Richmond Hill is a commercial and residential neighborhood located in the southwestern section of the New York City borough of Queens. The area borders Kew Gardens and Forest Park to the north, Jamaica and South Jamaica to the east, South Ozone Park to the south, and Woodhaven and Ozone Park to the west. The neighborhood is split between Queens Community Board 9 and 10.Queens Boards, New York City. Accessed January 26, 2024.
Main commercial streets in the neighborhood include Jamaica Avenue, Atlantic Avenue and Liberty Avenue. The portion of the neighborhood south of Atlantic Avenue is also known as South Richmond Hill. The Long Island Rail Road provides freight access via the Montauk Branch, which runs diagonally through the neighborhood from northwest to southeast. Many residents own homes, though some also rent within small apartment buildings.
South Richmond Hill is known as Little Guyana for its large Indo-Caribbean American (mostly Indo-Guyanese and some Indo-Trinidadians) population.Haller, Vera. "Indo-Caribbean Content, Victorian Style" , The New York Times, January 11, 2013. Accessed April 3, 2022. "Richmond Hill, in southeastern Queens, is the ultimate study in New York diversity. It is a place to eat Caribbean cuisine, shop for Bollywood movies, worship at a Sikh temple and stroll through streets lined with Victorian-era houses, a slice of pure Americana. Extending down the south slope of Forest Park, the neighborhood evolves from the quiet streets just off the park, where the old wood-framed homes are found, to vibrant "Little Guyana" along Liberty Avenue, its southern border with South Ozone Park." It is also called Little Punjab due to its large Punjabi American (especially Sikh American) population."Richmond Hill Street Co-Named 'Punjab Avenue' To Honor Neighborhood's South Asian Culture" , WCBS-TV, October 23, 2020. Accessed April 3, 2022 "The goal was to celebrate the South Asian community's contributions to the Richmond Hill area, CBS2's Kiran Dhillon reported. The stretch of 101st Avenue between 111th and 123rd streets is filled with Punjabi culture – sounds, cuisine and clothing – earning it the nickname 'Little Punjab.'" Richmond Hill is home to a density of Hindu, Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Protestant, Sikh, Jewish, and Muslim places of worship.
Richmond Hill is located in Queens Community District 9 and its ZIP Codes are 11418 and 11419. It is patrolled by the New York City Police Department's 102nd Precinct. Politically, Richmond Hill is represented by the New York City Council's 28th, 30th, and 32nd Districts.Current City Council Districts for Queens County , New York City. Accessed May 5, 2017.
Geography Richmond Hill is located between Kew Gardens and Forest Park to the north, Jamaica and South Jamaica to the east, South Ozone Park to the south, and Woodhaven and Ozone Park to the west. Hillside Avenue forms its northern boundary with Kew Gardens east of Lefferts Boulevard, while Forest Park and the right-of-way of the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR)'s Montauk Branch form its northern edge west of Lefferts. Its western boundary north of Atlantic Avenue is formed by the LIRR's abandoned Rockaway Beach Branch; south of Atlantic, the western border lies between 104th and 107th Streets. The southern border extends to around 103rd Avenue or Liberty Avenue. The Van Wyck Expressway abuts the eastern end of the community.See:
The portion of the neighborhood south of Atlantic Avenue is also known as South Richmond Hill.
The area is well known for its large-frame single-family houses, many of which have been preserved since the turn of the 20th century. Many of the Queen Anne Victorian homes of old Richmond Hill still stand in the area today.
History
The hill referred to as Richmond Hill is a moraine created by debris and rocks collected while glaciers advanced down North America during the Wisconsin glaciation. Before European colonization the land was occupied by the Rockaway Native American group, for which the Rockaways were named.See:
In 1660, the Welling family purchased land in what was then the western portion of the colonial town of Rustdorp. The land would become the Welling Farm, while Rustdorp would be renamed Jamaica under British rule in 1664. The Battle of Long Island, one of the bloodiest battles of the Revolutionary War, was fought in 1776 along the ridge in present-day 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 advancing Hessians.See:
One of the sites that would make up modern Richmond Hill, Lefferts Farm, was said to be the site of a Revolutionary War battle. Clarenceville, a farming community, was established in January 1853 on the south side of Jamaica Avenue between 110th and 112th Streets on land purchased from the Welling estate.
Richmond Hill's name was inspired either by a suburban town near London or by Edward Richmond, a landscape architect in the mid-19th century who designed much of the neighborhood. In 1868, Albon Platt Man, a successful Manhattan lawyer, purchased the Lefferts, Welling, and Bergen farms along with other plots amounting to 400 acres of land, and hired Richmond to lay out the community. The tract extended as far north as White Pot Road (now Kew Gardens Road) near modern Queens Boulevard. The area reminded Man of the London suburb, where his family resided. Man's sons would later found the nearby Kew Gardens neighborhood from the northern portion of the land.
Streets, schools, a church, and a railroad were built in Richmond Hill over the next decade, thus making the area one of the earliest residential communities on Long Island. The streets were laid down to match the geography of the area. The development of area was facilitated by the opening of two railroad stations. These were the Clarenceville station on the Brooklyn and Jamaica Railroad, at Atlantic Avenue and Greenwood Avenue (now 111th Street); and the Richmond Hill station at Park Street (now Hillside Avenue) near Jamaica and Lefferts Avenues on the Montauk railroad line between Long Island City and eastern Long Island. By 1872, a post office was established in the neighborhood, while the Clarenceville neighborhood was merged into Richmond Hill. Richmond Hill was incorporated as an independent village in 1894, by which time it had also absorbed the Morris Park neighborhood, which had been established in 1885. In 1898, Richmond Hill and the rest of Queens county were consolidated into the City of Greater New York.
The New York City Subway's BMT Fulton Street Line was extended east along Liberty Avenue into the area on September 25, 1915, terminating at Lefferts Avenue (now Lefferts Boulevard). It is now the southern terminal of the . The area received further development when the BMT Jamaica Line elevated, now served by the New York City Subway's , was extended east into the neighborhood at Greenwood Avenue (now 111th Street) on May 28, 1917.* * * As the neighborhood's population continued to grow into the 1920s, smaller closely spaced houses and apartment buildings began to replace large private houses.
Demographics Based on data from the 2010 United States census, the population of Richmond Hill was 62,982, a decrease of 3 (0.0%) from the 62,985 counted in 2000. Covering an area of , the neighborhood had a population density of .Table PL-P5 NTA: Total Population and Persons Per Acre – New York City Neighborhood Tabulation Areas*, 2010 , Population Division – New York City Department of City Planning, February 2012. Accessed June 16, 2016.
The racial makeup of the neighborhood was 11.2% (7,078) White, 11.1% (6,960) African American, 1.0% (657) Native American, 27.4% (17,252) Asian, 0.2% (116) Pacific Islander, 6.6% (4,139) from other races, and 6.6% (4,136) from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 36.0% (22,644) of the population.Table PL-P3A NTA: Total Population by Mutually Exclusive Race and Hispanic Origin – New York City Neighborhood Tabulation Areas*, 2010 , Population Division – New York City Department of City Planning, March 29, 2011. Accessed June 14, 2016.
The entirety of Community Board 9, which comprises Kew Gardens, Richmond Hill, and Woodhaven, had 148,465 inhabitants as of NYC Health's 2018 Community Health Profile, with an average life expectancy of 84.3 years. This is higher than the median life expectancy of 81.2 for all New York City neighborhoods. Most inhabitants are youth and middle-aged adults: 22% are between the ages of between 0–17, 30% between 25 and 44, and 27% between 45 and 64. The ratio of college-aged and elderly residents was lower, at 17% and 7% respectively.
As of 2017, the median household income in Community Board 9 was $69,916. In 2018, an estimated 22% of Richmond Hill and Kew Gardens residents lived in poverty, compared to 19% in all of Queens and 20% in all of New York City. One in twelve residents (8%) were unemployed, compared to 8% in Queens and 9% in New York City. Rent burden, or the percentage of residents who have difficulty paying their rent, is 55% in Richmond Hill and Kew Gardens, higher than the boroughwide and citywide rates of 53% and 51% respectively. Based on this calculation, , Richmond Hill and Kew Gardens are considered to be high-income relative to the rest of the city and not gentrifying.
Demographic changes Originally, many European (Italian, Dutch, English, Irish, Scots, Danish, and German) and Jewish families lived in Richmond Hill. In the 1970s, the neighborhood was predominantly Hispanic. Today, the south side of Richmond Hill consists mostly of South Asian Americans (Indians, Pakistanis, and Bangladeshis) and Indo-Caribbean Americans (Indo-Guyanese, Indo-Trinidadians, Indo-Surinamese, and Indo-Jamaicans), who have steadily emigrated to the United States since the 1960s. A portion of Liberty Avenue has also been officially been renamed Little Guyana. Richmond Hill also has the largest Sikh population in the city, and 101st Avenue has evolved into "Little Punjab", or Punjab Avenue, has emerged in Richmond Hill, Queens.
Points of interest The Triangle Hofbrau, opened as a hotel in 1893 and as a restaurant in 1893, was a restaurant which was frequented by such stars as Mae West in the 1920s and 1930s. It sat on the triangular piece of land bordered by Hillside Avenue, Jamaica Avenue, and Myrtle Avenue. The building has since been converted to medical offices. Near the northwest corner of Hillside Avenue and Myrtle Avenue sat an old time ice cream parlor, Jahn's. It closed in late 2007. Between Myrtle Avenue and the Montauk Line railroad is a former movie theatre, RKO Keith's Richmond Hill Theater, opened in 1929, functioning since 1968 as a bingo hall. These and several other landmarks are located in the vicinity of the "Richmond Hill Triangle", bracketed by Jamaica Avenue, Myrtle Avenue, and 117th Street. This was historically the commercial center of Richmond Hill. The intersection of Jamaica and Myrtle Avenues is also known as James J. Creegan Square.
The northern edge of Richmond Hill contains the Church of the Resurrection. This Episcopalian church is an 1874 structure and is the oldest house of worship in Richmond Hill. It was placed in the National Register of Historic Places in 2003.Richmond Hill Historical Society, "About the Church of the Resurrection: First Church erected in Richmond Hill." http://www.richmondhillhistory.org/Resurrection.shtml Also listed on the National Register of Historic Places are Public School 66 and Saint Benedict Joseph Labre Parish.
The southeast corner of 86th Avenue and 111th Street in Richmond Hill is designated Felix Cuervo Corner. Cuervo was an elevator operator who campaigned for elevator safety and other maintenance issues in high rise buildings.
Police and crime