Wyckoff Heights, New York of Wyckoff Heights. The area was home first to many German immigrants, later followed by Italian and more recently Latino and Eastern-European residents. Wyckoff Heights was urbanized starting in the late 1800s, and took its name from the Wyckoff family who owned and farmed much of the land. Development progressed from Brooklyn into Queens as portions of the Wyckoff farm were sold. In 1890 the New York Times and New York Tribune announced the creation of a new park (now Maria Hernandez Park) to be located in the Wyckoff Heights section of the 18th Ward of Brooklyn. In 1892 Queens
Jackson Heights, Queens to move in by the 1940s and blacks by 1968. Beginning in the 1960s, an influx of newly immigrated residents came into Jackson Heights, at the same time that existing residents were leaving for suburbs due to white flight. Hispanic immigrants moved in by the 1970s. By then, white residents who remained in the neighborhood wished to eliminate the stigma of Jackson Heights being an ethnically diverse neighborhood, often defining its border as Roosevelt Avenue, because crime had started to increase in the area. By the mid-1970s, South American organized crime groups in Jackson Heights, often peddling drugs, gained national