Bartending School in East Elmhurst, NY

From colonial times to the early 1900s, the area now known as East Elmhurst was a vast marsh named Trains Meadow. Urbanization at the turn of the century was creating a New York City housing shortage and urban sprawl. In 1909, Edward A. MacDougall’s Queensboro Corporation bought 325 acres (132 ha) of undeveloped land and farms to the south and christened them Jackson Heights after John C. Jackson, a descendant of one of the original Queens families and a respected Queens entrepreneur.

The neighborhood formerly contained an amusement area along Bowery Bay Beach (later renamed North Beach), which started operating in 1886. An amusement park called Gala Amusement Park was built by William Steinway on the Bowery Bay in what is now present-day LaGuardia Airport. In the 19th century the area used to be called Frogtown before Steinway rebuilt the area. It was home to the East Coast’s first Ferris wheel and was known as the “Coney Island of Queens.” Gala Amusement Park was eventually shut down due to Prohibition. In 1929 it was razed and transformed into a 105-acre (42 ha) private flying field named Glenn H. Curtiss Airport after the pioneer Long Island aviator, later called North Beach Airport. Starting in 1937, a Works Progress Administration project transformed North Beach Airport into LaGuardia Airport, which formally opened in 1939.

The first houses were built in 1905. These residences were small frame houses located on 40-by-100-foot (12 by 30 m) lots, and some houses on the bay contained private beaches. The neighborhood’s first commercial development came to Ditmars Boulevard during World War II.