Guide to Queens borough in NYC
Queens borough travel guide - Airports, Mets and Jazz
QUEENS is one of the five boroughs that makes up New York City and is the second largest in terms of population at 2.3M and the largest in terms of land area at 109 square miles. Situated on Long Island at its western end, directly north of Brooklyn, Queens is home to both LaGuardia Airport and New York City’s largest and most prestigious airport, JFK.
Queens is home to the famous baseball team, the New York Mets and also the US Open tennis championship that takes place in Flushing Meadows Park.
Named after Catherine of Braganza who was a Portuguese princess who married King Charles II of England in the mid 1660s, Queens, today, is quite suburban and less metropolitan than some of the other boroughs that make up New York City. However, to 
the north west of Queens, it is more urban in the business districts and especially along the waterfront where the Citicorp tower is the tallest skyscraper on Long Island.
Jazz has always been a dominant feature of Queens and some jazz greats have crossed the East River from Harlem to perform in the clubs such as Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Charlie Parker and many others.
Today, west Queens is very much an artistic epicentre exemplified by the Sculpture Centre and Sculpture Park, the Dorsky Gallery, the Museum of the Moving Image, and the Flux Factory. Queens even has its own Poet Laureate, currently Ishle Yi Park.
Other cultural institutions that so identify Queens are:
- Queens Theatre in the Park;
- Thalia Spanish Theater;
- Kupferberg Center for the Arts; and
- Jamaica Performing Arts Center.
Queens Botanical Garden is very much worth a visit as are many of the excellent local restaurants that reflect the cultures of the local communities.
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