Across the Queens border north of Bushwick lies Ridgewood. The rhomboid-shaped neighborhood at the end of the M line is roughly bounded by Flushing Avenue on the west, Metropolitan Avenue on the north, the disused Bushwick Branch of the LIRR on the east, and Wyckoff Avenue to the south.
Home to the Mespachtes Indians centuries ago, it was farmed by Dutch settlers in the colonial era — of which the Onderdonk House on Flushing Avenue is a vestige — and eventually taken over by English settlers. They named it Ridgewood for its climbing elevation and thick stands of linden, red cedar, and beech.
Throughout the 20th century, it was one of Queens’ great working-class neighborhoods, home to Germans, Italians, Dominicans, former Yugoslavians, Chinese, Puerto Ricans, Romanians, Mexicans, and Poles, among others. This diversity persists, now intermingling with a new generation of restaurants that mark the changing neighborhood.
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