[4K] Non-Touristy New York City: Woodside, Queens Walking Tour

[4K] Non-Touristy New York City: Woodside, Queens Walking Tour

Hello everyone, it’s Alexander from City Gazing here and today I’m in Woodside it’s a neighborhood in Queens, New York and I’ll tell you some facts about it and will comment on the things I see around me Woodside has one of the highest Filipino populations in New York City thus giving

Part of the neighborhood the nickname “Little Manila” Woodside is commonly considered the heart of the Filipino community which dates back to around the 1970s after the passage of 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act Filipino medical professionals moved to Woodside many working at the nearby Elmhurst Hospital and most Filipinos felt welcome

Since Woodside had been predominantly Irish Catholic at the time today there are about 50,000 to 70,000 Filipinos living in the Woodside area Phil-Am Food Mart that you see right now is one of the most popular stores in the neighborhood featuring everything from ube desserts to Filipino meats to dishes like lumpia

Which are spring rolls and balut which is fertilized duck egg so that was a short intro for you today is Monday March 4th and a really nice spring weather so it should be a nice walk it’s almost 5:00 PM

This neighborhood is close to the other one that I shoot a video like few days ago about the sunny side these are neighbouring neighbourhoods you’ll see that a lot of things look the same but some are still different it’s another non touristic place here in New York so

We’ll not see huge crowds here or some major attractions that’s the place where people live Sorry about the noise in advance you can see right down below is a highway that’s Brooklyn Queens Expressway so I can imagine that living here might be a little bit noisy there is an abandoned house right there judging by the looks by the look of the windows upstairs

Looks like there was a fire as you see just half a block away from the highway and it’s much more quiet here it’s my first time here I haven’t walked here I was here only on the Long Islands railroad station so I’m experiencing everything here for the first time myself

So far it looks like a pretty clean neighborhood with the regular businesses nothing outstanding just a very typical place in New York where people live the place where we are heading is called Winfield Reformed Church and it’s a Protestant church that was founded in 1880 making it the oldest Taiwanese church

Established in North America the church was originally located on Queens Boulevard and moved to its current location in 1910 with the current building constructed in 1914 the church is named after an adjacent area that was largely incorporated into Woodside the church was historically Dutch speaking though a large wave of Taiwanese immigrants

Came in 1960s becoming predominantly Taiwanese by 1969 church pastors have for decades advocated for Taiwanese causes attending rallies and speaking in the media and this is how the church looks like looks pretty small they have text in two languages here and here is some information about the Sunday service

I need to go back because there is a dead end in that direction and I want to show you another thing here huh here is another part of this Winfield Reform Church I thought that they only have that old building but it looks like they have two buildings here

You can see that it’s a rush hour here and a lot of traffic some auto repair shop and we need to turn right here they have a little lawn here as always I will leave a link in the description for the website where I’m getting all the facts about the neighborhoods

Feel free to check it out I’m not going to every place they are listing just the places I think are interesting but feel free to leave a comment and say that I’ve missed something that you wanted to see and I will come back

Dude in the car asked if I was vlogging I said yes here you can see some taekwondo and now we will be crossing Queens Boulevard it’s a long boulevard so you might see that in my other videos too you can see Long Island Rail Road train riding on the bridge

The place where we are heading to is Francis Ford Coppola’s house Francis Ford Coppola who would go on to direct legendarily film such as The Godfather and Apocalypse Now had his beginnings at 67-24 49th Avenue in Woodside born in Detroit Coppola moved with his family to the Woodside home

In 1941 at age two living there for a decade before moving to Lake Success in Nassau County the family moved to New York due to his father’s promotion to principal flautist of the NBC Symphony Orchestra another Long Island Railroad train Coppola was constraint to the home

For much of his childhood after developing polio he would watch puppet shows at home which inspired him inspired his interest in theatre than movies some “99 cents and up” market and some kind of deli, another mini market and another “Kingdom hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses” and this is the house where Ford Coppola lived

Alright and now I need to head back to the Queens Boulevard but to the other part of it looks like no cars so I can cross let me go here not to go back through the places I’ve been to already it’s a very typical Queens street you will see streets like this

All across Queens, in Astoria Long Island City and you’ve seen that in Sunnyside too there is a guy fixing rooftop I’m filiming Woodside because some folks in the comments asked me to do that so if you want me to go to some other neighborhood, please do

I have another neighborhood in the Bronx to go to next time I know that these non-touristy neighborhoods are not as entertaining as 5th or 6th Avenue in Manhattan but I just want to see how New York is like not on Manhattan but in all other boroughs some people are saying that

It’s very crowded in New York and it is but look at this neighborhood not a lot of people haha look at this license plate, says Pikachu and they got Pikachu toy haha it’s funny you can see planes sometimes when I’m pointing in the right direction that’s because the LaGuardia Airport airport is nearby

Alright let’s see what would be the best way to cross the street here it’s busy, they don’t have pedestrian crossings here I would not park my car like this very dangerous and we are back at Queens Boulevard you can see another plane coming gas station

You will not see a lot of them in Manhattan and another plane that’s a fire engine right here and here you can see that Domino’s Pizzeria I haven’t seen a lot of them because people are usually go into some local pizza joints you will not see Pizza Hut or something like this

Everywhere for the same reason there is a lot of pizzerias but just not the chain ones it looks like a plaza here where you can go buy some groceries, pizza, get a haircut get some grill, deli, Chinese food, all of that

And we are almost at the place I wanted to show to you we are at the 60th Street right now and you need to go to 58th that’s a very typical plaza sign where they will list all the businesses that are operating there maybe not all the businesses but most of them

You can see all these buildings that are looking the same and the complex is called Big Six Towers so I would assume that there are six of them I don’t know if you can tell that on the video but the road goes slightly uphill and I can feel the heat

I’m wearing a jacket and that’s my mistake you will see to my left the Calvary Cemetery but I will not be going there this time there are some really interesting cemeteries here in New York but I wanna do a separate video on that alright and we are at the 58th Street

And Queens Boulevard and because I haven’t been to this place I hope I’ll get it right from the first try but if not we might need to cross the streets a couple of times I’ll show you what I was looking for and will tell you a story after that so here it is

Let me see if I can get all of that A traffic median along Queens Boulevard in Woodside at 58th Street claims to be the center of New York City and most passersby likely have never noticed it but the sign is inaccurate and not by a small measurement

The true center of New York City is really in Bushwick in a completely different borough miles away though the Bushwick center does not have a marker nobody knows exactly why this marker exists in Woodside and there is no evidence that the city government approved of its installation

It’s likely that someone not affiliated with the government placed the marker there with little knowledge of city geography the city has no plans to remove this marker or erect one in the actual center of New York City so that was another interesting point I wanted to show to you

Cause it’s like with the charging pool someone placed it there no one knows who and when and how but no one will bother to remove it so if you have any crazy ideas to place something in New York and it will be something that people will like or will not notice

That might stay there for a long time and we are back on the other side of Queens Boulevard I have few more places to show to you so stay tuned and if you are at this point and still watching then you might have liked my channel so please click that subscribe button

It will mean a lot to me and I have memberships now so if you want to support me monetarily you can do that just subscribe to a membership or you can click on the “Thanks” button and send any amount of money you want

It’s not necessary at all but I would appreciate it too here you can see Woodside Community Church Baptist Church it’s a pretty big building and the place where we are heading to is Saint Sebastian’s Church the full name is Saint Sebastian Roman Catholic Church it was founded in 1896

And when it came time for the congregation to move buildings they chose an unexpected one the former location of Loew’s Woodside Theatre which opened in 1926 I will show you a building in a minute so here it is the entrance and lobby of the theatre were demolished and replaced with the

Romanesque bell tower however the theatre’s auditorium decor was kept intact including the domed ceiling and 40 columns along the side walls and today the church draws in a diverse range of congregants including Hispanic Irish Filipino and Korean Catholics here is some plaza where they are doing some reconstruction it’s closed as of now

And it’s called sohncke, oh I cannot pronounce that right sohncke square but we are heading to another plaza a little bit bigger another regular deli right here some pet shop and here we are at Doughboy Park for some reason it’s called Doughboy Plaza on the Google Maps but officially is Doughboy Park

Doughboy Park is notable for its statue of a doughboy and the small garden after the land on which the park is situated was determined to be too steep and overgrown for children to play on it was assigned to New York City Parks in 1957 which later developed it into a sitting space

The Doughboy Monument was placed in the park in 1923 to honor members of the U.S. Army or Marine Corps used by the British during World War One the sculpture was created by Burt W. Johnson from Flushing depicting a solemn World War One soldier holding his helmet and gun

Standing atop of a granite pedestal inscribed with “lest we forget” soldiers from Woodside would gather at the “mustering ground” before leaving to fight though 10 soldiers who left from the park never returned in 1990 the statue was renewed and coated with wax and the surrounding plaza was renovated in 2001

To include benches a stone panel was installed with the names of 11 major World War One campaigns and seven key battles in which American soldiers fought locals continue visiting the park every Memorial Day that they have done for over a century I’m trying to see where the stone plate is

But I cannot see it sorry that I have missed it let’s see, I need to go down still can’t see that stone panel I like how this house looks like and this avenue to my left is called Woodside Avenue I have two more places to show you

But I need to walk for another seven minutes you’ll see how this part of the neighbourhood looks like you see that there is some gated community right there and everything looks very clean there New York is so different every block is like looks like a completely different city because a long time ago

It was like this, it was not a one huge New York City it was a lot of small cities then that later became New York City as it is right now I don’t know what that location is but their head building looks like a German style house another Deli or Bodega

You will see shops like this almost at every corner here in New York so this is TSBA controls I don’t know what that means but the building looks nice excuse me, this is an auto repair shop another bridge where Long Island Railroad is crossing

You can see how dark clouds are in the background the weather forecast says that it should be raining for the next four days so I would probably go and film Manhattan in the next couple of days when it will be raining I like the atmosphere there when it rains I like the bike

Phew that’s loud the place we are at is called the Tower Square Shopping Centre and you can see that there are like a lot there is a lot of shops like Subway Michaels, GameStop Starbucks, Dollar Tree but the interesting thing that I want to show you is this the trolley barn

Which is now empty but used to host the Pizza Hut was built in 1896 for the New York and Queens Railroad Company they building served trolley cars from Flushing, College Point, Jamaica and Long Island City and was the site of the largest carbarn in Queens that’s how it looks like right now

Let me get back here to show it to you from the other side the formation of the independent subway system and the expansion of buses led trolley companies to go bankrupt and the building serviced the last trolley in around 1937 in 1980s plans to to tear down the building

Came to a dramatic halt when a stop work order was issued minutes after a bulldozer on the clocktower in 1987 Community Preservations rallied to save the building then and still work to protect its architectural integrity let me see how it looks like from the other side

You can still see the inscription here that says New York and Queen’s Company Railway probably and then there is a waiting room right here I’m glad that it was preserved and there is one last place I’ll show you that would be one of the oldest cemeteries in New York City

It’s a 6 minute walk from here so I will end this video soon I’m sorry that it’s more than an hour I know that it might be very inconvenient to watch a video that long but thank you if you are watching it fully and this street right here is called Northern Boulevard

A lot of car shops here or like not car shops but car repair shops like oil change and car wash and car parts and here is another apartment complex here it’s 5:43 PM and it’s almost sunset time I need to film that last location before the dark so we could see something there

I don’t know what this building is but it says that it’s protected why I don’t know what’s inside I don’t know too no signs that could indicate that that’s an old car emergency services and we are almost there just one more block will turn to the left and we will see

One of the oldest cemeteries in New York City is called Moore-Jackson Cemetery and it’s a historic cemetery that was active from 1733 until around 1868 the cemetery is one of the last in New York dating to the 18th century and about 50 corpses are interred there in 1684 Samuel and Charity Moore

Bought the plot of land in which the cemetery stands and owned and owned it for over a century many of those interred are family members of the Moores’ 10 children including Augustine Moore who died in 1769 and still maintains an inscription though most of the Thompsons are completely illegible today

John Jackson bought additional land near the cemetery in 1867 members of the Moore and Jackson families took care of the site until 1910 when it fell into disrepair The Works Progress Administration razed the land in 1930s and in 1954 the city government seized the cemetery which was maintained starting in 1974

After two decades of deterioration the Queen’s Historical Society restored it around the turn of the century and the community garden was established in 2018 and it should be right here to my left you can see that it says Moore-Jackson Cemetery circa 1733 and you can see some tombstones here

Let me see if I can go inside yeah there is another sign that shows when it was established and looks like it’s closed for the day let me check Google Maps quickly yeah it’s open only on Saturday from 9:00 AM to noon so I would not be able to go inside

I’m a little sad but it is how it is I hope that you can see tombstones at least yeah so I’ll be heading to the subway station and I would like to thank you for watching and please subscribe to my channel put your like on the video

And let me know where you want me to go next and I’ll see you in the next video

Another non-touristy New York City walking tour, this time in Woodside, Queens. Woodside has one of the highest Filipino populations in New York City, thus giving part of the neighborhood the nickname “Little Manila.”
I have never been to the neighborhood, so I’m exploring it with you!

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Filmed March 4, 2024
Shot on DJI Osmo Pocket 3

0:00 Phil-Am Food Mart
8:30 Winfield Reformed Church
17:10 Francis Ford Coppola House
37:30 Inaccurate geographic center marker
42:30 St. Sebastian Roman Catholic Church
47:00 Doughboy Park
58:24 Trolley Barn
1:06:20 Moore-Jackson Cemetery

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