Corona Is Queens’ Cultural Smorgasbord


Get off the 7 train at 103rd Street to find yourself in the heart of Corona.
"The neighborhood now called Corona was originally christened 'West Flushing' in the mid 1800s, after a new Long Island Rail Road line opened between the then-farmland towns of Elmhurst and Flushing. In 1868 a real estate developer named Thomas Waite Howard suggested the neighborhood be renamed 'Corona,' since it was the crown jewel of Queens County. While some theorized that he took the name from an emblem used by a local development company, corona fittingly means 'crown' in Italian and Spanish, languages that later became common in the neighborhood. Italians settled the neighborhood in the early twentieth century, but residents are now mostly more recent arrivals from Mexico, Ecuador, and the Dominican Republic. Early buildings from the neighborhood still stand, including intact Victorian houses and churches from the late 1800s, which now often share block space with multifamily brick houses, Latino grocery stores, meat markets, and flower shops. ..."
Voice
W - Corona
History of Corona, Queens

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