Ridgewood

The industrial portion of Ridgewood, Queens, south of Myrtle Avenue was the heart of New York’s knitting industry in its heyday in the 1950’s, but over the past few decades dozens of small mills have buckled against competition from cheaper imports and gone out of business.

Until recently, the area remained largely commercial, but lately the last wave of knitting mills in Ridgewood are being converted into mixed-use buildings, spurring a wave of much-needed residential development.  read more »

Ridgewood, Queens, lies to the east of the up-and-coming Brooklyn neighborhood du jour, Bushwick, and is perhaps best known for suffering an identity crisis in the late 1970’s. Until then Ridgewood shared a border and zip code with Bushwick--which was even called Ridgewood, Brooklyn, at one point, lumping the neighborhoods together both practically and in the popular imagination. Much like the realtors who tried to rebrand Bushwick as “East Williamsburg” in the ‘90’s, Ridgewood residents tried to distance themselves from Bushwick when its reputation took a nosedive after widespread looting and riots there during the 1977 blackout.  read more »

We reported in today's paper about the travails of the 200-plus tenants booted late last month from 475 Kent Avenue (and about how Williamsburg in general has become an inhospitable place for artists, so much so that many are migrating to Ridgewood, Queens).

Brownstoner reports today that the tenants--a collection of artists, some of whom had been living in the old commercial building for years--may not be able to return home for months.  read more »

We've got more fun facts from the forthcoming book The Neighborhoods of Queens:

• Stockholm Street in Ridgewood is the only brick road in Queens.
• Woodside and Sunnyside host New York City's only St. Patrick's Day Parade open to gays and lesbians.
• Ground was broken on the Triborough Bridge the day after the 1929 stock market crash that sparked the Great Depression. Robert Moses Got Things Done!
• Cyndi Lauper grew up in Ozone Park.
• In the mid-19th century, Rockaway Beach Hotel--then the world's largest hotel--stretched between Beach 110th Street and Beach 116th Street in Rockaway Park.
• Now, the Rockaways have no hotels at all.