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Queens
A largely residential borough with some light industry. Housing is mixed: private homes, townhouses, garden apartments and blocks of large apartment buildings. The borough has more than 60 neighborhoods, each with a unique character and population mix. Were it not part of the City of New York, Queens would be the fourth largest city in the United States.
The Queens hotel listings below are arranged by neighborhood and star rating to facilitate hotel selection.
Transportation
Airports
Queens is the site of two of three major metropolitan commercial airports: La Guardia and JFK. They are accessible via a network of highways shown on the map below. JFK may also be reached via the Airtrain that connects to the New York City subway system as well as the Long Island Railroad. Many hotels are conveniently located in the vicinity of the airports.
Buses and Subways
For a map of the subway system and a map and schedules of Queens bus lines please refer to Tourist Information.
Neighborhoods
Long Island City
This neighborhood closest to Manhattan has hotels that provide an attractive alternative to staying in the big city. Another plus is the extensive presence of the arts as evidenced by the P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, the Sculpture Center, the Socrates Sculpture Park and the Noguchi Museum.
Forest Hills
One of the more affluent neighborhoods of Queens. It started with Forest Hills Gardens, a community of Tudor-style homes, townhouses and apartment buildings, built in the early 1900s and modeled after the English garden communities. For some years the US Open tennis championship games were held at the Forest Hills Westside Tennis Center and "Forest Hills" became a byword for tennis in the world of sports.
Astoria
Besides the Bohemian Hall and Beer Garden and fine Greek and other ethnic restaurants, the neighborhood developed a connection with the movies. The Kaufman Astoria Studios, are a film and television production complex, originally an Army Signal Corps and, later on, a Paramount Pictures film production and processing facility. The Museum of the Moving Image, 35th Ave. at 36th St., is devoted to the history, art, and technology of the movies. Its theater is said to be the best place for movie classics in New York.
The Rockaways
In the days before air-conditioning, the Rockaways were a welcome refuge from the city's summer heat. Today they are more of a bedroom community because of improved access to the city. Neponsit and Belle Harbor have mostly upper-class single-family homes. Other areas have more modest housing.
Recreation
Flushing Meadows
A large park area in the north of the borough. It was the site of the 1939 amd 1964 New York World's Fairs. Little is left from those events except for a few structures such as the New York State Building from the 1939 Fair, now housing the Queens Museum of Art, the Unisphere, the symbolic giant globe of the 1964 Fair and another 1964 structure housing the New York Hall of Science.
The park is also home of various sports events. In the north of the park is City Field, home of the New York Mets baseball team .The USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center is the home of the yearly US Open Grand Slam Tennis Tournament which takes place in August and September.
Jacob Riis Park
This ocean beach on the west end of the Rockaway peninsula is a legacy of Robert Moses, the Master Builder of the New York metropolitan area in the last century. It has a boardwalk and a historic art deco bathhouse.
Jamaica Bay
The bay north of the Rockaways contains several dozen islands which are a wildlife refuge run by the National Park Service. It is an excellent location for viewing birds and other creatures. There is also a variety of recreational facilities.
Brooklyn-Queens Greenway
A path for bicyclists and pedestrians, the Brooklyn-Queens Greenway starts in Fort Totten in North Queens and ends up in Coney Island in Brooklyn. The 40-mile route runs through Alley Pond, Flushing Meadows, Forest and Prospect Parks.
Aqueduct Racetrack
Aqueduct, a racetrack located in Ozone Park, is a winter-track, operating between October and May. There are, currently, plans to turn it into a "racino," i.e. combination racetrack and casino.
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