Congressman
Joseph Crowley
Fighting for the People of Jackson Heights
"While
Washington, D.C. may be 250 miles away, the people of my Congressional
District are always forefront on my mind, and everyday I have
the honor of serving you in Congress, your concerns will be paramount."
- Worked with Postmaster to make Jackson Heights Post Office more accessible to seniors, disabled and those with baby carriages starting in the spring of 2004
- Protecting residents by fighting for $500,000 for traffic and safety improvements on Queens Boulevard
- Has secured millions of dollars to soundproof schools from the noise caused by LaGuardia Airport
- Secured $100,000 from the EPA to conduct an air quality study for Northwestern Queens, paying particular attention to the problems brought on by LaGuardia Airport
- Successfully persuaded the VA to open a Veterans Outpatient Health Clinic in Sunnyside, at 41-03 Queens Boulevard, (Between 41st Street and Queens Blvd)
- Created a Home Ownership program in conjunction with the New York City Central Labor Counsel that is creating real home ownership opportunities, such as for Mr. Omar Pena Castro of Jackson Heights, a member of Plumbers and Pipe Fitters Local Union 1
- Worked with the U.S. Department of State to pressure the government of Indonesia to release the results of its autopsy of Jafar Saddiq Hamzah of Jackson Heights and to conduct an open and transparent investigation into his death.
- Secured Federal funding for a Business Improvement District for Jackson Heights Merchants Association
- Working for Federal funding for the Expansion of the Jackson Heights Library Branch
- Secured $640,000 in Federal funding for the Jackson Heights/Victor Moore Arcade study that is a community-based congestion reduction, traffic flow improvement and intermodal transfer study. This will incorporate the major roadways and arterials, including the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, Roosevelt Avenue and Broadway.
- Brought $100,000 in Federal funding to Latin Technologies, a not-for-profit technology education center, to help fund a comprehensive job training program for community youth in telecommunications and information technology
- Brought $18,500 in Federal funding for the Latin American Integration Center for youth to develop ways to improve safety in schools and public spaces
- Improving quality of life by securing over $13,000 each for the Jackson Heights Action Group and the Jackson Heights Beautification Society
Jackson
Heights
Jackson Heights is a neighborhood in northwestern Queens, bounded
to the north by Astoria Boulevard, to the east by 94th Street
and Junction Boulevard, to the south by Roosevelt Avenue, and
to the west by the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. It consisted originally
of farmland rising sixty-five feet (nineteen meters) above the
surrounding lowlands in the sparsely populated of Trains Meadows.
The land was bought in 1908 by a syndicate of bankers and real-estate
agents called the Queensboro Realty Company, led by Edward A.
MacDougal: Justice P. Henry Dugro was an agent.
After the Queensboro Bridge opened in 1909 the area became more attractive to developers,
and by the end of 1910 the syndicate had acquired 350 acres (140
hectares) of land. It prevailed on the city to close Trains Meadow
Road and lay out streets in a regular grid pattern numbered consecutively
(1st Street became the present 54th Street), and on Interborough
Rapid Transit to extend a line into Queens, for which Roosevelt
Avenue was specially built. The neighborhood was named for a street
that ran through it, Jackson Avenue (now Northern Boulevard).
An elevated line opened in May 1917 with four stations in Jackson
Heights: 74th Street, 82nd Street, Elmhurst Avenue, and Junction
Boulevard. The first apartment building was erected at 82nd Street
and Northern Boulevard in 1911, and by 1912 there were eight miles
(thirteen kilometers) of paved streets with sidewalks, curbs,
and gutters, and five miles (eight kilometers) of sewers.
During
the next twenty years Queensborough Realty engaged prominent architects
to design two-family houses and especially the apartment buildings
for which the neighborhood became known, many bordering the streets
on two sides and separated from each other by a communal garden;
there were also a golf course and a community center. An innovator
in urban and suburban housing, the corporation offered cooperative
apartments as early as 1920 and semidetached houses known as garden
apartments from 1923; it also practiced exclusionary policies
aimed at Jews, Catholics, and blacks. The neighborhood had 3600
residents in 1920, and in 1922 double-decker buses began offering
service from 82nd Street to 5th Avenue in Manhattan. Suites of
two to seven rooms in apartment buildings were rented for $90
to $200 a month in 1928. By the beginning of the Depression the
entire tract had been built up except the northern section near
Astoria Boulevard and the eastern section near Junction Boulevard,
but these areas as well were gradually developed during the 1930s.
The population increased during the 1930s from 44,000 to 54,290
in part because of the opening of the Independent subway to Roosevelt
Avenue on 19 August 1933. A large number of immigrants settled
in Jackson Heights in the 1980s, especially from Columbia, China,
and the Dominican Republic and to a lesser extent from India,
Ecuador, Korea, Guyana, Peru, Cuba, and Pakistan.
The neighborhood
is also the home of the largest Argentinean community in New York
City. In the mid 1990s Jackson Heights was a well-maintained neighborhood
with apartment buildings and expansive one-family houses.
Vincent Seyfried, Encyclopedia of New York City, Edited by
Kenneth T. Jackson. New Haven, Yale University Press. 1995.
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