87
Top Ten Fun Facts
About half of the borough’s 2.3 million residents were born in
a foreign country, and roughly 130 languages are spoken on its
streets.
The borough’s namesake is Queen Catherine of Braganza. Born
in Portugal, she was married to King Charles II, the monarch of
the British Empire when England colonized what’s now NYC.
Queen Catherine is credited with introducing the English to tea,
which was popular in Portugal but not England at the time.
The exact geographical center of New York City is in the vicinity
of 59th Street and Queens Boulevard in a neighborhood called
“Woodside.”
Names can deceive. The neighborhood Flushing has more
Chinese residents and businesses than Chinatown in Manhattan.
Hotel rooms in Queens are roughly $100 cheaper per night than
comparable rooms in Manhattan.
The world’s first road made specifically for automobiles was
paved in Queens. Known as “Long Island Motor Parkway” and
“Vanderbilt Parkway,” the stretch was privately built by railroad
heir William Kissam Vanderbilt II in the early 1900s. Parts of the
original roadway are now a Cunningham Park bicycle trail near
Winchester Boulevard.
An abandoned fort dating to the Civil War is in Bayside’s Fort
Totten Park. It was built to watch ships in Little Neck Bay in
1862, but never saw any real action. The U.S. Army used it as
a training station for a few decades after the Civil War.
The world’s best pianos come from Astoria in northwestern
Queens. Steinway & Sons, which was established in 1853, still
manufactures grand and upright pianos. Tours of the site are
available.
With a few large cemeteries, Queens has more buried bodies than
any other borough in New York City.
There is a crossroads in Queens where Francis Lewis Boulevard
intersects with Francis Lewis Boulevard.
NEWSWEEK