East Elmhurst, Queens
Encyclopedia
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, in the northwest of the borough
Borough (New York City)
New York City, one of the largest cities in the world, is composed of five boroughs. Each borough now has the same boundaries as the county it is in. County governments were dissolved when the city consolidated in 1898, along with all city, town, and village governments within each county...
of Queens
Queens
Queens is the easternmost of the five boroughs of New York City. The largest borough in area and the second-largest in population, it is coextensive with Queens County, an administrative division of New York state, in the United States....
. It is located north of Jackson Heights
Jackson Heights, Queens
Jackson Heights is a neighborhood in the Northwestern portion of the borough of Queens in New York, New York, United States. The neighborhood is part of Queens Community Board 3...
and Corona
Corona, Queens
Corona is a densely-populated neighborhood in the former Township of Newtown in the borough of Queens in New York City, New York, United States...
and is bounded on the east and north by Flushing Bay. Residents are mostly moderate-income families, but there are also low-income areas. It includes Trainsmeadow, which is its western section. It is patrolled by the New York Police Department's 115th Precinct. The neighborhood is part of Queens Community Board 3
Queens Community Board 3
The Queens Community Board 3 is a local government in New York City, encompassing the neighborhoods of Jackson Heights, East Elmhurst and North Corona The Queens Community Board 3 is a local government in New York City, encompassing the neighborhoods of Jackson Heights, East Elmhurst and North...
. The zip codes of East Elmhurst are 11369 and 11370.
East Elmhurst and its southern neighbor Corona are often referred to jointly as “Corona/East Elmhurst”. During the ‘50’s and '60's the area was home to legendary African American musicians, civil rights leaders, professionals and athletes including Dizzy Gillespie
Dizzy Gillespie
John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie was an American jazz trumpet player, bandleader, singer, and composer dubbed "the sound of surprise".Together with Charlie Parker, he was a major figure in the development of bebop and modern jazz...
, Nat Adderley
Nat Adderley
Nathaniel Adderley was an American jazz cornet and trumpet player who played in the hard bop and soul jazz genres. He was the brother of saxophonist Julian "Cannonball" Adderley....
, Louis Armstrong
Louis Armstrong
Louis Armstrong , nicknamed Satchmo or Pops, was an American jazz trumpeter and singer from New Orleans, Louisiana....
, Jimmy Heath
Jimmy Heath
James Edward Heath , nicknamed Little Bird, is an American jazz saxophonist, composer and arranger. He is the brother of bassist Percy Heath and drummer Albert Heath.-Biography:...
, Frankie Lymon
Frankie Lymon
Franklin Joseph "Frankie" Lymon was an American rock and roll/rhythm and blues singer and songwriter, best known as the boy soprano lead singer of a New York City-based early rock and roll group, The Teenagers. The group was composed of five boys, all in their early to mid teens...
, Charlie Shavers
Charlie Shavers
Charles James Shavers , known as Charlie Shavers, was an American swing era jazz trumpet player who played at one time or another with Dizzy Gillespie, Roy Eldridge, Johnny Dodds, Jimmy Noone, Sidney Bechet, Midge Williams and Billie Holiday...
, Ella Fitzgerald
Ella Fitzgerald
Ella Jane Fitzgerald , also known as the "First Lady of Song" and "Lady Ella," was an American jazz and song vocalist...
, and Willie Mays
Willie Mays
Willie Howard Mays, Jr. is a retired American professional baseball player who played the majority of his major league career with the New York and San Francisco Giants before finishing with the New York Mets. Nicknamed The Say Hey Kid, Mays was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1979, his...
. During the late 60' and early 70's numerous New York Mets such as Ed Charles and Tommie Agee called East Elmhurst home.
East Elmhurst is the childhood home of US Attorney General Eric Holder
Eric Holder
Eric Himpton Holder, Jr. is the 82nd and current Attorney General of the United States and the first African American to hold the position, serving under President Barack Obama....
and is home to Queens Borough President Helen Marshall
Helen Marshall
Helen M. Marshall is the 18th Borough President of Queens, first elected in November 2001, to succeed the term-limited Claire Shulman...
.
Library
Corona/East Elmhurst houses one of the most extensive collections of African American art and literature in the Langston Hughes Community Library and Cultural Center. A component of the Queens Library system, the Langston HughesLangston Hughes
James Mercer Langston Hughes was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist. He was one of the earliest innovators of the then-new literary art form jazz poetry. Hughes is best known for his work during the Harlem Renaissance...
Community Library and Cultural Center is located on Northern Boulevard.
The Black Heritage Reference Center, a part of the Langston Hughes Community Library and Cultural Center, serves Queens County with a comprehensive reference and circulating collection, totaling approximately 30,000 volumes of materials written about and related to Black culture. Emphasis is given to those geographic areas where African-Americans have lived in significant numbers, including West Africa, South America, the Caribbean, Canada and the United States. The Black Heritage Reference Center of Queens County includes books, periodicals, theses and dissertations, VHS videos, cassettes and CDS, photographs, posters, prints, paintings, and sculpture. The curator is responsible for the coordination, supervision, and care of the special collection for its continued development and on-going maintenance. Cultural arts programs are scheduled through the Black Heritage Reference Center. Meeting space is available to community organizations by application.
Special features of the Black Heritage Center include:
- The Schomburg Clipping File — an extensive microfiche collection of periodicals, magazine clippings, typescripts, broadsides, pamphlets, programs, book reviews, menus and ephemera of all kinds.
- The UMI Thesis and Dissertation Collection — consists of more than 1,000 volumes of doctoral and master dissertations concerning Africans and African-Americans in the Diaspora. The focus of the collection is on criticisms of Black writers, with special emphasis on the works of writer and poet Langston Hughes.
- The Adele Cohen Music Collection — contains most of America's foremost Black publications on microfilm. The papers cover 15 states beginning in 1893, and are updated each year with current issues.
- The Black Heritage Video Collection — documents the history and culture of Africans and African-Americans on tape, and in all subject areas including literature, biography, social science, fine arts; and titles such as "Sankofa," and the "Million Man March." Through the Black Heritage Reference Center literature readings, workshops and lectures are scheduled, as well as cultural arts programming in fine art exhibitions, film festivals, dance, musical, and dramatic presentations/ performances.
Economy
In 1987 British AirwaysBritish Airways
British Airways is the flag carrier airline of the United Kingdom, based in Waterside, near its main hub at London Heathrow Airport. British Airways is the largest airline in the UK based on fleet size, international flights and international destinations...
moved its United States corporate offices to the Bulova
Bulova
Bulova is a corporation making luxury watches and clocks. It has its headquarters in Woodside, Queens, New York City.Bulova was founded and incorporated as the J. Bulova Company in 1875 by Joseph Bulova , an immigrant from Bohemia...
Corporate Center, a converted watch factory in the East Elmhurst/Jackson Heights
Jackson Heights, Queens
Jackson Heights is a neighborhood in the Northwestern portion of the borough of Queens in New York, New York, United States. The neighborhood is part of Queens Community Board 3...
area. In 1999 British Airways said it would close its headquarters in the watch factory and move to a new headquarters building in a location in the New York City area by 2002, when the airline's lease would run out. By 2001 the airline said it would keep 80000 square feet (7,432.2 m²) of office space in the watch building, but that its telephone operations would move to Jacksonville, Florida
Jacksonville, Florida
Jacksonville is the largest city in the U.S. state of Florida in terms of both population and land area, and the largest city by area in the contiguous United States. It is the county seat of Duval County, with which the city government consolidated in 1968...
. As of 2008 British Airways maintains offices in the Bulova building.
Demographics
| Population Population A population is all the organisms that both belong to the same group or species and live in the same geographical area. The area that is used to define a sexual population is such that inter-breeding is possible between any pair within the area and more probable than cross-breeding with individuals... (2000 United States Census, 2000 The Twenty-second United States Census, known as Census 2000 and conducted by the Census Bureau, determined the resident population of the United States on April 1, 2000, to be 281,421,906, an increase of 13.2% over the 248,709,873 persons enumerated during the 1990 Census... ) |
79,252 | |
| Demographics Demographics Demographics are the most recent statistical characteristics of a population. These types of data are used widely in sociology , public policy, and marketing. Commonly examined demographics include gender, race, age, disabilities, mobility, home ownership, employment status, and even location... |
White Race (United States Census) Race and ethnicity in the United States Census, as defined by the Federal Office of Management and Budget and the United States Census Bureau, are self-identification data items in which residents choose the race or races with which they most closely identify, and indicate whether or not they are... Black Hispanic Asian |
30.0% 42.0% 18.0% 10.0%. |
| Median income Median household income The median household income is commonly used to generate data about geographic areas and divides households into two equal segments with the first half of households earning less than the median household income and the other half earning more... |
$32,182 | |
| Source: U.S. Census, Record Information Services | ||
Primary and secondary schools
New York City Department of EducationNew York City Department of Education
The New York City Department of Education is the branch of municipal government in New York City that manages the city's public school system. It is the largest school system in the United States, with over 1.1 million students taught in more than 1,700 separate schools...
operates public schools in the area. P.S. 127 Aerospace Science Magnet School, an elementary school for grades PK-8, and I.S. 227 Louis Armstrong Middle School
Louis Armstrong Middle School
The Louis Armstrong Middle School is a public school located in District 30 in Queens, New York. The school houses grades 5-8. The school was founded in 1979 as a court-ordered experiment in racial integration...
for grades 5-8 are in the neighborhood. A small section of the neighborhood is zoned for separate district in Whitestone, Queens causing some children to attend P.S. 21 for elementary and J.H.S 185 for middle school.
Private schools in the neighborhood include Monsignor McClancy Memorial High School
Monsignor McClancy Memorial High School
Monsignor McClancy Memorial High School is an all-boys Catholic high school located in the East Elmhurst neighborhood of Queens, New York. As of Fall 2012, the school will start accepting young women, and will become fully co-educational by 2016. Founded by the Brothers of the Sacred Heart in 1956,...
, an all-male Catholic high school
Catholic school
Catholic schools are maintained parochial schools or education ministries of the Catholic Church. the Church operates the world's largest non-governmental school system...
for grades 9-12, and St. Gabriel School, a co-ed Catholic school for grades PK-8.
Notable residents
- Malcolm XMalcolm XMalcolm X , born Malcolm Little and also known as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz , was an African American Muslim minister and human rights activist. To his admirers he was a courageous advocate for the rights of African Americans, a man who indicted white America in the harshest terms for its...
- Eric HolderEric HolderEric Himpton Holder, Jr. is the 82nd and current Attorney General of the United States and the first African American to hold the position, serving under President Barack Obama....
- Langston HughesLangston HughesJames Mercer Langston Hughes was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist. He was one of the earliest innovators of the then-new literary art form jazz poetry. Hughes is best known for his work during the Harlem Renaissance...
- Louis ArmstrongLouis ArmstrongLouis Armstrong , nicknamed Satchmo or Pops, was an American jazz trumpeter and singer from New Orleans, Louisiana....
- Ella FitzgeraldElla FitzgeraldElla Jane Fitzgerald , also known as the "First Lady of Song" and "Lady Ella," was an American jazz and song vocalist...
- Dizzie Gillespie
- Harry BelafonteHarry BelafonteHarold George "Harry" Belafonte, Jr. is an American singer, songwriter, actor and social activist. He was dubbed the "King of Calypso" for popularizing the Caribbean musical style with an international audience in the 1950s...
- Clive BradleyClive BradleyClive Bradley was a known arranger of steelpan music.-Person:Bradley grew up in Diego Martin, Trinidad where he attended elementary school. He then visited Fatima College...
- Charles "Honi" Coles
- Jackie RobinsonJackie RobinsonJack Roosevelt "Jackie" Robinson was the first black Major League Baseball player of the modern era. Robinson broke the baseball color line when he debuted with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947...
- Willie MaysWillie MaysWillie Howard Mays, Jr. is a retired American professional baseball player who played the majority of his major league career with the New York and San Francisco Giants before finishing with the New York Mets. Nicknamed The Say Hey Kid, Mays was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1979, his...
- Tommie AgeeTommie AgeeTommie Lee Agee was a Major League Baseball center fielder most noted for making two of the greatest catches in World Series history, both of which occurred in game three of the 1969 World Series.-Cleveland Indians:...
- Steve HendersonSteve HendersonSteven Curtis Henderson is a former Major League Baseball left fielder who is best remembered for being one of the players the New York Mets acquired in the infamous "Midnight Massacre."-Cincinnati Reds:...
- P. J. Hill, Jr.P. J. Hill, Jr.Parrish "P. J." Hill Jr. is an American football running back for the Las Vegas Locomotives of the United Football League. He was signed by the New Orleans Saints as an undrafted free agent in 2009...
- Christopher "Kid" Reid
- Christopher "Play" Martin
- Mark "DJ WIZ" Eastmond (Kid N Play)
- Hurby "Luv Bug" Azor
- KwaméKwaméKwamé Holland is an American emcee who enjoyed brief popularity in the late-1980s and early-1990s. He is currently a music producer sometimes credited as K-1 Million or K1 Mil.-Biography:...
Holland - Judge William Booth
- Queens Borough President Helen Marshall
- Ray FelixRay FelixRaymond Darlington Felix was an American professional basketball player. He was born in New York City. He played college basketball at Long Island University....
- Norman Mapp