Rego Park, Queens

Rego Park is an upscale neighborhood in the New York City borough of Queens. Rego Park's cost of living is 25.20% higher than the U.S. average.

Geography
Rego Park is bordered to the north by Elmhurst and Corona, the east and south by Forest Hills and the west by Middle Village.

History
A swath of farmland until the early 20th century, the area that came to be called Rego Park was once populated by Dutch & German farmers who sold their produce in Manhattan. Later, the farmers were Chinese, and sold their goods exclusively to Chinatown.

Rego Park was named after the Real Good Construction Company, which began development of the area in the mid-1920s. "Rego" comes from the first two letters of the first two words of the Real Good Construction Company. The company built 525 eight-room houses costing $8,000 each, stores were built in 1926 on Queens Boulevard and 63rd Drive, and apartment buildings were built in 1927–28.

Like its neighbor, Forest Hills, Rego Park has long had a significant Jewish population, most of which have Bukharan, Georgian and Russian Jewish ancestors, with a number of synagogues and kosher restaurants. Cartoonist Art Spiegelman grew up in Rego Park and made it the setting for significant scenes involving his aged father in Maus, his graphic novel about the Holocaust. Many Holocaust survivors, including Spiegelman and his parents, settled there after 1945. Even as many Jews have departed for further-flung suburbs over the years, they have been replaced by Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union, especially from Central Asia. Though these immigrants largely trace their ethnic roots back to Bukharan Jewish culture, the effect of life in the Soviet Union on the population has led Rego Park to have a Russian feel with many signs in Russian Cyrillic. Most of the Bukharan Jewish immigrants in the neighborhood come from Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, and it is possible to find excellent, authentic Uzbek and Tajik cuisine in many Rego Park restaurants. Immigrant populations from Albania, Israel, Romania, Iran, Colombia, South Asia, China, and South Korea are also well-represented.

Aside from the many apartment buildings, multi-family, and railroad houses which make up Rego Park, many houses in Rego Park are in the colonial and Tudor style with slate roofs. This is especially so in an area called the Crescents, named for its semicircular shaped streets emanating in a concentric pattern from Alderton Street, between Woodhaven Boulevard and the Long Island Rail Road. There is easy access to Manhattan via the 63rd Drive subway stop.

Community Groups/Civic Associations
Rego park is represented by Queens Community Board 6 (CB 6). There is also a local online community called Rego Park Group. Originally hosted on Yahoo! Groups, the group aims at providing residents and merchants of Rego Park with opportunities for community service, socializing, and activism, improving the quality of life in the neighborhood. They partner with other organizations to benefit the community. The neighborhood also benefits from the work of the newly formed Rego Park Green Alliance, which has been active in the community planting flowers and trees, arranging the installation of new garbage cans, pushing for the repair of some sidewalks and creating a large mural celebrating the neighborhood under the L.I.R.R. overpass on 63rd Drive.

Community Services
Responding to the needs of the community, the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty and Masbia opened a kosher soup kitchen on Queens Boulevard in 2009.

Public transportation
The Long Island Rail Road overpass between Austin and Alderton Streets hosted the Rego Park station until its abandonment in 1962. Though physically part of the railroad "Main Line" heading out to Jamaica, the station operated as part of the Rockaway Beach Branch. The station was later dismantled, and little can be discerned of its existence now save for the flattened clearing beside the tracks.

The IND Queens Boulevard Line of the New York City Subway has a local station at 63rd Drive ( trains) and Queens Boulevard, dating from the mid-1930s. Transportation via subway to Midtown Manhattan is 15 minutes to the East Side #6 subway or 20 minutes straight through to Midtown Manhattan. Direct subway stops in Midtown are 42nd St, Bryant Park and 34th St. Herald Square. A number of Express Buses also run between the neighborhood and locations in Manhattan.

Police
More than 95 percent of Queens Community Board 6, traditionally a safe, low crime area, is served by the 112th Precinct.

Fire Department
CB6 has one engine and one ladder company in a single firehouse within its boundaries, and another on its border. FDNY deployments to structural fires within the district have customarily been satisfactorily prompt.

Public schools
Rego Park's public schools, as are the public schools in all of New York City, are operated by the New York City Department of Education. The following elementary schools serve Rego Park:
 * P.S. 139 (Rego Park School, grades K-6); P.S. 139 Parents' Association
 * P.S. 174 (William Sidney Mount School, grades K-6)
 * P.S. 175 (the Lynn Gross Discovery School, grades preK-5)
 * P.S. 206 (the Horace Harding School, grades K-5)
 * P.S. 220 (Edward Mandel School, grades preK-5)

All areas in Rego Park are zoned to J.H.S. 157 Stephen A. Halsey (6 - 9), in Rego Park, or J.H.S. 190 Russell Sage (7-9) in Forest Hills. Rego Park is not zoned to a high school as all New York City high schools get students by application. Forest Hills High School is located in nearby Forest Hills.

Private schools
Our Lady of the Angelus, a PK-8 private school operated by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn, is located in Rego Park. Resurrection-Ascension School, another PK-8 private school operated by the Diocese of Brooklyn, is also located in Rego Park. Our Saviour Lutheran School is the third parochial school in the area.

Private institutions include Rego Park Day Care, The Rego Park Jewish Center (est. 1939), and The Jewish Institute of Queens (a.k.a. the Queens Gymnasia), ICCD http://www.iccd.com.



Public libraries
The Rego Park Library Branch of Queens Library, is located at 91-41 63rd Drive in Rego Park. As of 2010, the total annual circulation was 382,545 volumes, which is the highest number of volumes compared to two other libraries in Queens Community District 6, Forest Hills and North Forest Park libraries. All three libraries in Community Board 6 are heavily utilized by growing numbers of immigrants.

Commerce
Along Queens Boulevard, Rego Park is home to some of Queens' most popular shopping destinations, including the Rego Park Center (formerly Alexander's department store), a retail complex with a large Sears, Bed Bath & Beyond, Marshalls, and Old Navy locations. A new shopping center, recently built on 62nd Drive across from Rego Park Center, houses a Kohl's, a Century 21 (department store), a Costco, a T.J. Maxx, and will soon house a Toys "R" Us, and a Payless ShoeSource, with more stores being built. The Queens Center mall, the borough's largest, lies just to the west in Elmhurst.

Shopping Districts with many smaller stores, bakeries, pharmacies and restaurants can be found along 108th Street and 63rd Drive.

Rego Park's boundaries include Queens Boulevard, the Long Island Expressway, Woodhaven Boulevard, and Yellowstone Boulevard.

63rd Drive
The main business thoroughfare of Rego Park is 63rd Drive. The main section extends from Woodhaven Boulevard in the south, to Queens Boulevard in the north, with the central business district of Rego Park nestled between Alderton Street (just south of the Long Island Rail Road overpass), and Queens Boulevard. The stretch south of Alderton is entirely residential. The business district is anchored by The Rego Park School PS 139Q, an elementary school dating from 1928 and Our Saviour Lutheran Church established in 1926 which right across Wetherole Street from PS 139Q. The business district is criss-crossed by major Rego Park side streets Saunders, Booth, Wetherole and Austin. Most of the businesses lining 63rd Drive are the original single story "Taxpayers" dating from the 1930s.

Across Queens Boulevard to the north, 63rd Drive becomes 63rd Road, and its business district continues another three blocks. One block to the east another 63rd Drive extends from Queens Boulevard, but this spur is a minor, narrow, one way residential street. It was common practice when the numbering system for streets and avenues evolved, for the street names to change from one side of Queens Boulevard to the other.

Rego Center
Rego Center is a 277000 sqft site across the street from Sears that features four floors of shops and a multilevel parking garage developed by Vornado Realty Trust. Plans for two high rise apartments have been abandoned, which included a 15 story tower at the corner of 97th Street and 62nd Drive, and a 20 story tower at the corner of Junction Boulevard and 62nd Drive, city records show. The design and style of the new high rises would have matched those of nearby complexes, according to a land use proposal submitted by Alexander’s, Inc., and approved by the City Planning Commission. According to SEC filings, property owners have entered into longterm lease agreements with two major clothing retailers and may search for more tenants to occupy the three attached buildings of retail space.

63rd Drive Fire of 1972
The short block of 63rd Drive between Austin Street and the railroad overpass was the scene one February morning in 1972, of a wild fire that claimed a row of stores and the neighborhood library. The blistering fire reportedly started in the second store on the block from Austin, a shoe store, and quickly spread with the gusting winds to neighboring stores, including a television repair shop, toy store, pet shop and a pioneering Indian restaurant, and finally, the library, where row upon row of oily books and wooden shelves sent flames high into the sky and up the embankment of the railroad. Firefighters scrambled to keep the windswept flames from reaching an apartment house behind the stores, a new Key Food supermarket across Austin Street, or the Shell gas station just across the drive. The library caved in before flames could damage the electrical wires lining the railroad. A new library eventually opened across the street (on the former site of the Shell gas station). After the fire, until the new library was built, the community was served by a mobile "Bookmobile" library which parked under the LIRR tracks on 63rd Drive.

Fiction
Rego Park was the setting of the 1980s sitcom Dear John, which centered around the fictional "Rego Park Community Center."

The CBS sitcom The King of Queens is set in Rego Park, and sometimes shows clips of the area.

Rego Park is also home to one of American television's most unforgettable characters, Archie Bunker from the 1970s sitcom All in the Family. The Bunkers were said to live at 704 Hauser Street, a fictitious address that was supposed to be located in Astoria, but doesn't exist anywhere in New York. However, the house shown in the credits is located at 89-70 Cooper Avenue in Rego Park.

What Happened to Anna K.: A Novel  by  Irina Reyn is set in Rego Park. Most of the characters are Bukharan Jews who have emigrated from the Soviet Union.

Brooklyn's Finest, a 2010 release, was filmed in part in Rego Park.

Famous residents
Notable current and former residents of Rego Park include:
 * Steve Hofstetter - Comedian/Radio Personality.
 * Chris Canning - Business Man
 * Malika Kalantarova - Central Asian legendary dancer "Queen of Eastern Dance" (People's Artist of USSR)
 * Fatima Kuinova - Central Asian singer, one of the leading singers in the Soviet Union (Merited Artist of USSR)
 * Robert Lipsyte - sports journalist.
 * Art Spiegelman - author of Maus.
 * Sid Caesar - Actor/Comedian.
 * Gypsy Rose Lee - American burlesque entertainer.
 * June Havoc - Actress.
 * Tommy Ramone - drummer of The Ramones.
 * Dave Rubinstein - singer of Reagan Youth.
 * Bobby Schayer - drummer of Bad Religion.
 * Vera-Ellen - Actress/Dancer.
 * Fred Silverman - American television producer.
 * Eddie Egan - New York Police Department/French Connection fame.
 * Peter Golden-Former manager of Crosby Stills & Nash and Jackson Browne