Forest Hills is a neighborhood in the central portion of the borough of Queens in New York City. It is adjacent to Corona to the north, Rego Park and Glendale to the west, Forest Park to the south, Kew Gardens to the southeast, and Flushing Meadows–Corona Park and Kew Gardens Hills to the east.

The area was originally referred to as "Whitepot".About Forest Hills at QueensNewYork.com The current name comes from the Cord Meyer Development Company, which bought in central Queens in 1906 and renamed it after Forest Park. Further development came in the 1920s and 1930s with the widening of Queens Boulevard through the neighborhood, as well as the opening of the New York City Subway's Queens Boulevard Line. Forest Hills has a longstanding association with tennis: the Forest Hills Stadium hosted the U.S. Open from 1915 through 1977 and the West Side Tennis Club offers grass courts for its members. The area's main commercial street, Austin Street, has many restaurants and chain stores.

Forest Hills is located in Queens Community District 6, and its ZIP Code is 11375. It is patrolled by the New York City Police Department's 112th Precinct. Politically, Forest Hills is represented by the New York City Council's 29th District.Current City Council Districts for Queens County, New York City. Accessed May 5, 2017. It is located within , represented by Grace Meng.

History Development

The development of adjacent Forest Park, a park on the southern end of Forest Hills, began in 1895. Starting in 1896, the landscape architecture firm of Olmsted, Olmsted & Eliot was contracted to provide a plan for the park.

The inspiration came from the first garden city, Letchworth Garden City, started in 1903.

In 1906, the Cord Meyer Development Company, headed by Brooklyn attorney Cord Meyer, bought abutting land made up of six farms (those of Ascan Bakus, Casper Joost-Springsteen, Horatio N. Squire, Abram V. S. Lott, Sarah V. Bolmer, and James Van Siclen). The company then renamed the aggregate "Forest Hills", after Forest Park. Single-family homes, designed by architects such as Robert Tappan and William Patterson, were constructed on the combined area. The roads of Forest Hills were laid out by 1910. The present-day Ascan Avenue in Forest Hills is named after Ascan Bakus.

Margaret Sage, the founder of the Russell Sage Foundation, bought of land from the Cord Meyer Development Company in 1908. This land was to be used for "Forest Hills Gardens", a development on the southern side of Forest Hills.

Architecture

Grosvenor Atterbury, along with his associate architect and Forest Hills resident, John Almy Tompkins II, was given the commission to design Forest Hills Gardens.

There are many Tudor Revival homes in Forest Hills, often featuring stucco walls and red Ludowici clay tile roofs. The most expansive buildings are in Forest Hills Gardens, but many are located in the area loosely bounded by 68th Avenue on the north; 72nd Road on the south; 108th Street on the west; and Grand Central Parkway on the east.* The Garden City Movement A Garden City For The Man Of Moderate Means , accessed December 23, 2006

The construction of this area used a prefabricated building technique. Each house was built from approximately 170 standardized precast concrete panels, fabricated off-site and positioned by crane.Christopher Gray "Designing for High and Low", The New York Times, October 22, 2009. Accessed August 7, 2012. The houses were mostly constructed between 1910 and 1917. To eliminate garbage piles on the curb, Forest Hills Gardens was designed with alleys, where small garbage trucks collected households' trash.

Growth and expansion

The Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) opened a station in Forest Hills in 1906, and the Queens Boulevard trolley line opened seven years later. The LIRR station was built with a brick courtyard, a clock tower, and arch-filled underpasses, fitting in with the Forest Hills Gardens section of the neighborhood. Since the railroad and trolley both connected to Manhattan, the presence of these two transportation options spurred development in Forest Hills.

In 1914, the West Side Tennis Club moved from Manhattan to Forest Hills Gardens. They constructed the Forest Hills Tennis Stadium, with approximately 13,000 seats, in 1923. The U.S. Open and its predecessor national championships were held there until 1978, making Forest Hills synonymous with tennis for generations. Forest Hills also had a golfing presence for a short time. The Queens Valley Golf Club started constructing a golf course in the neighborhood in 1922 and it was open by 1924. However, the club was closed in 1938 so that developers could build housing atop the site of the course.

Queens Boulevard was widened in the 1920s. Planning for a Queens Boulevard subway line started around this time. There were proposals for two stations in Forest Hills: an express station serving all trains on 71st Avenue, and a local station at 75th Avenue. During the late 1920s, in anticipation of the arrival of the subway, land was bought by developers and was built up. Zoning laws were changed to allow 15-story apartment buildings to be built, and made the neighborhood of Forest Hills a more desirable place to live, especially as it was an express stop. Queens Borough President George Harvey predicted that the introduction of the subway to Forest Hills would turn Queens Boulevard into the "Park Avenue of Queens." Excavation for the line started in 1931, and the two subway stops in Forest Hills opened in 1936 along with six other stations on the Queens Boulevard line.*

The population nearly doubled in the late 1920s, increasing from 9,500 residents in 1927 to 18,207 residents three years later. By 1940, after the subway opened, the population had increased to 32,500 residents. By this time, development had largely stopped due to World War II, and about 25 empty lots in Forest Hills Gardens were developed after the war. At the same time, the single-family houses in Forest Hills were being razed to create new apartment buildings. The land in Forest Hills Gardens was fully developed by the 1960s, but there would still be empty lots in Forest Hills itself until the mid-1990s.

Later history A small neo-Nazi group, the "United Nordic Confederation", led by resident George Leggett, was active in Forest Hills during the late 1950s. In 1958, the New York Police Department thwarted the group's plans to rob a bank in nearby Kew Gardens and seize funds for the construction of an upstate training camp.

In 1972 residents protested against Forest Hills Houses, a proposed public housing development with three 24-story buildings at 62nd Drive and 108th Street. It was part of Mayor John Lindsay "scatter-site" plan to construct public housing in neighborhoods that had none (as opposed to concentrating public housing in poor neighborhoods). White middle-class residents believed that the public housing would depreciate the community's quality of life because poor residents would move into the housing. Advocates for the project accused residents of racism, since the proposed development's residents would be mostly people of minority races. Lindsay garnered significant opposition due to the controversy surrounding Forest Hills Houses. Mario Cuomo, a lawyer and future Governor of New York, was assigned to mediate the dispute and succeeded in halving the size of the project. The New York City Housing Authority ultimately implemented a rigorous screening process for prospective residents of Forest Hills Houses, with quotas for elderly and poorer tenants.

During the 1970s and 1980s the neighborhood became more racially diverse. Discriminatory covenants for prospective Forest Hills Gardens residents were lifted, and immigrants from Iran, India, Israel, and the former Soviet Union started residing in Forest Hills.

Demographics

Based on data from the 2010 United States census, the population of Forest Hills was 86,364, an increase of 1,318 (1.5%) from the 85,046 counted in 2000. Covering an area of , the neighborhood had a population density of .Table PL-P5 NTA: Total Population and Persons Per Acre – New York City Neighborhood Tabulation Areas*, 2010, Population Division – New York City Department of City Planning, February 2012. Accessed June 14, 2016.

The entirety of Community Board 6, which comprises Forest Hills and Rego Park, had 115,119 inhabitants as of NYC Health's 2018 Community Health Profile, with an average life expectancy of 85.4 years. This is higher than the median life expectancy of 81.2 for all New York City neighborhoods. The plurality of inhabitants are middle-aged and elderly adults: 31% are between the ages of 25–44, 28% between 45–64, and 19% over 64. The ratio of young and college-aged residents was lower, at 16% and 5% respectively.

As of 2025, the median household income in Community Board 6 was $54,057. In 2018, an estimated 16% of Forest Hills and Rego Park residents lived in poverty, compared to 19% in all of Queens and 20% in all of New York City. One in seventeen residents (6%) was unemployed, compared to 8% in Queens and 9% in New York City. Rent burden, or the percentage of residents who have difficulty paying their rent, is 50% in Forest Hills and Rego Park, lower than the boroughwide and citywide rates of 53% and 51% respectively. Based on this calculation, , Forest Hills and Rego Park is considered to be high-income relative to the rest of the city and not gentrifying.

Race and ethnicity

Based on data from the 2010 census, the racial makeup of the neighborhood was 58.3% (48,822) White, 2.5% (2,086) African American, 0.1% (63) Native American, 24.2% (20,233) Asian, 0.0% (22) Pacific Islander, 0.4% (373) from other races, and 2.1% (1,719) from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 12.4% (10,410) of the population.Table PL-P3A NTA: Total Population by Mutually Exclusive Race and Hispanic Origin – New York City Neighborhood Tabulation Areas*, 2010, Population Division – New York City Department of City Planning, March 29, 2011. Accessed June 14, 2016. The Asian and Latino populations of Forest Hills experienced the most growth from 2010 to 2020.

While Forest Hills Gardens has historically been White and Christian, the rest of Forest Hills grew to be predominantly populated by Jews who had arrived from the Bronx and Brooklyn. By 1970, the neighborhood was estimated to be two-thirds Jewish.

In the present day, Forest Hills continues to have a significant Jewish population (~36%), although it is no longer a majority; many of these are Bukharian Jews, who have had a substantial presence in the neighborhood since the 1970s, especially in the 108th Street area. As of 2011, Forest Hills also has the largest concentration of Filipinos in New York City, at 44%. Furthermore, the neighborhood also has a significant, growing Chinese population, and has been referred to as a Chinatown.

Land use