Middle Village | |
---|---|
Neighborhood of Queens | |
Coordinates: 40°42′44.26″N 73°53′20.71″W / 40.7122944°N 73.8890861°W | |
Country | United States |
State | New York |
City | New York City |
County/Borough | Queens |
Population (2000) | |
• Total | 28,984 |
Ethnicity | |
• White | 83.9% |
• Black | 0.7% |
• Hispanic | 9.8% |
• Asian | 4.0% |
• Other | 3.2% |
Economics | |
• Median income | $67,715 |
ZIP code | 11379 |
Area code(s) | 718, 347, 929, 917 |
Middle Village is a mainly residential neighborhood in the central section of the borough of Queens, New York City, bounded to the north by the Long Island Expressway, to the east by Woodhaven Boulevard, to the south by Cooper Avenue, and to the west by Mount Olivet Cemetery. Middle Village also consists of a small trapezoid-shaped area bounded by Mt. Olivet Crescent to the east, Fresh Pond Road to the west, Eliot Avenue to the north, and Metropolitan Avenue to the south, though this is sometimes considered part of nearby Ridgewood.
Middle Village is bordered by the neighborhoods of Elmhurst to the north, Maspeth and Ridgewood to the west, Glendale to the south, and Rego Park to the east. In 2003, South Elmhurst, an area between Eliot Avenue and the Long Island Expressway, was reassigned from Elmhurst's ZIP code of 11373 to Middle Village's ZIP code of 11379. The neighborhood is part of Queens Community District 5, served by Queens Community Board 5. Housing in the neighborhood is largely single-family homes with many attached homes, and small apartment buildings.
The area was settled around 1816 by people of English descent and was named in the early nineteenth century for its location as the midpoint between the then-towns of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and Jamaica, Queens, on the Williamsburgh and Jamaica Turnpike (now Metropolitan Avenue), which opened in 1816. It was generally sparsely populated because the large Juniper Swamp was in the area. The swamp, an area where the Americans hid from British in the American Revolutionary War, was originally circumscribed by a "Juniper Round Swamp Road". In 1852, a Manhattan Lutheran church purchased the farmland on the western end of the hamlet.