Ridgewood
Neighborhood Intelligence

Ridgewood sits on the Queens-Brooklyn line and remained sparsely populated until the early twentieth century, when rowhouses were built for a rapidly growing and predominantly German population. Its oldest streets, Myrtle Avenue, Metropolitan Avenue, and Fresh Pond Road, were originally farm routes to market, and the neighborhood has become more ethnically diverse since the mid-twentieth century. Large parts of Ridgewood are national and city historic districts, which preserve many of its blocks of rowhouses.

The Onderdonk House, built in 1709, is the only known remaining Dutch farmhouse in the neighborhood. Beside it stands Arbitration Rock, a marker of the long-disputed boundary between Bushwick and Newtown, and by extension between Brooklyn and Queens. Gottscheer Hall on Fairview Avenue is a long-standing German-American gathering place, and Saint Matthias Church on Catalpa Avenue is a prominent neighborhood church. Grover Cleveland High School and the Queens Public Library's Ridgewood branch are central community institutions, and Myrtle Avenue and Fresh Pond Road are its main commercial streets.