Elmhurst, Queens in the context of "Chinese Americans in New York City"

The City of Greater New York was the consolidation of the City of New Yorkwith Brooklyn, western Queens County, and Staten Island, which took effect on January 1, 1898. New York had already annexed the Bronx (west of the Bronx River in 1874, east of the Bronx River in 1895), so the consolidated city sprawled across five counties, which became the five Boroughs of modern New York. Eastern Queens County was excluded and later became Nassau County.

There are multiple Chinatowns in the borough of Queens in New York City. The original Queens Chinatown emerged in Flushing, initially as a satellite of the original Manhattan Chinatown, before evolving its own identity, surpassing in scale the original Manhattan Chinatown, and subsequently, in turn, spawning its own satellite Chinatowns in Elmhurst, Corona, and eastern Queens. As of 2023, illegal Chinese immigration to New York has accelerated, and its Flushing neighborhood has become the present-day global epicenter receiving Chinese immigration as well as the international control center directing such migration. As of 2024, a significant new wave of Chinese Muslims are fleeing religious persecution in northwestern China’s Xinjiang Province and seeking religious freedom in New York, and concentrating in Queens.

Roosevelt Avenue and Greenpoint Avenue are main thoroughfares in the New York City boroughs of Queens and Brooklyn. Roosevelt Avenue begins at 48th Street and Queens Boulevard in the neighborhood of Sunnyside. West of Queens Boulevard, the road is named Greenpoint Avenue and continues through Sunnyside and Long Island City across the Greenpoint Avenue Bridge into the borough of Brooklyn, terminating at WNYC Transmitter Park on the East River in the neighborhood of Greenpoint. Roosevelt Avenue goes through Woodside, Jackson Heights, Elmhurst, Corona, Flushing Meadows–Corona Park (adjacent to Citi Field) and Flushing. In Flushing, Roosevelt Avenue ends at 156th Street and Northern Boulevard.

Jackson Heights is a neighborhood in the northwestern part of the borough of Queens in New York City. Jackson Heights is neighbored by North Corona to the east, Elmhurst to the south, Woodside to the west, and today northern Astoria (Ditmars-Steinway) to the northwest, and East Elmhurst to the north and northeast. Jackson Heights has an ethnically diverse community, with half the population having been foreign-born since the 2000s. The New York Times has called it "the most culturally diverse neighborhood in New York, if not on the planet." According to the 2010 United States census, the neighborhood has a population of 108,152.

The site of Jackson Heights was a vast marsh named Trains Meadow until 1909 when Edward A. MacDougall's Queensboro Corporation bought 325 acres (132 ha) of undeveloped land and farms. The Queensboro Corporation named the land Jackson Heights after Jackson Avenue, which was in turn named after John C. Jackson, a descendant of one of the original Queens families. He was a respected Queens entrepreneur. Jackson Avenue was the northern border of the ambitious Garden City development of the Queensboro Corporation. Further development arose through the development of transit and "garden apartments". "Garden homes" soon became prevalent in Jackson Heights. During the 1960s, Jackson Heights's white middle-class families began moving to the suburbs, and nonwhite residents began moving in.