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Ridgewood is a community in Brooklyn, New York and Queens, New York, that borders the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Bushwick and Williamsburg, and the Queens neighborhoods of Maspeth, Middle Village and Glendale. It is home to many small families of diverse backgrounds, including Eastern Europeans, Latinos, and Central and Western Europeans.
The Majority of the neighborhood covers a large hill, more than likely part of the glacial moraine that created Long Island, which starts at Metropolitan ave, rises steeply for about two blocks, then slopes down gently. An example of just how steep the hill can be can be found at Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal Parish. The Front Entrance of the Church, which is at street level on 60th Place, is almost level with the second floor of the Parish school right next door.
Major streets in Ridgewood include Forest Avenue, Fresh Pond Road, Myrtle Avenue, and Metropolitan ("Metro") Avenue. All of these streets are narrow two-lane roads (with parking lanes), and the high volume on these streets can cause traffic tieups during rush hour. The intersection of Fresh Pond and Metropolitan is especially notorious for being a bottleneck. The main shopping areas are on Myrtle Avenue and Fresh Pond Road.
The M subway line runs through the heart of Ridgewood, and its connection to the L line at Myrtle-Wyckoff Avenues at the very southern end of Ridgewood is a transportation hub. The hub is in the process of a 60 million dollar renovation due for completition in late 2006. The Ridgewood Terminal at that station serves the B13, B26, B52, B54, Q55, and Q58 bus lines. The B20, B38 and Q39 bus lines also serve Ridgewood. In addition, the neighborhood is home to the large Fresh Pond Bus Depot, which services many of the buses that run throughout Brooklyn and Queens and Fresh Pond Yard, a storage yard for the M train.
The Ridgewood Times, established in 1908, and now known as the Times Newsweekly, serves as the community newspaper, and has the largest classifieds section of Queens County community newspapers.
Ridgewood has also served as location shoots for numerous major motion pictures, including The French Connection, A Stranger Among Us, Brighton Beach Memoirs, The Movie, and Beat Street. In addition to these movies, The Sopranos was recently filmed on Fresh Pond Road in Ridgewood on March 9th 2006, when a cafe next to a neighborhood bar was blown up.
Borough debate: A matter to be addressed
The great majority of Ridgewood’s land area lies within Queens County. However, its political boundary with Brooklyn causes confusion and debate about where the western boundary of Ridgewood actually lies and whether Ridgewood is considered to be actually part of Brooklyn. Ridgewood and its Brooklyn neighbor community, Bushwick, have a grid plan street layout. Because the boundary between Brooklyn and Queens that was historically set by the Arbitration Rock in 1769 lied along a diagonal with this grid plan, the geographic boundary was adapted to the street layout, resulting in a zig-zag pattern. Buildings fronting on streets that “begin” in Brooklyn (i.e., located west of Forest Avenue), and the cross-streets that bisect them, follow a house-numbering system commencing within Brooklyn (Myrtle and Metropolitan Avenues are exceptions to this system). Put more simply, as the numbering of residential addresses proceeds traveling from Kings County into Queens County, the political border is crossed without any change in the address-numbering system.
Until the late 1970s, Ridgewood and neighboring Glendale (Queens) were entirely served by the Brooklyn post office in Bushwick. Letters to Queens addresses would normally be addressed to "Ridgewood, Brooklyn NY 11227". Following events surrounding the New York City blackout of 1977 which marred the public perception of the Bushwick community, the communities of Ridgewood and Glendale expressed a desire to disassociate themselves from Bushwick. In 1979, the two areas were granted a Queens zip code, 11385, while Bushwick was designated a separate Brooklyn zip code of 11237.
Over many years since, Ridgewood has been suggested to be re-included as part of Brooklyn in order to ameliorate the perceived poor reputation attached to the neighboring Bushwick neighborhood. However, residents have protested against this, claiming that it would worsen Ridgewood. Similarly, the 104th Precinct might also have to relocate to another section of Queens in order to serve Glendale, Middle Village, and Maspeth.
Ridgewood Schools
P.S.71, P.S.81, P.S.88, St. Matthias, St. Aloysius, Our Lady of Miraculous Medal, St. Brigid are elementary schools in Ridgewood. I.S. 77 and I.S. 93 are middle schools in Ridgewood. Grover Cleveland High School is the only high school in Ridgewood, and is the zoned public high school.
Notable Ridgewood residents/former residents
- Ron Eldard, actor
- Jason Sileo scholar
- John Ventimiglia - actor
- Phil Rizzuto Broadcaster
- James Cagney Actor
External links
"Ridgewood, Queens"