Corona, Queens is a highly dense neighborhood in the former Township of Newtown in the
New York City borough of
Queens surrounded by
Flushing,
Jackson Heights,
Forest Hills and
Elmhurst.
Corona's main thoroughfares include Corona Avenue, Roosevelt Avenue,
Northern Boulevard, Junction Boulevard, and 108th Street. The neighborhood is part of
Queens Community Board 4, while the northern most part is included in Community Board 3. Corona's zip code is 11368.
Community
Corona was a late 19th Century development in the old Town of Newtown. The name allegedly derives from the crown used as an emblem by the Crown Building Company, which developed the area; the Italian immigrants who moved into the new housing stock referred to the neighborhood by the Italian or Spanish word for "crown" (which is "corona"). The
LeFrak City housing development is located within the southwest ending boundaries of Corona.
Over the last 50 years Corona has seen dramatic ethnic demographic turnovers. In the 1950s what was predominately an
Italian American and African American neighborhood began to give way to a very large influx of
Dominicans, though a part of Corona near "Spaghetti Park", where older men play
bocce, still has an Italian-American community. In the late 1990s, Corona saw a new wave of immigrants from
Latin America. Subsequent to increasing crime, congestion and quality of life issues many remaining Italians in Corona followed the
white flight trend and moved east to more suburban areas like Little Neck, Bayside and Long Island. the residents of the Dorie Miller Coops and Meadow Manor Apartments remain predominately African American.
The Hispanic community consists of
Dominicans,
Colombians,
Guatemalans,
Bolivians,
Peruvians,
Chileans and
Ecuadorians. There are also
Asian Americans (
Koreans,
Filipinos,
Chinese and
Pakistanis) as well as
Italian Americans and
African Americans.
Corona is bordered on the east by
Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, one of the largest parks in
New York City and the site of the
1939 and
1964 World's Fairs. Located within the park are
Citi Field, home of the
New York Mets, and the
USTA National Tennis Center, where the
U.S. Open in tennis is held annually.
Dorie Miller Residential Cooperative, built in 1952, comprises six buildings, containing 300 apartments, with 1,300 rooms in total. The cooperative is named after Doris "Dorie" Miller, a U.S. Naval hero at
Pearl Harbor and the first African American recipient of the Navy Cross.Among its original residents were jazz greats
Nat Adderley &
Jimmy Heath; Kenneth and Corien Drew, publishers of Queens' first African-American newspaper,
The Corona East Elmhurst News, Thelma E. Harris founder of Aburi Press and prominent Queens attorney Henry Slaughter to name a few.
During the 1950 and '60s Corona and its neighbor, East Elmhurst, was home to legendary African American musicians,civil rights leaders and athletes including Dr. Ophelia Devore,
Dizzy Gillespie,
Charlie Shavers,
Ella Fitzgerald, Norman Mapp, Nat Adderley, Frankie Lymon, Willie Mayes], George Williams former Harlem Night Club Dancer turned restaurateur who owned the renown BBQ George’s Supper Club frequented by the Black elite of Queens and New York politicos including civil rights activist Judge William “Bill” Booth, Publisher and NYC Commissioner Ken Drew, New York City's Mayor John Lindsay and New York Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller.
The two communities were often referred to as one “Corona/East Elmhurst” and is the childhood home of the first African American US Attorney General,
Eric Holder, to rap (Hip Hop) artists
Kidd & Play,
Kwamé,
Salt-n-Pepa and
Kool G Rap, and is home to Queens Borough President Helen Marshall and her husband Donald.
Corona/East Elmhurst also houses one of the most extensive collections of African American art and literature in the Langston Hughes Community Library and Cultural Center, which serves
Queens County with reference and circulating collections, totaling approximately 30,000 volumes of materials written about or relating to black culture. The
Black Heritage Reference Center of Queens County includes books, periodicals, theses and dissertations, VHS videos, cassettes and CDS, photographs, posters, prints, paintings, and sculpture. Cultural arts programs are scheduled through the Center. Meeting space is available to community organizations by application. Special features of the Center include:
- The Schomburg Clippings File, an extensive microfiche collection of periodicals, magazine clippings, typescripts, broadsides, pamphlets, programs, book reviews, menus and ephemera of all kinds.
- The UMI Thesis and Dissertation Collection--consists of more than 1,000 volumes of doctoral and master dissertations concerning the African and African-American diasporas.
- The Adele Cohen Music Collection contains most of America's foremost black publications on microfilm. The papers cover 15 states beginning in 1893, and are updated each year with current issues.
- The Black Heritage Video Collection documents the history and culture of Africans and African-Americans on tape, and in all subject areas including literature, biography, social science, fine arts.
Through the Black Heritage Reference Center literature readings, workshops and lectures are scheduled, as well as cultural arts programming in fine art exhibitions, film festivals, dance, musical, and dramatic presentations/performances.
Popular culture
- Lemon Ice King of Corona is located on the intersection of 108th Street and Corona Avenue. It appears in the opening credits of the TV show King of Queens.
- Books about Corona's history and present include Roger Sanjek's The Future of Us All and Steven Gregory's
Black Corona. Chapter 6 of
Andrew Morton's
Madonna describes Madonna's brief stint as a Corona resident in the late 1970s/early 80s.
Transportation
The
IRT Flushing Line () train runs through the neighborhood with stops at
111th Street,
103rd Street-Corona Plaza and
Junction Boulevard.
Notable residents
Notable current and former residents of Corona include:
- Cannonball Adderley (1928-1975), jazz alto saxophonist.
[Berman, Eleanor. , Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, January 1, 2006. Accessed October 1, 2009. "Mr. Knight shows the brick building that was the studio of Dizzie Gillespie, where other Corona residents like Cannonball Adderley used to come and jam....When the trolley tour proceeds, Mr. Knight points out the nearby Dorie Miller Houses, a co-op apartment complex in Corona where Clark Terry and Cannonball and Nat Adderley lived and where saxophonist Jimmy Heath still resides."]
- Ella Fitzgerald (1917-1996), jazz vocalist.
[Holloway, Lynette. , The New York Times, February 10, 1996. Accessed October 1, 2009. "The Armstrongs embraced Corona, selected partly because of its proximity to other jazz musicians who lived nearby, including Dizzy Gillespie, Jimmy Heath, Lena Horne and Ella Fitzgerald, said Phoebe Jacobs, executive vice president of the Louis Armstrong Educational Foundation."]
- Estée Lauder (1906-2004), founder of the cosmetics company that bears her name.
- Madonna (born 1958), singer lived here from 1979-1980 as a member of the band Breakfast Club.
- Robert Parris Moses, a legendary figure in the civil rights movement of the 1960s, and later founder of the Algebra Project, lived at 108-63 Ditmars Boulevard in Corona.
- Norman Mapp (1928 - 1988) Jazz Vocalist and Composer
- Hip-hop musicians Kidd & Play, Kwamé, BB and Salt-n-Pepa, came from Corona/East Elmhurst.Darryl "God" Whiting,DJ Polo, Styles P, Noreaga, Big Mato, Nu-Era, The Beatnuts, Disco Twins, Nu Sounds, King Charles, T Rapper D Disco Knights & V.I.C. came from Corona.
Queens Borough President
Helen Marshall, Dr.
Calvin O. Butts, III]], Pastor of the nationally-renowned Abyssinian Baptist Church, Jazz Greats and performers ,
Charlie Shavers,
Irving Barnes and
Frankie Lymon made Corona their home.
Paul Simon -singer, songwriter of Simon and Garfunkel and solo artist, was also born in Corona.
