At the dawn of the 1930s, Jackson Heights was a commercially desirable and uniformly white, middle class neighborhood of 44,500 residents with a cohesive community identity and architectural aesthetic. But in the next decades, the neighborhood would deteriorate in real estate value and physical appearance. By the mid-50s, development in the neighborhood had come to a close. By the end of the 60s, whites were fleeing Jackson Heights for the suburbs, fewer whites were moving in, and the neighborhood was physically declining. Once pristine courtyard gardens were paved over for asphalt, sandboxes, and playgrounds. Many single family homes and garages were illegally converted into apartments.
The Hart-Celler immigration Act of 1965 allowed for a major demographic change across New York. The law abolished the natural origins quota system that the US government had used since the 1920s to severely limit immigration from the Asian continent, among other purposes. In the following decades, an enormous number of immigrants from Asia and Latin America would establish lives in New York. Queens was especially transformed. From 1983-87, 42% of Asian immigrants and 47% of Central and South American immigrants arriving in New York settled in Queens. By 1969, half the 700,000 households in Queens were headed by an immigrant resident. The influx would sustain itself throughout the 1990s.
In the mid-70s, Jackson Heights was still largely white and middle class. The early Latin American immigrants belonged to the same race and economic demographic as the neighborhood’s historic residents: Cubans escaping first Batista’s despotic regime and then Castro’s revolutionary Cuba, and middle-class Colombians escaping the chaos and violence of their country. These early Latino groups had the resources to start businesses. Many of the immigrants who arrived in New York in the 60s and 70s settled in Manhattan’s Chinatown, El Barrio, and the Lower East Side, but others—particularly those who were relatively affluent—chose to settle in the less dense neighborhoods of Brooklyn and Queens. Much of the new wave of Asian immigrants following the 1965 Act were highly educated, with the resources to rapidly enter the middle class in the US. They tended to settle in neighborhoods with high vacancy rates and large, affordable apartments or houses, access to public transportation, and available storefronts to establish ethnic businesses. Jackson Heights was one of these neighborhoods.
In 1960, Jackson Heights had 81,000 residents and was 98.5% white. In 1990, the neighborhood was 40% white with 85,000 residents. And in 2000, it had 109,000 residents and was 20% white.
This racial transformation was part of a borough-wide trend. Until the 1970s, Queens was majority white. In the 90s, the county became the most ethnically diverse in the entire country. From 1990 to 1996, 180,000 immigrants arrived in Queens. In 2000, 46% of Queens and 63% of Jackson Heights was foreign born, compared with only 32% of the other four boroughs.
Though it is more economically diverse than in the neighborhood’s early days, today Jackson Heights remains relatively strongly middle class. In 1999, 63% of households had incomes over $30,000 and only 4% of residents received public assistance income. In 2010, one third of units were owner-occupied, a rate higher than New York City and lower than Queens. However, there are some race-based disparities in homeownership rates. In 1990, the ratio of white renters to white homeowners in Jackson Heights was 1.6:1; the ratio of Asian renters to homeowners was 1.5:1; and the ratio of Latino renters to homeowners was 3.7:1—meaning Latino Jackson Heights residents are much less likely to own their homes than white or Asian residents, who have similar rates of ownership.
Jews and Irish Catholics were the first to diversify Jackson Heights, in the late 40s after restrictive covenants were ruled illegal. Black people continued to be excluded from the neighborhood until Congress passed the Fair Housing Act in 1968. However, discrimination against Black people might have continued secretly through the 80s. This is especially likely in the co-ops, where antidiscrimination housing ordinances are still notoriously difficult to enforce. MacDougall’s co-op housing plans are still largely in place in Jackson Heights. They were conceived to give residents the benefit of home ownership while protecting themselves from owners who might sell their stock interest in the building at a low cost to “undesirable people.” This feature contributed in part to Jackson Heights’ racial homogeneity.
The Queensboro Corporation’s early ads for Jackson Heights invited middle class whites looking to flee the increasingly crowded and culturally diverse city into an exclusively white, suburban community shaded by huge trees and full of private lush gardens and recreation areas. Today, Jackson Heights is considered a hyperdiverse neighborhood. The integration of its residents was never planned, and didn’t follow invasion-succession models of ethnic turn-over. It’s not the only neighborhood that went from WASPy to Black, brown, or immigrant, but Jackson Heights is different from Brighton Beach or Harlem in that no single ethnic group ever became dominant. Instead, the magnitude of its diversity has only increased.
But despite this explosive diversity, since 1980, Jackson Heights has only been 2% Black. This is especially significant because neighboring Corona and East Elmhurst have long-standing Black populations, and North Corona is historically Black and middle class. Junction Boulevard (the eastern border of Jackson Heights) was nicknamed the Mason-Dixon line in 1964, after an attempt by the Board of Education to integrate schools in Jackson Heights and Corona. Whites in Jackson Heights mounted significant resistance to the Board’s integration plan.
Today there is less white hostility, but some believe that although Jackson Heights was open to Asian and Latino immigration, that never extended to Black people. A thirty-year resident told an interviewer in 1995 that if a lot of Black people moved into the neighborhood, many apartments would be sold very fast because “many of the tenant owners are elderly, they have enough problems dealing with Hispanics or gays.”
The Jackson Heights Latino (mostly South American) population grew from 6.1% of the neighborhood in 1970 to 30.7% in 1980 to 41.3% in 1990. Colombians are the largest and most visible single Latin group in Jackson Heights. After that, the largest Latin populations are Ecuadorians, Peruvians, Mexicans, Argentines, and Salvadorans. Puerto Ricans and Dominicans are present in smaller numbers, despite being the city’s largest Latin populations.
Modern-day Jackson Heights disrupts the “ethnic Main St.” paradigm (where one national origin group dominates a commercial strip): Roosevelt Ave, heavily Latino, is the most diverse commercial area in Queens. Though South Asians were the least residentially concentrated among all recent immigrants to the New York metro area, they are highly commercially concentrated along 74th Street. This has caused tension with long-established white and Latino businesses and residents, since it seemed to them like 74th was being overtaken by people who didn’t live in the neighborhood. Little India, stretching from 74th to 76th Streets, is hugely profitable because South Asians from all over the New York metro area shop and eat there. Interestingly, when this commercial ethnic enclave was establishing itself in the 90s, some white residents of Jackson Heights attempted to cede Roosevelt Ave to adjacent neighborhoods, dissociating from it. Many whites insisted Jackson Heights ended on the north side of Roosevelt, while Latino residents considered the border less clear. Koreans, who are residentially concentrated in Flushing, own a significant amount of Jackson Heights commercial real estate, often leasing to Latin American business owners or establishing their own businesses, which sometimes cater to Latin customers. And as an added dynamic of commercial activity in Jackson Heights, the informal economy of street food and drink vendors largely represents the most recent immigrant arrivals, typically Mexicans, who lack the means to break into established commercial markets, like restaurants. Going west along Roosevelt Ave the businesses become more Filipino, and then Irish, and then Korean towards Woodside and Sunnyside. Going west on Broadway, one transitions into Greek and Italian Astoria and going east on Roosevelt toward Flushing, one approaches New York’s Koreatown and the Taiwanese Chinatown. Though spectacular, Jackson Heights is one piece in the rich tapestry of Queens, New York.
References:
Bazzi, M., Doane, R., Kasinitz, P. (1998). “Chapter 8: Jackson Heights, New York.” Cityscape, 4(2): Racially and Ethnically Diverse Neighborhoods, pp. 161-177.
Copquin, C. G. (2009). “Jackson Heights,” The Neighborhoods of Queens, Yale UP.
Maly, M. (2011). “Jackson Heights, New York,” Beyond Segregation: Multiracial and Multiethnic Neighborhoods, Temple UP.
Miyares, I. M. (2004). “From Exclusionary Covenant to Ethnic Hyperdiversity in Jackson Heights, Queens.” Geographical Review, 94(4), pp. 462-483.
Plunz, R. (2016). A History of Housing in New York City, Columbia UP.
Williams, K. (2015). “How Queens Became New York City’s Largest Borough.” Curbed New York.
