Scenes from Fresh Meadows, Queens

This week, as part of my Every Neighborhood in New York project, I visited Fresh Meadows in central Queens. Before it was Fresh Meadows, this area was known as Black Stump—named for the charred stumps left after the British clear-cut nearly every tree on Long Island during the Revolution and shipped them back to England.

The Klein Farm, which started in 1895, operated until 2004 as the last working family farm within NYC limits. After WWII, a massive planned community of 11,000 residents rose here, what architect Lewis Mumford called "perhaps the most positive and exhilarating example of large-scale community planning in this country."

The neighborhood is home to Bagel Oasis, the 24-hour bagel shop on best-of lists since 1961, and the only Hooters within city limits. This week, I also share the work of quintessential NYC photographer Flo Fox, who, despite being legally blind, created an archive of nearly 200,000 photos.

For more on Fresh Meadows or other neighborhoods in NYC, you can subscribe to (or just read) my newsletter here: http://www.theneighborhoods.nyc