The Queensboro Corporation was the real estate company responsible for giving the Jackson Heights neighborhood its name. The marshy area had previously been called "Trains Meadow," and, led by Edward A. MacDougall and a group of New York investors, it was developed to become a neighborhood for the middle-class and upper middle-class who were looking to escape the overcrowding of Manhattan.

The corporation had purchased about 350 acres of undeveloped land and farms by 1915, and MacDougall erected the infrastructure necessary to maintain a rising middle-class who would soon move in. The Flushing Line reached Trains Meadow, now christened "Jackson Heights," in 1917. The "heights" in the name does not denote any elevation change, but instead was meant to make the area seem exclusive.