26 FEBRUARY 20, 2020 RIDGEWOOD TIMES WWW.QNS.COM
ZIP-ping through post offi ce battles in Ridgewood and Glendale
BY THE OLD TIMER
OUR NEIGHBORHOOD: THE WAY IT WAS
EDITORIAL@RIDGEWOODTIMES.COM
@RIDGEWOODTIMES
One unique distinction between
Queens and the other boroughs of
New York City is the importance of
a neighborhood to each resident.
Here in Queens, if we’re talking to
someone from outside the borough,
we generally don’t say that we’re
from Queens; instead, we’re from
Ridgewood, or Bayside, or Jackson
Heights, or Jamaica, or any of the
other dozens of neighborhoods that
we call home. Our unique attachment
to the communities we live in dates
back generations and gives many of
us a “small town feel” in the big city.
For the most part, the current ZIP
code map for Queens generally reflects
and respects the boundaries of
each distinct neighborhood, though
there are a few exceptions. One
of them happens to be Ridgewood
and Glendale — two rather distinct
neighborhoods that have shared
the same 11385 ZIP code for about
40 years.
Turn the clock back even further
to 1963 — when the U.S. Postal Service
established the ZIP code system
— and you’ll find that Ridgewood and
Glendale shared the same code that
wasn’t even based in Queens itself. In
fact, the 11227 ZIP code they shared
was based not out of Flushing (like
other northern Queens neighborhoods)
but rather in Brooklyn.
Today, that difference might
not seem that important — but to
Ridgewood and Glendale residents
in the 1970s, that association with
Brooklyn proved consequential in
two key areas.
REGRESSION, REDLINING
AND RATES
First, Bushwick, Brooklyn — located
right next door to Ridgewood
— fell into rapid decline. The housing
stock devalued as middle class residents
moved out.
Redlining — the racist practice
of financial institutions declining
loans and other services to areas of
color — destroyed property values
to the point where landlords couldn’t
make enough money renting out
apartments in the neighborhood.
It also came with a side effect that
Ridgewood and Glendale residents
felt directly: higher insurance premiums
to safeguard against damage
to their homes and vehicles. That’s
because premium rates, at the time,
were set based on the policyholders’
ZIP codes.
With Bushwick falling into the
abyss of high crime and arson— especially
in the wake of the fires and
In June 1979, Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro delivered to Postmaster General William Bolger thousands of
post cards from Ridgewood and Glendale residents who desired a new Queens-based ZIP code to replace the
one they shared in Brooklyn. Photo via Ridgewood Times archives
looting that erupted during the July
1977 blackout — many Ridgewood
and Glendale residents demanded
a change away from Brooklyn and
toward Queens.
Many of the more than 38,000
residents of Ridgewood and Glendale
began urging the U.S. Post Office to
give them a Queens-based ZIP code.
FERRARO TAKES UP THE
FIGHT
In February 1979, the Daily News
reported, Postmaster General William
Bolger met with the neighborhoods’
freshman Congresswoman,
Geraldine Ferraro, and made a
promise: If she could produce
evidence showing that 70% of the
neighborhoods desired a Queens ZIP
code, he would make it happen.
Ferraro, a former prosecutor,
knew how to build a case — and she
set out to hold Bolger to his promise.
Her staff mobilized to create
and launch a postcard campaign to
Ridgewood and Glendale residents
seeking their support for a new ZIP
code.
She sought and received the aid
of local groups such as the Glendale
Chamber of Commerce and the Kiwanis
Club of Glendale to make the
campaign a success.
“In this case, the problem is a
ZIP code arbitrarily assigned by a
bureaucratic process which did not
take into consideration the needs
of the community,” Ferraro told the
Daily News.
Then, in June 1979, the Ridgewood
Times ran a photo showing just how
successful the effort proved to be.
Congresswoman Ferraro helped
deliver thousands and thousands
of postcards directly to Postmaster
Bolger showing the neighborhoods’
desire for a new ZIP. Not long thereafter,
Ridgewood and Glendale
residents got their wish.
In 1982, the U.S. Postal Service created
the 11385 to cover Ridgewood
and Glendale, dissolving the 11227
ZIP code in its entirety. Bushwick
was assigned two ZIP codes: 11237
(which includes the Wyckoff Heights
area straddling the Ridgewood/
Bushwick order in Brooklyn) and
11221.
The ZIP code change was just one
of many accomplishments that propelled
Ferraro into a star within the
Burned out storefronts and apartments in Bushwick were part of the
urban decay that ravaged the community during the 1970s.
Photo via Ridgewood Times archives
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