Little India (Jackson Heights, Queens)

Jackson Heights, Queens, has been called “Little India” since at least 1985. In 1992, the 74th Street area (between Roosevelt Avenue and 37th Avenue) was officially named “Little India” by New York’s mayor. Many Indian restaurants and stores exist in the area that is also known as “Jaikishan Heights.”
 
Manhattan has a “Little India” on East 6th Street (between First and Second Avenues) and another “Little India” on Lexington Avenue at East 28th Street (also called “Curry Hill”). 
     
 
Wikipedia: Little India (location)
Little India is an ethnic enclave containing a large population of Indian people within a society where the majority of people are either not South Asians or where the majority in the enclave are indigenous to states in the country of India within a South Asian Society not identifying as Indian.
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* New York City With 575,541 Asian Indians per 2007 American Community Survey Census data, the largest ethnic Asian Indian community of any metropolitan area in North America.
** Manhattan
*** Lexington Avenue, between 26th and 30th Streets
*** 6th Street, between 1st and 2nd Avenues
** Queens
*** Flushing, Queens, in vicinity of Hindu temple on Bowne Street
*** Hillside Avenue, Glen Oaks, Queens
*** 73rd and 74th street between Roosevelt and 37th Ave, Jackson Heights, Queens
     
Wikipedia: Jackson Heights, Queens
Jackson Heights is a neighborhood in the northwestern portion of the borough of Queens in New York City, USA. The neighborhood is part of Queens Community Board 3. The zip code of Jackson Heights is 11372.
   
About.com: Queens, NY
A Tour of Jackson Heights, A South Asian Neighborhood
Overview of Little India
By John Roleke, About.com
The great borough of Queens is known for its polyglot ethnic neighborhoods. Often it seems that every immigrant group in Queens has at least one representative on a single block. But the Little India section of the Queens neighborhood of Jackson Heights is different.
 
Seventy-fourth Street between Roosevelt Avenue and 37th Avenue and the surrounding blocks are the heart of a South Asian neighborhood. Indians, Bangladeshis, and Pakistanis call this area home, and come here to shop and eat.
 
25 August 1985, New York (NY) Times, “Rising Rents Threatening ‘Little India,’” by Marvine Howe, pg. 39:
The area of spice bazaars, sari shops and curry restaurants on the East Side of Manhattan known as Little India is beginning to feel the gusts of changing times.
 
The strip, concentrated along Lexington Avenue between 27th and 30th Streets, faces sharp rent increases, new competition from other Indian centers—mainly in Queens—and the erosion of traditions.
 
Several Indian shops have been forced to close lately. Some shopkeepers are hanging on, but say they fear they will have to leave when their leases are up. Others, who own their buildings, are prospering and have opene branches in Jackson Heights, Queens, in what is now called Little India No. 2.
 
Google Books
Nation and Migration:
The politics of space in the South Asian diaspora
By Peter van der Veer
Philadelphia, PA: University of Philadelphia Press
1995
Pg. 193:
Through this process the Jackson Heights Merchants’ Association has emerged as a viable body which seeks to represent Indian immigrants in official forums. As such, they present Jackson Heights as a symbol of ethnic Indian life in the United States. In 1992, on the festival of Diwali, this association invited Mayor David Dinkins to join the celebration. The mayor referred to the plan of renaming the Seventy-fourth Street area “Little India.” On that occasion, a white American carried a placard of protest. it read, “Mayor Dinkins: Wrong. I live here. This is my American home. Not ‘Little India.’” (India Abroad, October 30, 1992).
   
New York (NY) Times
MAKING IT WORK; The Cop In Little India
By LYNETTE HOLLOWAY
Published: Sunday, April 9, 1995
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In a city where issues of diversity are posed in terms of blacks, Asians and Hispanic people, it might be easy for Indians to fall between the cracks. But not in Jackson Heights. Though the community is to 1990’s New York City as the Lower East Side was to 1890’s New York, with an extraordinary mix of new immigrants, the Indians have a large and noticeable presence, particularly along 74th Street from the elevated subway station at Roosevelt Avenue to 37th Avenue. These blocks have become the nation’s largest shopping district for immigrants from India, sometimes resembling the bazaars found along the streets of Bombay and New Delhi.
 
Not all went smoothly as 74th Street metamorphosed over the years into what is now called Little India. Many of the older, established, Italian and Irish residents resented the new busy-ness of the street, complaining of congestion, noise and litter. At one point, they even held a protest march.
     
Google Books
New York eats (more)
By Ed Levine
New York, NY: St. Martin’s Griffin
1997
Pg. 124:
Patel Brothers » Strolling down 74th Street, the center of Jackson Heights’ Little India, I was stopped by the sounds of a vendor hawking his mangoes.
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PATEL BROTHERS
37-56 74th Street (between Roosevelt Avenue and 37th Avenue)