Homes & Real Estate In Flushing, New York

Where's Flushing? No-one can agree on its boundaries. The Post Office, for example, divides Queens up into five "towns" which existed at the time New York City was consolidated. They are Long Island City, Jamaica, Floral Park, Far Rockaway, and Flushing. By that definition, Flushing ranges just about all of Northeastern Queens. Such a wide area glosses over the uniqueness of more cohesive neighborhoods within this area.

In fact, until 1998 all zip codes which started with 113 were labelled Flushing, which gave Flushing an area the size of Boston! A campaign led by the Queens Tribune and two area legislators reversed this, and we have the more neighborhood-friendly system we have today.

The Queens Borough President's page has a map which shows Queens neighborhoods. While the boundary structures are not named, we'll take this as authoritative. Our best guess of Flushing's boundaries from this map are:

• Northern: Whitestone Expressway (I 678) and 20th Avenue
• Eastern: Parsons Blvd, Union Street, a short stretch of Bayside Avenue, Parsons Blvd
• Southern: Roosevelt Avenue, Kissena Blvd, Kissena Corridor Park
• Western: Flushing Meadow Park, Whitestone Expressway

The zip codes of Flushing are: 11351, 11352, 11353, 11354, 11355, 11358, 11367, 11380. The parts of Flushing on which Judy and the Energized Realty Group focus are zip codes 11354, 11358, and 11367.

Get off at the last stop on the No. 7 train and you're smack in the middle of Flushing's Main Street district, (Main Street and Roosevelt Avenue). This is considered New York's first or second largest Chinatown, depending on your source and, rare for New York's outer boroughs, it has a true downtown feel.

Flushing is, in fact, truly a melting pot, with some estimates of its Asian-American citizens alone at 55% of its population, which varies depending on the source and definition of Flushing's boundaries. Using the New York City Department of Planning Census Tract (the smaller boundaries as shown on our map) puts the population at 140,000, other sources at 200,000-plus.

Mass Transit : No. 7 train to Main Street (30-35 minutes), LIRR from Main Street to Midtown (30 minutes); also bus QM2 runs express to midtown.

For renters: Typical one-bedroom apartments go for $1,100 (private home) to $1,200 (bldg.); two-bedroom apartments go for $1,400-$1,500 (bldg); three-bedroom apartments go for $1,600-$1,700 (bldg).

For buyers: One-family homes go for $530,000-$760,000. Two-family homes go for $850,000 to $1 million.

History: Before European settlement, northeastern Queens was inhabited by the Matinecoc Native Americans, a tribe of Algonquian-speaking people.

The town of Flushing was first settled in 1645 under charter of the Dutch West India Company and was named after the city of Vlissingen, in the southwestern Netherlands. It is said that the name Vlissingen means "salt meadow" and that the name was given as a nod to the tidal waters of Flushing Meadows. Pronunciation was corrupted to "Flushing" by the town's English-speaking inhabitants.

The town was inhabited mostly by British settlers, including John Bowne, who would later become a leader in the movement to stop the harassment of local Quakers, prohibited by Governor Peter Stuyvesant from worshipping openly. Remnants of the Dutch period include the John Bowne House on Bowne Street, and the Flushing Quaker Meeting House on Northern Boulevard. Flushing was occupied by British troops for most of the revolution. The 1785 Kingsland Homestead, originally the residence of a wealthy Quaker merchant, now serves as the home of the Queens Historical Society.

Flushing has more than its share of "claims to fame."
- It can claim to be a birthplace of religious freedom in the new world--the Flushing Remonstrance, signed there on December 27, 1657, protested religious persecution and led to the decision of the Dutch West India Company to allow Quakers and others to worship freely.
- It was the site of the first commercial tree nurseries in North America, the most prominent being the Prince, Bloodgood, and Parsons nurseries. Much of the northern section of Kissena Park, former site of the Parsons nursery, still contains a wide variety of exotic trees. The naming of streets intersecting Kissena Boulevard on its way toward Kissena Park celebrates this fact (Ash Street, Beech, Cherry ...Poplar, Quince, Rose). Flushing also supplied trees to the Greensward project, now known as Central Park in Manhattan.
- Flushing was a forerunner of Hollywood, when the young American film industry was still based on the east coast. Decades later, the RKO Keith's movie palace would host vaudeville acts and appearances by the likes of Mickey Rooney, The Marx Brothers and Bob Hope. In 1921, Anne Francis Robbins was born in Flushing. She would later be known as Nancy Davis and, finally, Nancy Reagan, wife of Ronald Reagan.
- What is now Flushing Meadows Park was the site of New York City's two world's fairs. Among the innovations presented to the world from Flushing were the television in 1939 (the broadcast was a speech by Franklin D. Roosevelt) and the Ford Mustang in 1964.
- The USTA National Tennis Center in Flushing, originally consisting of Louis Armstrong Stadium (originally the Singer Bowl, a leftover from the '64 World's Fair), is the home of the US Open and successor of Forest Hills.