Hottest Neighborhood in Queens: History of Long Island City

Added: 2026-05-30

[00:00:00]You guys are here. It's a basement in uh the Lower East Side. You guys got a tour guide in front of you. What better time than uh now to do a tour around New York, baby. It's tour time with Tom.

[00:00:09]Let's do it. Come on.

[00:00:12]>> That was me back in the day. Look at that guy. He's a tour guy. That's great.

[00:00:15]Oh, we got to work on our summer bods and uh boys of summer back and dabbing rat. All right, cool. So, here we go.

[00:00:23]Now, we got to What What neighborhood are we going to do today? Huh? Big question is what neighborhood are we going to do today? Well, it's a neighborhood that is pretty upand cominging or has already has already kind of come a long time ago, but it's a lot of lot of big glass buildings, huh?

[00:00:40]And if you don't like big glass buildings, then there's even more big glass buildings, huh? But it's got a lot of history, a lot of hip-hop history even. Believe it or not, you guys are going to learn about that. Uh, and you know, all this is going to have you asking, is Pepsi okay?

[00:00:56]Oh, we're having fun. I'm talking about Long Island City, baby. Come on. Long Island City.

[00:01:03]We got some Long Island City lenders here. So, you guys are in for a treat.

[00:01:06]You can use all this information with your friends and then don't cite me, of course. Don't make any reference to me, please. All right. So, here we go. Let's get started. All right. You got to start here. Obviously, Native Americans were there first, like most of New York, like mo the whole damn country, let's be honest. But on Long Island, you had over you had 13 different algangquin tribes.

[00:01:27]And the tribe that was at the north end around where Greenpoint is today and where Long Island City is today is the Canari. You guys may recognize that name as the Rockaways were a little further south. But those are the groups that were there. And clearly of the 13, none are left. That is all very depressing.

[00:01:43]So here's a picture of my cat. There you go. Little, you know, clean the pallet a little bit. All right, let's keep it moving. All right, so here we go. Dutch.

[00:01:52]This is where we're going to move on into the Dutch, right? So the Dutch buy up a lot of land. This was a little further away from the city, so not tons of farms and everything, but they did buy a lot of the land. One of the big names, Everardis Bogartis.

[00:02:05]That is a cool ass name. Those of you guys, young young parents, young soon to be parents, take that note down.

[00:02:13]Everardis, that could be the next name.

[00:02:16]That could be like Skyler.

[00:02:19]Everardis Bogartis. I sorry about this picture. Uh, it's a little that's actually from my locket, so I couldn't I couldn't actually get it, but that's Everartis Bogartis. Okay. Uh, one of the big names. That's so ridiculous. I'm sorry. Another big name was Abraham Reichen, who later on the name became uh Riker, as in Riker's Island. Yeah, Abraham Reichen. I couldn't find a picture of him, so here's an artist rendering. Uh, and like I said, the name became Riker, and Riker's Island belongs to him. This is all one of the reasons why one of the big neighborhoods in Long Island City area was called Dutch Kills. That was the name of one of the neighbors, Dutch Kills. Kills. Kill means creek or like river or inlet. That's a Dutch old Dutch word for that. So, it was called Dutch Kills. Uh, which actually sounds like, you know, an anti Holland, you know, tourism campaign or something. Um, but, you know, that's that's what it was.

[00:03:12]Dutch kills. So, let's keep this moving, baby. All right. So, one of the things that started to slowly change this was the Long Island Railroad. So, in the 1850s, the predecessor to what was eventually bought by the Long Island Railroad in the 1860s built a terminus in this area in what is called Hunter Point. I don't know if you guys have been around there. There is like a little little train station there. Now, it was all basically dating back to this time. That's one of the reasons they did this was because a college bought a bunch of the land. It was like, "Hey, we want to make this nicer. What can we do?" "Well, bring the trains in, baby."

[00:03:42]So, that's what they did. and they got the Long Island Railroad to build that there and it started to kind of branch off. Those of you guys who aren't aware of the Long Island Railroad, round of applause if you've ridden the Long Island Railroad.

[00:03:52]>> All right, round of applause if you've ridden the Long Island Railroad at 2:30 a.m. on a weekend.

[00:04:03]>> These people have seen things. If you've never ridden the 2:30 a.m. Saturday or Friday train, don't do it. You will be a changed person forever. You'll hear slurs you didn't know existed. It's going to it's going to be a nightmare.

[00:04:18]You're going to wake up in cold sweats and your partner's going to be like, "Are you okay, honey?" And you're going to say, "I I can't." You just can't talk to them about it. You want to protect them, but then it's going to drive a wedge into your relationship as time goes on, this secret that you're carrying with you. And then eventually you will end that relationship. I'm sorry. So, don't do it. All right. That is the Long Island Railroad. There's a picture. Look at that. Getty. Getty wasn't afraid to ride the train. But uh All right. So, here we go. Like I said, it was made up of towns, right? So, you had towns like Dutch Kills, right? You had towns like uh New Town, but you also had towns like Hunter Point, right? You had a towns like Ravenswood.

[00:04:57]Yes, those towns Hunter Point and Ravenswood, they sound like straight out of, you know, Game of Thrones. That's like, you know, the I I come from Hunter Point bearing news from the house of Ravenswood.

[00:05:12]We bring gifts of Lululemon, Starbucks, and and those things. I don't know what the hell those fancy strollers. Yeah.

[00:05:22]Anyways, all right. Here is the big deal. New Town. So, we were talking about New Town was one of those towns.

[00:05:27]I'm going to get to this in a second.

[00:05:28]I'm going to wrap it all up. New Town is actually named uh well they named the creek New Town Creek, right? So New Town got so embarrassed that they ended up changing their name to Elmherst eventually. But New Town Creek is the little body of water that goes through there. Real dump.

[00:05:45]Real dump. Real fun game of course is always asking you know someone how much would it cost for you to drink a cup of that? Um it's bad. In 2010 it actually became a super fund site. Uh superfund site. Okay. Super fund site. Emphasis on the D. Uh, emphasis on the D. All right.

[00:06:04]Uh, but no, super fund site. It means the federal government puts money aside to actually clean it up because it's a it's like a hazard to the entire country. So, it became a super fun site.

[00:06:15]And because it's so disgusting and everything, New Town actually changed its name to, like I said, Elmhurst, which is kind of insane to think about.

[00:06:22]Uh, oh, by the way, on on the one of the reasons it's so dirty is because of the industry on there, including in the past Astral Oil Works, which was bought by the Rockefellers. Uh, and this this is a wastewater plant. You guys ever seen this? It's a wastewater plant. They call them the hits.

[00:06:39]Real cute.

[00:06:41]Real cute. But that's one of the reasons why New Town changed its name to Elmhurst. Look at that. That's pretty tame. I think like, you know, New Town, they they they had to separate that. I don't know. You I think you just suck it up and keep the name. You know, you think that's You think that's hard? Try being the town of poop, Mexico.

[00:06:59]That's a real place. There's a town called poop and they didn't change their name. Suck it up. All right. Anyways, here we go. We're going to keep it moving. Mid 1800s, like I said, as the train comes, you start having people stay in stay uh stay around. They start building housing in the late 1800s, pretty housing, everything. It's around this time in 1870 that that things start kind of coming together. And one of the things that they did around this time was they got the name Long Island City.

[00:07:24]The name Long Island City came from a newspaper, the Long Island City Daily Star. That's kind of what tied it together. That's where they pulled the name from when it incorporated in the 1870s. Now, this picture I I actually generated with AI. This is my venture into AI. Pretty good picture, actually.

[00:07:42]I'm not going to lie. But, uh, hold the phone. Let's zoom in a little bit.

[00:07:48]Oh, AI's not there yet, baby. Big mistake there.

[00:07:56]That ain't Daily Star. Nice try, AI.

[00:07:59]It's only going to take maybe another six months until they take us over, but we still got time. All right. Now, it becomes the county seat of Queens County. This is a big thing. Queens County, unlike Brooklyn, let's say, when it joined with the when it consolidated in 1898, was a county of cities. One of them being Long Island City, another being Flushing, etc. So, this is a big deal. Long Island City became the county seat around this time in the 1870s, and it had a string of very, very, very corrupt mayors in the 1870s, which kept it from being a very formidable city.

[00:08:29]One of them was actually named Patrick Gleason. His nickname was the Battle Axe.

[00:08:35]That's pretty sick, man. Come on. That's a cool nickname, dude. If I was a mayor, my if I was going to mayor, you know, my name was probably like, you know, Tom the the wedge if I was if we're going to go by tools, I guess, because it's the simplest of tools, you know, just like me. But it's interesting because back then, you forget these actual bureaucrats and these city government officials, these were like the cool guys back then. They give stuff away. They they, you know, give kickbacks to their friends. Everyone loved them, you know.

[00:09:03]It was they were like the, you know, the K-pop groups of the time, you know, like the K-pop kids. Huh?

[00:09:10]Right. Because they were cool. Everyone wanted to be like them. And they hung out exclusively with Korean teenagers.

[00:09:16]That laugh part's not true, but whatever. You get it. All right. Now, here we go. Now, around this time, too, mid 1800s, you have the industrial revolution picking up. You have places like Dumbo. You have places like So, you place all these different places started getting industry, whether it's textiles, whatever. Long Island City with the New Town Creek, with the access to the water, started bringing in lots of industry. This right here is a gantry.

[00:09:36]Huh? You recognize the word gantry?

[00:09:38]Gantry state park. Gantry state little little plaza here. That's a gantry. This is what they use the cranes to kind of load boxes and stuff onto trains and onto boats. That's where it gets a name.

[00:09:48]It's around this time to Well, not around this time, a little later. You have the Pepsi plant. Huh. The Pepsi plant opens there in the 1930s and it's actually opened until the in 2001. It closes there for a long time. And today you got the Pepsi sign. Huh. Can you imagine a world without Pepsi? Huh?

[00:10:07]Wow, how horrible that would be. Just drink Coke, I guess. But can you imagine a world without Coke or Pepsi? Can you imagine a world where Americans live 15 years longer? No.

[00:10:18]All right, let's keep it moving. All right, so we're talking about industry.

[00:10:21]This picture is a little a little blurry, but another industry that opened there is the Silver Cup Bread Factory.

[00:10:28]That's right. The Silver Cup Bread Factory opened up late 1800s. It goes through all the way to 1974 when the workers struck. They're like, "We're striking. we want better wages. The ownership counter offered and the workers said, "No, we're staying put."

[00:10:40]They call in their bluff. They're like, "There's no way they're going to back down because they just bought a fleet of new trucks and everything. We're staying put." So, the owners closed the factory.

[00:10:50]That's how much they hated their workers. So, they closed the factory. It sat sat it sat empty until the 1980s. In 1983, it becomes Silver Cup Studios.

[00:10:59]That's right. It is actually a a movie and TV studio. Some of the greatest films in American history were made there. Movies like Do the Right Thing.

[00:11:08]Movies like Gangs of New York and movies like What Happens in Vegas, you know, real cinematic gems. Uh another t a lot of TV shows also filmed there, including the TV show You. That's right. This is got This is the main character, You.

[00:11:23]He's a He's a serial killer that I am constantly told that I look like.

[00:11:29]Uh constantly. They don't even say the guy's name. They just say you look like the serial killer from you.

[00:11:36]Which is ironic because uh I also kind of look like Ted Bundy when I'm clean shaven and have short hair and I look like Charles Manson when I have a forehead swastika. So, you know, I can't I can't win. It's kind of weird.

[00:11:48]All right, let's keep it moving. So, we got the Queensboro Bridge. This is one of the things that helped Queens explode, right? So, the Queensboro Bridge is finished in 1909. It is one of the reasons why Queens gets connected.

[00:11:58]Remember consolidation 1898. That's one of the reasons Queens connected. They're like we need to be connected to everything. So they build the bridge 1909 and it is what connects the city uh to sorry the the burrow to the rest of the uh city and it starts to explode right. So 1800s Brooklyn was its own city. Remember that. So 1800s Brooklyn grew exponentially. So if 1800s was the year of Brooklyn then the 1900s were the year of Yes. Queens.

[00:12:31]Sorry, I wrote it down on this card. I had to say it. All right. Now, you have the train. Also, 1917, the IRT gets to Queens. Another reason why it blows up, man. People forget. Look at this. This is an actual picture of the IRT being built. This is Sunnyside. And in in like 1917, 1918s, there's nothing out there.

[00:12:50]This is the reason why it was actually able to be built up. the the the train, the IRT, the Seven Train. I If you've never ridden the Seven Train, it is a racist worst nightmare.

[00:13:00]You hear every language except English.

[00:13:03]It is an amazing amazing train. I really recommend you ride it. It's a real It's a real good representation of what New York can be. So, this is some cool history here. These are the Queens Bridge House. We talked about the Queensboro Bridge. The Queensbridge houses were built during the 1930s which as you know was the great totes depress you know and that was around the time that this guy Fela LaGuardia took some some of that money and helped fund some things and this is the one of the first projects that were built in the 1930s very very large one of the biggest in the city and it is here that hip-hop history was made in fact during the 1980s people like Marley Marl uh Mc Shanty all these different people came out of here Marley Marl by the way if you don't know he he was like the first super producer He was like the guy that they hired to like put all you come up with songs as opposed to just fund things. So the uh and and also there was like ups and downs and it was like a rivalry with the Bronx, believe it or not, with the Queensbridge houses. But it was in 1994 when it really popped off and that was with this man Nas. If you guys have ever heard of Nas, this is Ilmatic. This is a picture right there at Queensbridge houses of this of this this is one of arguably one of the most important hip-hop albums of all time. Uh and they actually have a mural there that you could check out. Pretty cool. Uh, arguably one of the most important albums of all time. Second to possibly only uh Bad Hair Day by Weed Yankovic.

[00:14:19]Um, so we're going to keep moving. So, Momma Art Artist. Oh, okay. 1971, you have a woman named Alana Heis. She actually starts a basically like a bunch of art art collective gets people's showcasing people's art. Uh, Momma eventually takes it over in the uh early 2000s. Then the name changes a little later on, but it actually opens up in this old school from the 1800s. They put a museum in an old school which is probably the worst place you could put it if you want to get kids interested in art. I guess the only worst place I put in a old broccoli factory I guess but that's where they put it and it's still there. Pretty cool. And they got art, you know, crazy weird art like that, you know. I don't know. That's I just took a guess. That's probably something like what they had there. Uh but let's keep it moving. Art. Oh, so this is interesting. More industry. This here was a water meter company. The Neptune water meter company. Late 1800s. It closes down. This guy Jerry Waloff buys it. You may not recognize it from this picture, but up until 2014, this was home to the Five Points. The Five Points was a living museum that was basically artist studios starting in the 1990s.

[00:15:20]Jerry Waloff uh eventually sees the value of the land and to sell it. And to do all that, he paints over it in the middle of the night. And all this art, he paints over it. It was like a destination all around the world for artists and street artists to come to.

[00:15:33]And he does that. He gets sued. By the way, this is him. He's passed away now.

[00:15:37]He's resting hell. I'm just kidding. But I'm sorry that was me.

[00:15:42]But uh yeah, he he basically did and not and and to to add insult to injury, he tried to name this this it's still there. He tried to name it five points and the artist sued him, by the way.

[00:15:52]They sued him and in a surprise victory, they won and the this, you know, crotchy old man did not get his way for once, but they won 6.7 million for 21 different artists. But we're to keep moving. So a lot of corporate headquarters there today like Bloomingdales has its corporate headquarters there. Also, JetBlue, which by the way started in Queens. It started in Forest Hills, Queens. It has its uh its little uh thing there in initially interesting a nod to its birthplace. It actually wanted to be called Taxi initially. It wanted to be called Taxi Airlines, but JP Morgan threatened to pull of it all of its money out if they named it Taxi Airlines because they knew that passengers would not want to listen to the pilots uh just talk loudly on international calls the whole time. Uh so it actually almost it was called Taxi. JetBlue almost also merged with Spirit Airlines in a billion dollar deal. It was actually blocked uh by the federal government, but they almost merged with Spirit Airlines. Uh the judge blocked it because he believed the only reason the CEO was doing it was so he could check more than three bags. Um moving on now, big reasonzoning 2001.

[00:16:59]They resone a lot of the area. One of the reasons you see so many glass buildings is because they reszone in 2001. Check out check this out. 2015 versus 2022. Look how many different buildings. The the city the city old city building is no longer the tallest building in Queens. Uh because 41 buildings have gone up from 2010 to 2017 and then they keep going up. Uh so it's going up very expensive, but it has added a lot to the diversity of the area. Now you have all kinds of people from tech people in tech sales to people in tech development. Uh it's anyone in the V. It's a really really diverse neighborhood. I really like that about it. Um now it's interesting because it's also gotten very expensive. You have onebedrooms going for around an average median around of like high 3000s. Uh but it does have a lot of history and it's very important to keep this in mind. You know, when you talk about Long Island City, you talk about the different people that live here. You have Queensbridge, one of the biggest projects in New York is located in Long Island City with a lot of history as well. And you know, you go visit and you'll be left with the big big burning question of is Pepsi okay? You know, come on.

[00:18:06]>> Yeah.

[00:18:07]>> Is Pepsi Is Pepsi okay?

[00:18:13]>> Oh boy. That's him again. Well, we made it through. Look at that. We really We really hauled ass through that history.

[00:18:20]We had We had people from Long Island City here, too. So, yeah.

[00:18:24]Uh, how do we do for Long Island City?

[00:18:26]Do you enjoy that?

[00:18:27]>> What do you do? What are you in tech?

[00:18:30]>> You are in tech.

[00:18:32]>> Come on.