design Forest Hills Gardens. The neighborhood was planned on the
model of the garden communities of England. As a result, there are many
Tudor-style homes in Forest Hills, most of which are now located in Forest Hills
Gardens. However, there are currently a number of Tudor homes in particular
areas of Forest Hills outside of the Gardens.
The neighborhood contains areas of private houses with little commerce, such as
the Gardens area; dense commercial districts full of stores and large apartment
complexes; and streets with the six-story brick apartment buildings common
throughout Queens. The main thoroughfare is the 12-lane-wide Queens Boulevard,
while Metropolitan Avenue is known for its antique shops. The commercial heart
of Forest Hills is a mile-long stretch of Austin Street, which contains many
restaurants, boutiques, and chain stores. Forest Hills is also home to a large
working to middle-class community consisting mostly of Bukharan, along with
Russian and Persian, Jews (Mostly from Iran) and a variety of other Asian and
Hispanic immigrants, residing mostly north of 65th Avenue around 108th Street.
On 62nd Drive, the last block before 108th Street ventures north into Corona,
Queens, is a NYCHA low-income housing project that caused controversy among the
residents in the more prestigious areas in Forest Hills when first constructed.
Forest Hills was once the home of the U.S. Open tennis tournament, played at the
West Side Tennis Club before it moved to the USTA National Tennis Center in
Flushing Meadows Park. When the Open was played at the tennis stadium, the
tournament was commonly referred to merely as Forest Hills just as The
Championships, Wimbledon are referred to as Wimbledon. In the 2001 motion
picture The Royal Tenenbaums, Luke Wilson's character plays a tennis match at
the West Side Tennis Club in Forest Hills. Gene Hackman's character is also
shown cruising on the premises.
Forest Hills is also home to the main offices of JetBlue Airways Corp., a US
low-cost carrier.
Two monuments are erected in Forest Hills Gardens:
* A tribute to the victims of World War I, the "Great War".
* The mast of Columbia, the winner of the America's Cup in both 1899 and 1901.
Demographics
As of the 2000 census, there were 41,417 people residing in Forest Hills. The
population density was 27,396 people per square mile (10,582/kmē). The racial
makeup of the neighborhood was 73.1% White, 20.1% Asian, 0.06% Pacific Islander,
1.62% African American, 0.12% Native American, 2.39% from other races, and 2.61%
from two or more races. 9.35% of the population were Hispanic of any race. 41.6%
of the population was foreign born, 47.4% came from Asia, 34.6 from Europe, 14.9
from Latin America and 3.1% from other.
Statistics
* Area Code: 718/347
* ZIP Code: 11375
* Time Zone: Eastern (Standard Time: GMT -5 hours, DST: GMT -4 hours).
* Global Coordinates: Latitude 40.72 & Longitude -73.85
The Forest Hills Housing Co-ops are located on 62nd Drive and 108th Street.
Colleges
Bramson ORT College is an undergraduate college operated by the American branch
of the Jewish charity World ORT. Its main campus is in Forest Hills, with a
satellite campus in Brooklyn.