Queens History: A Reader’s Guide

Follow the borough through its neighborhoods, waterways, buildings, and people

Queens is easier to understand when you can move between the larger story and a particular place.

This guide offers several ways in: follow the borough’s changing connections, explore a neighborhood, trace the history of Jamaica Bay, or investigate the institutions people built around them.

Begin with the overview below, or go straight to a place you recognize.

On this page: Start Here · Transportation & Waterways · Jamaica Bay · Neighborhoods · Buildings & Community Life

Start here: choose your way into Queens

These five starting points lead to different parts of the collection. You do not need to read them in sequence.

  1. Queens in Motion

    Start with the larger picture of a borough shaped by movement and connection.

  2. The Water Was the First Street

    Follow the waterfront route into the history of ferries and travel.

  3. Jamaica Bay: Nature, Industry, and the Lost Edge of New York

    Enter a focused series on one of the city’s changing landscapes.

  4. Queens Neighborhood History Index

    Find a neighborhood and begin with its own story.

  5. Masonic Buildings in Queens

    Explore the borough through meeting places, institutions, and community life.

Find a Neighborhood

Transportation and waterways

Choose this route if you want to understand how places became connected—and what happened when those connections changed.

Suggested reading path:

  1. Queens in Motion

  2. The Water Was the First Street

  3. Hunter’s Point to Rockaway

  4. When Bridges Killed Ferries

  5. The Return of the Ferry

Related reading:

Jamaica Bay: one landscape, several histories

Follow this collection for a closer look at the relationships among waterfront life, recreation, industry, and environmental change.

Start with the series overview:

Jamaica Bay: Nature, Industry, and the Lost Edge of New York

Then explore these connected subjects:

Button: Explore the Jamaica Bay Series

Explore by neighborhood

Looking for a particular place? Use the Queens Neighborhood History Index, or begin with one of these collections.

Astoria and the communities of historic Long Island City

For an overview, begin with How Long Island City Was Created in 1870.

Then choose a place:

Newtown and its early communities

Begin with Early Newtown, Queens: From Mespat to Modern Queens.

Continue with Maspeth and English Kills.

Flushing

Begin with Flushing, Queens.

Then explore The Flushing Remonstrance and John Bowne.

Far Rockaway

Begin with Far Rockaway: A Queens History Hub.

For earlier background, read Before Far Rockaway: The Rockaway Peninsula Before the Resorts.

Buildings and community life

Neighborhood history also lives in the organizations people formed and the places where they met.

Explore:

You do not need an interest in Masonic symbolism to follow these local histories. For an introduction to the fraternity itself, visit the Freemasonry Guide.

Where to go next

Return to the Neighborhood History Index to choose another place, follow a related series, or Browse All Articles.