Belle Harbor, Queens
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Belle Harbor is a small residential neighborhood in the
New York City borough The boroughs of New York City are the five major governmental districts that comprise New York City. They are the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island. Each borough is coextensive with a respective county of the State of New ...
of
Queens Queens is the largest by area of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City, coextensive with Queens County, in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York. Located near the western end of Long Island, it is bordered by the ...
, located on the western half of the Rockaway Peninsula, the southernmost area of the borough. Belle Harbor commonly refers to the area from Beach 126th to Beach 141st Streets. The neighborhood is part of Queens Community Board 14. According to the 2010 United States Census, the neighborhood, coupled with nearby Neponsit, had a population just over 5,400. Belle Harbor was the site of the 2001 crash of American Airlines Flight 587, which killed 265 people.


History


Development

The opening of passenger railroad service in 1880 to Rockaway Park from
Long Island City Long Island City (LIC) is a neighborhood within the New York City borough of Queens. It is bordered by Astoria to the north; the East River to the west; Sunnyside to the east; and Newtown Creek, which separates Queens from Greenpoint, Brook ...
and from Flatbush Terminal (now Atlantic Terminal) in
downtown Brooklyn Downtown Brooklyn is the third-largest central business district in New York City (after Midtown Manhattan, Midtown and Lower Manhattan), and is located in the northwestern section of the borough (New York City), borough of Brooklyn. The neighb ...
, via the
Long Island Rail Road The Long Island Rail Road , or LIRR, is a Rail transport, railroad in the southeastern part of the U.S. state of New York (state), New York, stretching from Manhattan to the eastern tip of Suffolk County, New York, Suffolk County on Long Islan ...
's
Rockaway Beach Branch The Rockaway Beach Branch was a rail line owned and operated by the Long Island Rail Road in Queens, New York City, United States. The line left the Main Line at Whitepot Junction in Rego Park heading south via Ozone Park and across Jama ...
, facilitated population growth on the Rockaways Peninsula. The makings of Belle Harbor began in 1900, when a New York State judge ordered that the land west of Rockaway Park be put up for auction. The area that makes up Belle Harbor and the neighboring community of Neponsit was bought by Edward P. Hatch, who, after a couple years, sold it to the West Rockaway Land Company in 1907. Residential lots in Belle Harbor were auctioned off in 1915. The president of the company, Frederick J. Lancaster, who had earlier developed the Edgemere neighborhood, officially gave the community its name. Prior to Lancaster's acquisition of the land, however, a group of men wishing to form a yacht club entered into a grant agreement with the West Rockaway Land Company in 1905. The group, which had named itself the Belle Harbor Yacht Club, bought property from the company for four thousand dollars. The agreement included two hundred square feet of land and thirty plots of upland. That same year, the group received corporation status by the
State of New York New York, also called New York State, is a state in the northeastern United States. Bordered by New England to the east, Canada to the north, and Pennsylvania and New Jersey to the south, its territory extends into both the Atlantic Ocean and ...
, and by 1908 began participating in its first inter-club ocean races with some of the city's other yacht clubs. The earliest homes in Belle Harbor were built circa 1910. Over the next four decades, hundreds of single- and two-family houses were built from beach to bay, filling most of the land by the early 1950s. In the 1960s and 1970s, the neighborhood became a haven for working class and lower-middle-class families looking to escape the congestion of "mainland" Brooklyn and Queens. Many civil servants, including teachers, firefighters and police officers owned homes in the neighborhood. The housing bubbles in the late 1980s and early 2000s brought a different mix of residents but many many third and fourth generation residents remain.


Disasters


September 11, 2001

The neighborhood suffered heavy losses from the
September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks The September 11 attacks, also known as 9/11, were four coordinated Islamist terrorist suicide attacks by al-Qaeda against the United States in 2001. Nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners, crashing the first two into ...
. These included several members of the Fire Department of New York—ranging from probationary firefighter to captain—and people who worked at the World Trade Center. The names of the 343 firefighters killed at the World Trade Center are listed on a monument at Tribute Park on Beach Channel Drive and Beach 116 Street, a park marking the 75 area residents killed in the attacks, which then-mayor
Michael Bloomberg Michael Rubens Bloomberg (born February 14, 1942) is an American businessman and politician. He is the majority owner and co-founder of Bloomberg L.P., and was its CEO from 1981 to 2001 and again from 2014 to 2023. He served as the 108th mayo ...
cited as "more than any other neighborhood in the city".


American Airlines Flight 587

On November 12, 2001, American Airlines Flight 587, bound for
Santo Domingo Santo Domingo, formerly known as Santo Domingo de Guzmán, is the capital and largest city of the Dominican Republic and the List of metropolitan areas in the Caribbean, largest metropolitan area in the Caribbean by population. the Distrito Na ...
in the
Dominican Republic The Dominican Republic is a country located on the island of Hispaniola in the Greater Antilles of the Caribbean Sea in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean. It shares a Maritime boundary, maritime border with Puerto Rico to the east and ...
, crashed in the center of Belle Harbor, killing all 260 passengers and crew on board, as well as five others on the ground. Many of the passengers on the plane were from the Dominican community in Washington Heights."Plane Crash in Queens." ''
Seconds From Disaster ''Seconds from Disaster'' is a US/UK-produced documentary television programme that investigates historically relevant man-made and natural disasters from the 20th and early 21st centuries. Each episode aims to explain a single incident by anal ...
''. ocumentary TV series/ref> After consultation with families in the Belle Harbor and Washington Heights communities, a memorial was erected at Beach 116th Street in Rockaway Park, a major shopping district and transportation hub in the area. Although a temporary memorial was developed at the actual site of the disaster, on Newport Avenue, many still annually gravitate toward the Rockaway Park area for commemoration. In 2001, a resident stated to ''
The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...
'', "It's impossible to understand unless you live here."Younge, Gary
"Flight to the death: Just two months after 9/11, a Queens suburb suffered the second-worst plane crash in US history. Five years on, residents tell Gary Younge, the cause remains worryingly unresolved"
''
The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...
'', November 11, 2006; accessed January 24, 2008. "On flight 587, myriad immigrant stories of hope foundered. On board was Hilda Yolanda Mayol, 26, a waitress who had escaped from the north tower of the World Trade Center and was heading to the Dominican Republic with her mother and children to take her mind off the trauma."
Father Michael Geraghty, a priest quoted in the same article, said that it was common for people to live in the houses that their parents lived in and that many families lived in the same houses for generations. "


Hurricane Sandy

Belle Harbor was further devastated by
Hurricane Sandy Hurricane Sandy (unofficially referred to as Superstorm Sandy) was an extremely large and devastating tropical cyclone which ravaged the Caribbean and the coastal Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic region of the United States in late ...
on October 29, 2012. The storm surge from the Atlantic Ocean completely inundated the peninsula, sending waves through the streets and into Jamaica Bay. In addition, more than a dozen homes and the Harbor Light restaurant were completely destroyed by fire. The neighborhood has almost completely recovered.


Demographics

Based on data from the 2010 United States Census, the population of the combined area of Breezy Point/Belle Harbor/ Rockaway Park/ Broad Channel was 28,018, an increase of 1,307 (4.9%) from the 26,711 counted in 2000. Covering an area of , the four neighborhoods had a population density of . The racial makeup of the neighborhoods was 78.3% (21,946)
White White is the lightest color and is achromatic (having no chroma). It is the color of objects such as snow, chalk, and milk, and is the opposite of black. White objects fully (or almost fully) reflect and scatter all the visible wa ...
, 7.5% (2,095)
African American African Americans, also known as Black Americans and formerly also called Afro-Americans, are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, American racial and ethnic group that consists of Americans who have total or partial ancestry from an ...
, 0.1% (29) Native American, 2.1% (595) Asian, 0.0% (8)
Pacific Islander Pacific Islanders, Pasifika, Pasefika, Pacificans, or rarely Pacificers are the peoples of the list of islands in the Pacific Ocean, Pacific Islands. As an ethnic group, ethnic/race (human categorization), racial term, it is used to describe th ...
, 0.2% (66) from other races, and 0.9% (259) from two or more races.
Hispanic The term Hispanic () are people, Spanish culture, cultures, or countries related to Spain, the Spanish language, or broadly. In some contexts, Hispanic and Latino Americans, especially within the United States, "Hispanic" is used as an Ethnici ...
or Latino of any race were 10.8% (3,020) of the population.


Geography

Belle Harbor is a suburban enclave on the Rockaway Peninsula, on a narrow barrier
peninsula A peninsula is a landform that extends from a mainland and is only connected to land on one side. Peninsulas exist on each continent. The largest peninsula in the world is the Arabian Peninsula. Etymology The word ''peninsula'' derives , . T ...
sandwiched between the Atlantic Ocean to the south and
Jamaica Bay Jamaica Bay (also known as Grassy Bay) is an estuary on the southern portion of the western tip of Long Island, in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York. The estuary is partially man-made, and partially natural. The bay connects with Lo ...
to the north. It is also bordered by the neighborhood of Neponsit to the west and Rockaway Park to the east. Its broad, white sandy beaches draw residents and visitors to the area. As part of the New York City parks system, Rockaway Beach is open to the public. The beaches in Belle Harbor draw many down-for-the-day visitors (DFDs) during the week. Street parking is prohibited on weekends and holidays from May 15 to September 30. Visitors must use buses, bicycles or the ferry/shuttle service to access the neighborhood beaches during those times. The bike lanes on Rockaway Beach Blvd. connect to both the Rockaway and Riis Park boardwalks and are part of the Jamaica Bay Greenway Bike Path.


Community

Belle Harbor is primarily made up of single-family homes with many third and fourth generation Irish
Catholic The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...
residents. The community also has
Italian-American Italian Americans () are Americans who have full or partial Italians, Italian ancestry. The largest concentrations of Italian Americans are in the urban Northeastern United States, Northeast and industrial Midwestern United States, Midwestern ...
and
Jewish American American Jews (; ) or Jewish Americans are American citizens who are Jewish, whether by culture, ethnicity, or religion. According to a 2020 poll conducted by Pew Research, approximately two thirds of American Jews identify as Ashkenazi, 3% id ...
populations, and is home to a large number of New York City
police officers A police officer (also called policeman or policewoman, cop, officer or constable) is a warranted law employee of a police force. In most countries, ''police officer'' is a generic term not specifying a particular rank. In some, the use of ...
and firefighters, both active and retired. A commercial center is located on Beach 129th Street. A larger shopping area used by some residents of Belle Harbor is located on Beach 116th Street in Rockaway Park.


Transportation

Vehicular access to the area is available via the Marine Parkway–Gil Hodges Memorial Bridge, which provides access to
Brooklyn Brooklyn is a Boroughs of New York City, borough of New York City located at the westernmost end of Long Island in the New York (state), State of New York. Formerly an independent city, the borough is coextensive with Kings County, one of twelv ...
, and the Cross Bay Veterans Memorial Bridge, which connects to Broad Channel and mainland Queens. The of the
New York City Subway The New York City Subway is a rapid transit system in New York City serving the New York City boroughs, boroughs of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx. It is owned by the government of New York City and leased to the New York City Tr ...
are available at the Rockaway Park–Beach 116th Street station. Several MTA Bus lines, namely the , also serve the area. A shuttle service from NYC Ferry connects Belle Harbor to the landing at Beach 108 Street on Jamaica Bay.


Education

Belle Harbor residents are zoned for schools in the
New York City Department of Education The New York City Department of Education (NYCDOE) is the department of the government of New York City that manages the city's public school system. The City School District of the City of New York (more commonly known as New York City Publ ...
. Residents are zoned to PS/MS 114 Belle Harbor School for grades K-8. Additionally there are private schools within the area including St. Francis de Sales Catholic Academy, a
Catholic school Catholic schools are Parochial school, parochial pre-primary, primary and secondary educational institutions administered in association with the Catholic Church. , the Catholic Church operates the world's largest parochial schools, religious, no ...
of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn and three Jewish schools: West End Temple Early Childhood Center (for pre-school), Yeshiva of Belle Harbor and Mercaz HaTorah of Belle HarborHistory
Mercaz HaTorah of Belle Harbor. Accessed March 15, 2023.


References


External links


Flight 587 Memorial Project
{{authority control Neighborhoods in Queens, New York Neighborhoods in Rockaway, Queens Populated coastal places in New York (state) Irish-American culture in New York City Irish-American neighborhoods