Tourists often visit Central Park or Times Square to see New York City, but there’s no better place to experience the essence of the city and understand its origins than Jackson Heights.
A few months after moving to New York City, I began conversing with a woman from the Borough of Queens. She asked me, “Where are you from?” I mentally prepared myself to chat with someone who had local ties, but her response was, “Well, it’s a bit complicated.”
“I’m half Colombian and half Indian.”
She stopped me and said, “Oh, so you’re from Jackson Heights?”
I’m not from there, but I wasn’t surprised by her guess because it wasn’t off the mark. I soon realized that Jackson Heights, a neighborhood in the northwest corner of Queens, is famous for being one of the most diverse places in the world due to its residents from various races and nationalities. One part of it is known as Little Colombia, which connects directly to Little India, so her educated guess about me was also an introduction to the culture of this part of the city.
It’s hard to estimate the exact number, but Jackson Heights is believed to be home to approximately 180,000 people speaking at least 160 languages.
Roosevelt Avenue, a major road running through the middle of Queens on the southern edge of Jackson Heights, never seems to quiet down. The chatter among travelers only intensifies when seven trains pass overhead at one spot in the area.
Tibetan phone repair shops, Latin American bakeries where “arepas” or “almojábanas” (Colombian bread filled with cheese, historically connected to Arab culture) and crispy fritters are prepared.
Recently, when I visited the area, the joy was palpable as the warm steam from Latin American “tamales” (an ancient American pastry) filled the cold weather. Nearby, a person was selling stolen electrical items, disappearing at the sight of any police officer with remarkable skill. At first, this scene may seem intimidating—so many languages and items for sale. But the lively chaos of the place draws visitors into its embrace.
Like New York City itself, Roosevelt Avenue appears as a hub of intoxicating energy, intercultural mingling, and mutual commerce. The area is often dirty and doesn’t always look beautiful, but if you know where to look, you’ll be enchanted by its allure. In other words, it’s a part of New York City that showcases its spirit: a bustling, capitalist environment that attracts people from around the world who come here seeking to improve their and their children’s lives.
So, while tourists might be more likely to see the “Big Apple,” Central Park, or the Statue of Liberty, there’s no better place to feel the city’s DNA and understand how this neighborhood started and what the city’s future might hold than Jackson Heights.
Esther Zipory, originally from Israel and who moved to the neighborhood seven years ago, says, “I feel Jackson Heights is a prime example of New York City’s culture; the city should be as it is.” When she’s not teaching urban planning courses to university students, she helps her husband run “Sandwich Therapy,” which draws on Israeli and Georgian culinary skills inspired by the neighborhood’s environment.
Zipory, who has lived in different parts of the city, fell in love with her future husband at first sight in Jackson Heights. She said, “Here we have such a close-knit community made up of immigrants. It feels like we belong here. When I see tourists here, they are usually people who have already visited New York and have done the touristy things but now want to see the city’s real essence.”
She’s not the only person I met who takes pride in Jackson Heights’ multiculturalism. Oscar Zamora Flores, a Queens College graduate and lifelong Jackson Heights resident, says, “What I love about Jackson Heights is that every street has its own identity. There are streets or avenues that are really nice with beautiful architecture and then you reach Roosevelt Avenue, just a few blocks away, and these streets are so bustling and sometimes so crowded that you can’t even walk.”
I met Zamora Flores at “Ciba Ciba,” one of the dozens of Colombian restaurants and bakeries in the area. He mentioned that he used to think about moving to Manhattan as a child.
“But there was no reason to leave; everything I needed was right here.”
Walking east from Diversity Plaza, you’ll find pedestrian zones near the subway entrance of Roosevelt Avenue, and Little India (somewhat of a misnomer as it’s a neighborhood with a mix of Tibetans, Nepalese, Bangladeshis, Pakistanis, and other groups) gradually transitions into Little Colombia (a neighborhood of Ecuadorian, Peruvian, Argentine, and Uruguayan immigrants). It then blends into Queens’ LGBTQ community’s vibrant area, centered around the oldest gay bar in Queens, “Friends Tavern.”
Zamora Flores added, “Unlike gay bars in other parts of the city, every night here is a Latin night.”
Jackson Heights seems to naturally embody the diversity of its people. According to Jason Antos, Executive Director of the Queens Historical Society, before World War I, this area was an undeveloped marshland known as “Trains Meadow,” where people hunted foxes and geese. The land was purchased in 1914 by Edward A. McDougall’s Queensboro Corporation. Because the area was close to Manhattan’s central business district, it was bought with the idea of creating a community where middle and upper-middle-class white Americans could live in English-style, beautifully landscaped apartments. It was also a nominally “restricted community,” where people of different races, Jews, and other marginalized groups were not allowed to purchase property.
A significant number of white people moved into the neighborhood, especially after the IRT subway line (now the 7 train) was extended to the heart of Jackson Heights in the last months of World War I. But McDougall’s vision did not last. After years of resistance and protests against the racist discriminatory laws of the time, New Yorkers eventually succeeded in opening the neighborhood to people of all races after World War II, which eventually shaped Jackson Heights into what it is today.
Today, tourists visiting Jackson Heights come to what appears to be a poor neighborhood, and its reputation as a cheap food destination in the city is understandable. The residents speak passionately about the food carts, stalls, and restaurants, in a way that you might never hear in Manhattan’s sports bars or Chinese restaurant areas. Bridget Bartolini, an oral historian and founder of the Five Borough Story Project, which aims to strengthen community ties through storytelling, moved to Jackson Heights in 2016 from another part of Queens. On the street below 34th Avenue, which had turned into an “open street” pedestrian zone since COVID-19, I asked her if she ever sees the neighborhood’s diversity as a necessity.
As we searched for her favorite Kashmiri tea restaurant (Al-Naimat Sweets and Restaurant), Bartolini responded, “Absolutely not. That’s precisely why I love it. This morning I went to a Lebanese restaurant for brunch. On the corner of my street are Bangladeshi food carts, a few steps away Tibetan momos… and it’s all great because people from those countries are making the food for people from those countries.”
For professional chef Esneider Arvelo, Jackson Heights is a center of food-selling carts and restaurants where, in his view, the culinary hustle and bustle is more visible than on the city’s relatively quiet streets or avenues. He moved to Jackson Heights from Colombia 34 years ago to help his mother with her food cart. His mother gained fame in the neighborhood as “Arpa Lady,” turning her unlicensed food stand into a restaurant with bricks, cement, and other materials.
Arvelo said that his goal with the visitors coming for food is to showcase the diversity of languages, cultures, and religions through different dishes. “Walking becomes a hobby as we see the culture of so many countries in one day.”
During my walk along Roosevelt Avenue, I saw stalls representing a dozen different countries. Walk a little in any direction, and you’ll find dozens more. Arvelo said, “When people say New York is the capital of the world, they’re talking about this part of New York.”
The fact is, I could ask three different residents of Jackson Heights for food recommendations and end up eating three different dishes. This reflects the variety of foods in these streets. For Mexican food, Zamora Flores recommended “Jaguailla” on 83rd Street, while Arvelo suggested going to “La Espiga” in the neighboring Corona area. Bartolini prefers “Samudra” for South Indian food, while Arvelo likes “Fuska House” for Bangladeshi snacks.
When it comes to Colombian food, besides his family business, Arvelo highly praises “Mr. Cangrejo,” especially for its Pacific coast dishes.
However, this area is not just a representation of New York City because of its culinary diversity but also reflects the city’s rapidly changing lifestyle. In a city historically presenting itself as a global neighborhood model for people worldwide, rising rent pressures are threatening New York’s character. In December 2022, for the first time, the Economist Intelligence Unit named the city the most expensive in the world, and due to rapidly improving developmental and demographic changes, some fear it is becoming the “world’s largest gated community.” Consequently, areas like Jackson Heights are at risk of losing their unique multicultural character due to recent waves of immigrants.
Bartolini pointed to a new “affordable” housing development, saying, “Every time you step outside, you feel the incredible diversity of this neighborhood, and that’s why people are so worried about losing it now.”
McDougall once envisioned a perfect community with dollar signs in his eyes. However, what has become of it is entirely different from his ideal. A vibrant, living example of multiculturalism and multiracialism,
