Forest Hills, Queens

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Traffic- and pedestrian-clogged Austin Street is the main shopping artery in 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.

1 Neighborhood
2 Statistics
3 Education
4 References
5 External links

[edit] 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 White Pot. In 1909, Margaret Olivia Slocum Sage, who founded the Russell Sage Foundation, bought 142 acres (0.6 km²) 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. Many of the Tudor homes outside of the Gardens have been replaced by "McMansions" to serve the progressively wealthy community. These "McMansions" are often based on French Baroque architecture. In other parts of Forest Hills, home styles include frame houses, apartment complexes, and semi-attached houses.

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. Forest Hills is also home to a large Bukharian Jewish community. North of Queens Boulevard, another main thoroughfare in Forest Hills, 108th Street is home to many establishments that cater to the local Central Asian and Middle Eastern communities. 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 British Open was referred to as Wimbledon.

Forest Hills is also home to the main offices of JetBlue Airways Corp., a US low-cost carrier.^[1]

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.

[edit] 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.

[edit] Education

Forest Hills, like all areas of New York City, is served by the New York City Department of Education.

[edit] K-12 Schools

Forest Hills pupils attend several different elementary Schools, including:

Forest Hills pupils attend either J.H.S. 157 Stephen A. Halsey in Rego Park or J.H.S. 190 Russell Sage in Forest Hills.

There is a zoning district for Forest Hills High School. Famous graduates of Forest Hills High School include the founding members of the Ramones and Jerry Springer. However, students from all over New York City may apply to high schools in other parts of the city. In addition to Forest Hills High School, a large percentage of students from both J.H.S. 157 and I.S. 190 gain admission to other high schools in New York City. Many J.H.S. 157 students also attend the Bronx High School of Science, Brooklyn Technical High School, and Francis Lewis High School.^[2] Traditionally many more students from I.S. 190 choose to study at Stuyvesant High School, Townsend Harris High School, in addition to the Bronx High School of Science and Francis Lewis High School.^[3] Many of the students from outside the district accepted to attend Forest Hills High School are those who applied to either the school's Law & Humanities program, or the Carl Sagan program in accelerated math and science. FHHS has also began admitting students by audition to their Academy of Instructional Music and Performing Arts in 2005.^[4]

[edit] Colleges

Bramson ORT College is a technical college under Jewish auspices in the New York Metropolitan area. It was established in 1942 to serve refugees and immigrants during World War II. It became a College in 1977 to provide quality technical postsecondary education and to meet the educational and career needs of the New York community.