Jackson Heights: The neighbourhood that epitomises New York
Sebastian Modak/ BBC:
A few months after moving to New York City, I struck up a conversation with a woman from the borough of Queens. “Where are you from?” she asked. “Well, it’s a little complicated,” I started, preparing for the spiel anyone with peripatetic roots has down pat.
“I’m half Colombian and half Indian–””Oh, so you’re from Jackson Heights?” she interrupted. I’m not, but it wasn’t a bad guess. I soon learned that Jackson Heights, a neighbourhood in the north-western corner of Queens, is famous for being one of the most diverse places on Earth. In one section of it, an area called Little Colombia runs right into Little India – hence the woman’s educated guess – and that’s only scratching the surface. It’s hard to nail down exact numbers, but Jackson Heights is thought to be home to roughly 180,000 people who speak at least 160 languages. On the neighbourhood’s southern edge, cutting through Queens like a backbone, is Roosevelt Avenue. Here, conversations don’t stop when the 7 train rattles overhead, they just get louder.
Phone repair shops run by Tibetans with makeshift shrines displayed between plastic iPhone covers abut Latin American bakeries churning out pillowy almojábanas (Colombian cheese bread) and crispy empanadas. On a recent visit, a woman shouted over the never-ending din, hawking tamales that sent pillars of steam into the cold air. Nearby, a man sold knock-off electronics, prepared for a well-rehearsed disappearing act at the sight of a police officer. It’s intimidating at first – so many languages, so much for sale – but lock into the frenetic rhythm of the place and it becomes hypnotic. Like New York City itself, Roosevelt Ave is a bustling, intoxicating, maelstrom of cultural exchange and commerce. It’s messy and not always pretty, but if you know where to look, you can find magic. In other words, it’s the epitome of New York City: a clamorous, capitalistic milieu drawing people from across the world who have come to try to better their lives and that of their children.
So, while visitors may be more likely to visit Central Park or the Statue of Liberty to see the Big Apple, there’s no better place than Jackson Heights to feel the city’s DNA, understand how it started and glimpse where it could be going. “To me, Jackson Heights feels like the ideal version of New York City – it’s what the city can be,” said Esthi Zapori, who is originally from Israel and moved to the neighbourhood seven years ago. When not teaching urban planning courses to university students, Zapori helps her husband run Sandwich Therapy, a pop-up food stand that specialises in “Israeli-Georgian food that’s inspired by the neighbourhood”. Zapori has lived in other parts of the city, but in Jackson Heights, it was love at first sight. “We have such a close community here that’s made up of immigrants – we feel like we belong here,” she said. “When I see tourists here it’s usually people who have been to New York before and they’ve done the touristy stuff, but now they want to see the real thing.”
She wasn’t the only person I met who takes pride in the neighbourhood’s multiculturalism. “What I love about Jackson Heights is that every single avenue has its own personality,” said Oscar Zamora Flores, a graduate student at Queens College who grew up between Mexico and Jackson Heights. “There are avenues that are really relaxed, with beautiful architecture, and then you get to Roosevelt, just a few blocks away, and it’s crazy and overwhelming and sometimes so packed you can’t even walk.” I met Zamora Flores at Seba Seba, one of a few dozen Colombian restaurants and bakeries in the neighbourhood. “When I was living here as a kid, I could count the number of times I went into Manhattan on one hand,” he said. “There was no reason to go, everything I needed was here.”Follow the crowds east from Diversity Plaza, a pedestrian zone near the Jackson Heights-Roosevelt Avenue subway entrance, and Little India (somewhat of a misnomer considering the equal number of Tibetans, Nepalis, Bangladeshis, Pakistanis and other groups who live here) becomes Little Colombia (and Ecuador, Peru, Argentina and Uruguay). That, in turn, blends into the beating heart of Queens’s LGBTQ community centred on Friend’s Tavern, the oldest gay bar in Queens. “Unlike at the gay bars in other parts of the city, here every night is Latino night,” Zamora Flores said. There’s a kind of poetic justice to Jackson Heights becoming a place that celebrates diversity. Before World War One, the area was a largely uninhabited marshland called Trains Meadow where people would hunt foxes and geese, according to Jason Antos, the executive director of the Queens Historical Society. The land was purchased by Edward A MacDougall’s Queensboro Corporation in 1914, with the vision of creating a place where middle- and upper-middle-class white Americans could live in gorgeously appointed English-style courtyard apartments, while still being close to Manhattan. It was also a so-called “restricted community”, where people of colour, Jews and other marginalised groups were prohibited from purchasing property.
White people moved to the neighbourhood in droves, especially when the IRT subway line (now the 7 train) was extended down into the heart of Jackson Heights in the final months of WWI. But MacDougall’s vision didn’t last. After New Yorkers resisted and protested the racist segregation laws of the period for years, they finally managed to desegregate the neighbourhood after World War Two, eventually leading to the Jackson Heights of yesterday.
These days, visitors to Jackson Heights tend to come to the neighbourhood hungry, and its reputation as one of the city’s culinary meccas is understandable. Residents here talk about food carts and restaurants with an unbridled passion you’ll never find amid the sports bars and chain restaurants of Midtown Manhattan. Bridget Bartolini, an oral historian and the founder of the Five Boro Story Project, which aims to strengthen community connections through storytelling events, is from elsewhere in Queens, but moved to Jackson Heights in 2016. On a walk down 34th Avenue, which has been turned into an “Open Streets” pedestrian zone since the Covid-19 pandemic, I asked her if she ever takes the diversity of the neighbourhood for granted.