Little Neck, Queens

Little Neck
Neighborhood of Queens
Residential street
Country	United States
State	New York
County	Queens
Ethnicity
• White	71.1%
• Black	1.1%
• Hispanic	6.8%
• Asian	23.9%
• Other	1.9%
ZIP code	11362, 11363
Area code(s)	718, 347, 917

Little Neck is an upper middle class neighborhood of Queens, New York City, bordered on the north by Little Neck Bay and on the east by Great Neck in Nassau County. Due to this proximity to Nassau, Little Neck remains one of the most suburban-looking areas in New York City. The southern border is the Grand Central Parkway, and to the west is Douglaston. The Little Neck station is the easternmost New York City station on the busy Port Washington Branch of the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR), and thus Little Neck is home to the busiest of approximately a dozen remaining railway grade crossings in New York City. The neighborhood is part of Queens Community Board 11.

Prior to the mid-1600s, the Matinecock lived in what is today considered Little Neck, sustained by the seafood in Little Neck Bay. In the 17th century, European settlers began arriving in the area for its conveniently located harbor. Soon after, the British and Dutch gained control of the Matinecock lands peacefully, except for a small area known as Madnan's Neck (possibly a shortened form of Indian name for the area, Menhaden-ock, or "place of fish"). Thomas Hicks, of the Hicks family that eventually founded Hicksville, and a band of armed settlers forcibly drove out the Matinecock in a battle at today's Northern Boulevard and Marathon Parkway. An old Matinecock cemetery remained in Little Neck on Northern Boulevard between Cornell Lane and Jesse Court. One of the last photographs of the cemetery (available online) was taken by the Daily News in August 1931, a few months before it was removed to make room for a widened Northern Boulevard. The remains from the cemetery were moved to the Zion Episcopal Church of Douglaston and placed under a stone marker that reads "Here rest the last of the Matinecoc."