Where in the world can you dine where the residents speak a combined total of 138 languages and there is a melting pot of diverse food options to choose from? You don't have to go any further than Queens, New York. That’s right, Queens also holds the Guinness World Record for the most ethnically diverse urban area on the planet! With just the swipe of your MetroCard, you can make your way around Queens’s diverse neighborhoods with endless food options to choose from. Take in some history, and whether you’re in Astoria, Jackson Heights, Sunnyside, or Flushing, you’ll surely discover a new meal to try.

Vernon Boulevard, west side, at 43rd Road, showing the Bodine Castle, 1932. One of the many unique features of this castle was an underground tunnel from below the home out to the the East River waterfront, which can be seen just right of center. Before it was demolished the land surrounding the castle was used as a lumberyard evidenced in the details of this photograph.

"Located in the once-fashionable Ravenswood area, the Bodine Castle was typical of the modestly-scaled romantic villas that formerly surrounded New York." Constructed sometime in the mid to late 18th century by a supposedly exiled French nobleman, the eclectic building included a large square tower and turret on a large plot of land. Though considered for landmarking in 1966, just one year after the passage of the Landmarks Law, it was denied and was demolished the same year. It was replaced by expanded infrastructure for the Con Ed "Big Aliss" power plant.

Between 1954 and 1957, the Municipal Art Society surveyed historic buildings in all five boroughs to create a database of potential landmarks to preserve. Local residents and MAS staff compiled individual sheets devoted to about 200 buildings. Each sheet outlined the building’s date, location, and style and provided a description and a small photograph. This is the list of Queens buildings.

Bodine Castle With its rather gloomy, forbidding exterior implying Gothic origins, there is almost as much of the Romanesque in this "castle." It may be sensed primarily in the massing of the elements and in the round-arched windows and doors. In its final location, it would have been difficult to visualize the spacious grounds and lawns that must have once surrounded the house.

Crew waterproofing reinforced concrete entrance to the 60th Street Tunnel, October 17, 1917. Plans originally called for the BMT Broadway Line to connect to Queens lines via the Queensboro Bridge, but this plan was scrapped due to uncertainty over the bridge’s ability to support additional train and vehicular traffic. The tunnel opened on August 1, 1920, in an event timed to coincide with the opening of the Montague Street Tunnel; together, the tunnels connected the Manhattan’s BMT Broadway Line to service in Brooklyn and Queens.

Over the years, more than a few New Yorkers have taken the phrase "A man's home is his castle" literally. This tour takes you through a few of the fortifications that New Yorkers have built for themselves.

Penitentiary and City Hospital, on the south end of Welfare Island; as seen from the Queensboro Bridge, March 5, 1933. In 1832, on what was then called Blackwell's Island, a large penitentiary was constructed. The long imposing arcaded structure looked a bit like a castle with crenelations at the roofline and turrets. This complex included areas for both male and female prisoners. In the 1830s hundreds of prisoners were head there and spent their days in labor, often breaking rocks. Boss Tweed was imprisoned here in 1874, though he had a private unlocked room and a secretary. Though the island prison likely had a long history of poor conditions and corruption, it was not until the early 20th century that the conditions were widely made public by Katharine Davis, the female Commissioner of Correction in 1914. Despite the accusations of overcrowding, drug-dealing, and favoritism the prison survived until reforms by Mayor La Guardia in the mid 1930s finally prompted the closing of the facility and the removal of prisoners to the nearly complete complex on Riker's Island.

Who is the Bridge and Tunnel crowd? In more quotidian times, that moniker might call to mind tourists from New Jersey. Currently, the crowd in question might be New Yorkers themselves: Over the past several months, many New Yorkers have sped across these spans on their way out of the city. At the same time, subway-wary city-dwellers have also streamed across New York’s bridges, and through its tunnels, making what would ordinarily be public transit trips by foot, bike or car. Whether you’re in-town or out-of-town, this is a bridge and tunnel moment for New York City. Since the pandemic has redefined our relationship the city’s iconic modes of ingress and egress, let’s take this moment to recognize the bridges and tunnels that carry us in and out of the Upper East Side. Scroll on for a bridge and tunnel history of the neighborhood. Read this story in its original format here.

Queensboro Bridge ca. 1910 Restoration and reuse have saved many Guastavino projects. Originally an open-air market under the Queensboro Bridge, the Bridgemarket served the community from 1914 to 1930. For nearly 60 years thereafter, the space functioned as a storage garage. In 1999, extensive restoration returned the area to public use as a market and popular event space named in honor of the Guastavinos.

The Queensboro Bridge, viewed from Sutton Square, ca. 1930. When the Queensboro— originally named the Blackwell's Island Bridge for the island close to the Queens side of the East River— was built, the area around the Queens approach was still sparsely settled. Large portions of land in the vicinity were owned by a few wealthy families and the remainder of the borough was home to truck farms, cemeteries, and race tracks. Following the consolidation of Greater New York in 1898, consolidationist politicians sought to accelerate the development of industry and housing in Queens; completion of a bridge connecting Queens to Manhattan was essential to these ambitions. Engineer Gustav Lindenthal, who was also chief engineer for the Hell Gate Bridge, collaborated extensively with architect Henry Hornbostel to conceive a bridge both functional and architecturally appealing. Hornbostel and Lindenthal used symmetry and repetition, towers capped with spires, and falsework support in an effort to compensate for the bridge's massiveness and relative lack of decorative ornamentation. The finished structure has been described as a cantilever bridge wit suspensions bridge lines. When the Quebec Bridge, a contemporary cantilever project planned as the longest cantilever in the world, collapse in 1907, apprehensive City officials ordered exhaustive tests of Lindenthal and Hornbostel's design. Administrative misgivings led also to concern about the quality of materials, which were subjected to exhaustive reinspection.