page_title: Woodside, Queens
section_title: 20th century
hierarchical_section_title: Woodside, Queens / History / 20th century
caption_attribution_description: English: This extract from a news article summarizes a sensational murder committed in a rented Woodside cottage on June 23, 1897. The victim, his murderer, and the murderer's accomplice were all German, but none were Woodside residents. The case is considered a landmark not in American jurisprudence but in the history of yellow journalism.
context_page_description: Woodside is a residential and commercial neighborhood in the western portion of the borough of Queens in New York City. It is bordered on the south by Maspeth, on the north by Astoria, on the west by Sunnyside, and on the east by Elmhurst, Jackson Heights, and East Elmhurst. Some areas are widely residential and very quiet, while other parts, especially the ones around Roosevelt Avenue, are busier.
  In the 19th century the area was part of the Town of Newtown. The adjacent area of Winfield was largely incorporated into the post office serving Woodside and as a consequence Winfield lost much of its identity distinct from Woodside. However, with large-scale residential development in the 1860s, Woodside became the largest Irish American community in Queens, being approximately 80% Irish by the 1930s and maintaining a strong Irish culture today. In the early 1990s, many Asian American families moved into the area, with the population being 30% Asian American. South Asians and Latinos have also moved to Woodside in recent years.
  Reflecting its longtime diverse foods and drink, the neighborhood is filled with many cultural restaurants and pubs.
context_section_description: As the 19th century gave way to the 20th, Woodside's plentiful advantages convinced real estate developers to invest substantially in high-occupancy housing and duplex homes to complement the single-family units which had dominated the area.  Three representative examples are Woodside Apartments built in 1913, the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company's project of 1922, and the projects of the Woodside Development Corporation in 1923. Located near the rail and rapid transit stations, the Woodside Apartments was a row of four-story, semi-detached buildings. There were four apartments on a floor, most of them having four rooms. Rents initially ranged from $18 to $20 a month. Located just as close to the trains, but on the other side of the village, the Metropolitan Life apartment project was more ambitious. Consisting of ten five-story buildings, the project had space for four hundred families. The Woodside Development Corporation built four-story apartments with stores on the ground floor and both two- and one-family houses on two large plots of land near the center of the village. When a citywide aerial survey was taken in 1924, Woodside was shown to have quite a few other multifamily apartment buildings and duplexes along with its many small single-family homes.
  During the 1930s and into the post-war era, Woodside residential development continued to grow, although more slowly than in the boom years following World War I. Empty lots continued to be filled with one- and two-family houses, compact apartment buildings continued to be constructed, and larger, elevator-style high-rises were put up. In 1936, a last large tract of undeveloped land was made available for construction of garden apartments when a portion of the 10-acre Windmuller Estate was sold to developers.
  A community profile, published in 1943, characterized Woodside (along with Winfield, its neighbor to the south) as "a district of small homes and middle incomes."  The area still had few apartment buildings and very little industry. Although the rapid population growth of the 1920s had fallen off in the 1930s, the authors of the profile expected improved transit (the IND Queens Boulevard Line which opened in 1933) and a new shopping center to draw larger numbers of new residents. The number of single-family houses is given as 2,159, double-family houses as 1,711, and larger residential buildings as 868.
  In 1949, construction was completed on the Woodside Houses, a public housing complex built and operated by the New York City Housing Authority. The complex consists of 20 six-story buildings with 1,358 apartments. It is located in western Woodside, bordering Astoria, between 49th and 51st Streets, 31st Avenue and Newtown Road.
caption: Extract from a news article about an 1897 murder in Woodside. More details This extract from a news article summarizes a sensational murder committed in a rented Woodside cottage on June 23, 1897. The victim, his murderer, and the murderer's accomplice were all German, but none were Woodside residents. The case is considered a landmark not in American jurisprudence but in the history of yellow journalism.[85][86][87]
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