[nygirl1]

Now we're going to head east just a bit through the Borough's central hood's

Jamaica is a busy neighborhood in the center of Queens. It was first settled as the village of Rustdorp by the Dutch in the 1650’s. When the British took control of the colony later in the 17th century they changed the name to the Town of Jamaica. The village grew throughout early British rule as the county seat of Queens until it was reorganized in the late 18th century and the county seat moved to a location now in Nassau County. By the revolutionary era Jamaica was a trading post for farmers in the area. The already established King’s Highway was the main thoroughfare, today we know it as Jamaica Avenue and it is so old that it even pre-dates the Dutch. Jamaica Avenue, formerly King’s Highway used to be an Indian trail for foreign tribes to trade with the local Indians in the area. By the 1850’s the important artery required a toll and by the civil war era tracks were laid for horse-drawn trams. The tram along the Avenue exchanged horses for electricity by the turn by the late 1880’s. As New York incorporated Queens the county seat moved back. Jamaica at the turn of the 20th century, a mostly white area saw an influx in Irish Immigrant population. It remained predominantly white until the 1950’s when many of its residents fled to newly developed suburban villages east and north of the city. A black middle class replaced them and for nearly 2 decades it remained just that way. In the 1970’s Puerto Ricans and Cubans as well as Guyanese, Trinidadian and Jamaicans moved into the area. Many of these new groups settled in areas that cling to Jamaica Avenue or created their own nodes throughout all of South Jamaica making the area a unique patchwork of various West Indian cultures and it remains that way to this day. The largest groups settling Jamaica now are the Bangladeshis and Pakistani communities. The area is becoming quite popular in recent years and the rapid growth coincides with a spike in immigration, gentrification and a strikingly reduced crime rate overall. Jamaica Avenue is still a popular destination for shopping in Queens. Notoriously known for its bootleg items and a location one could acquire a nearly flawless fake I.D. it still hums with heavy pedestrian traffic. Residents of Queens come to the area not for fake Coach bags and phony identification but retailers, restaurants, and anything else from leather couches to diamond necklaces.