Kew Gardens is one of seven planned garden communities built in Queens from the late 19th century to 1950. Maple Grove Cemetery on Kew Gardens Road opened in 1875.
Forest Park is the third largest park in Queens and is located to the south of Kew Gardens. According to geologists, the Wisconsin Glacier retreated from Long Island some 20,000 years ago, leaving behind the hills that now are part of Forest Park. The park was home to the Rockaway, Delaware and Lenape Native Americans until Dutch West India Company settlers arrived in 1634 and began establishing towns and pushing the tribes out. The park contains the largest continuous oak forest in Queens. Inside the park, the Forest Park Carousel was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2004.
Notably, in addition to the historic Maple Grove Cemetery, the Ralph J. Bunche House is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is also a designated National Historic Landmark. The house was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1976. The house is also a New York City landmark. It is named after Ralph Bunche, who helped to found the United Nations in 1945. In 1950, he became the first African American and first person of color to win the Nobel Peace Prize, for mediating armistice agreements between Israel and its neighboring countries.
The county’s civic center, Queens Borough Hall, along with one of the county criminal courts, stand at the northern end of the neighborhood, on Queens Boulevard, in a complex extending from Union Turnpike to Hoover Avenue. Adjacent to Borough Hall is a retired New York City Subway R33 (Redbird), which lays on a fake track as well as a raised platform.
