By Frederic Sandy, Licensed Real Estate Broker & Owner, Orion Homes Realty
There’s a moment that happens to almost everyone who visits Forest Hills for the first time. You step off the E, F, M, or R train, walk up the stairs onto Continental Avenue, and stop. The tree-lined streets, the Tudor architecture, the unhurried pace of a neighborhood that somehow feels like a village inside one of the world’s most dynamic cities — it catches you off guard. You were expecting Queens. You got something that feels like it was lifted from the English countryside and dropped, gently, between the Long Island Expressway and the LIRR tracks.
I’ve lived here since 2007. I’ve raised my family here, built my business here, and spent nearly two decades watching this neighborhood welcome newcomers while staying true to its character. As a real estate broker, I’ve helped dozens of buyers find their place in Forest Hills — and without exception, the ones who move here wonder why they waited so long.
This guide covers everything you need to know about the neighborhood: the streets, the schools, the parks, the transit, and the intangible quality of life that makes Forest Hills one of Queens’ most sought-after places to call home.
Austin Street — The Heart of the Neighborhood
If Forest Hills has a main street, it’s Austin Street. Stretching from Continental Avenue westward toward Queens Boulevard, Austin Street is where the neighborhood does its living. On any given afternoon you’ll find parents pushing strollers past bakeries, couples lingering over brunch, and longtime residents stopping to chat outside shops they’ve been patronizing for decades.
The commercial strip is anchored by an honest mix of local independents and familiar names. For coffee, you have multiple solid options within a few blocks — from casual grab-and-go spots to sit-down cafés where you can spend an hour with a book. The restaurant scene is genuinely diverse: Italian trattorias, Japanese ramen spots, Middle Eastern cuisine, classic diners, and everything in between. Austin Street has never tried to be trendy, which is precisely why it has outlasted every trend.
Beyond food, the street offers practical everyday convenience — pharmacies, dry cleaners, banks, a post office, grocery options — alongside boutique retail that keeps the strip from feeling like a strip mall. There’s a community board, a library branch nearby, and enough foot traffic at any hour to feel safe and alive without ever feeling overwhelming.
What makes Austin Street special, though, isn’t any individual business. It’s the accumulated feeling of a street that people actually use. Neighbors run into each other here. Local business owners know their regulars by name. On Halloween, it’s decorated and buzzing. During the winter holidays, it’s lit up and warm. Austin Street is the kind of main street that urban planners try to engineer and almost never achieve organically — Forest Hills just has it.
Forest Hills Gardens — A Neighborhood Within a Neighborhood
No guide to Forest Hills would be complete without spending time on Forest Hills Gardens, the planned residential community that occupies the southwestern corner of the neighborhood and is arguably the most architecturally distinctive enclave in all of Queens.
Developed beginning in 1909 by the Russell Sage Foundation and designed by the celebrated landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. — son of the man who designed Central Park — the Gardens were conceived as a model community where thoughtful urban planning and beautiful design could improve everyday life. More than a century later, the vision holds.
The streets of the Gardens wind in gentle curves rather than the rigid grid that governs most of New York City. The homes are predominantly Tudor and Colonial Revival in style — brick, stucco, and timber-framed facades, steeply pitched roofs, arched entryways, and carefully tended gardens that look spectacular in every season. Station Square, the formal entrance to the community at the foot of the LIRR station, is anchored by the landmark Forest Hills Inn and framed by architecture that stops visitors mid-stride.
Living in the Gardens means belonging to a private homeowners’ association that maintains the roads, manages landscaping, and preserves the aesthetic standards that have kept the community so intact over a century. That comes with rules — exterior modifications require approval, for instance — but it also comes with something rare in New York: a genuine sense of permanence and stewardship.
The Gardens also attract attention for their seasonal beauty. Burns Street and the surrounding blocks are famous for their Halloween decorations — a tradition our own family has enthusiastically contributed to for years. In spring, the flowering trees along Greenway North and Greenway South are breathtaking. In winter, the snow-covered rooftops look like something from a Christmas card.
Real estate in the Gardens commands a premium, and has for as long as anyone can remember. Single-family homes here are among the most coveted in Queens. If you have the opportunity to own here, you are buying into something that has been exceptional for over a hundred years and shows no signs of changing.
Transit — Getting Around From Forest Hills
One of the strongest arguments for Forest Hills — especially for anyone who works in Manhattan — is the transit situation, which is genuinely excellent by New York standards.
Subway: Forest Hills is served by four subway lines at two stations. The 75th Avenue station and the Forest Hills–71st Avenue station both provide access to the E, F, M, and R trains. The E and F are express trains, meaning you can be at Rockefeller Center in roughly 20 minutes and at the World Trade Center in about 25. For a neighborhood that feels this removed from the city’s intensity, that commute time is remarkable. The M and R provide local service for shorter trips or connections to other lines.
Long Island Rail Road: The Forest Hills LIRR station on the Port Washington Branch is one of the neighborhood’s most underappreciated assets. The LIRR to Penn Station takes approximately 16 to 20 minutes — faster than the subway and more comfortable. For commuters heading to Midtown, this is often the preferred option, especially during off-peak hours when fares are lower.
Buses: Multiple bus routes serve the neighborhood, including lines along Queens Boulevard and Metropolitan Avenue, providing connections to Jamaica, Flushing, and other major Queens hubs. The Q23 and Q60 are particularly useful for reaching destinations not directly on the subway lines.
Driving: Forest Hills sits at a convenient intersection of major Queens arteries. The Long Island Expressway (I-495) is accessible nearby, as is the Van Wyck Expressway, making car-based commutes to Long Island, JFK Airport, and Brooklyn relatively straightforward. Queens Boulevard, love it or hate it, is the commercial spine that connects the neighborhood to the broader borough.
For families with one or two cars who also want robust public transit options, Forest Hills strikes an unusually good balance. You are not dependent on a car to live well here, but having one doesn’t hurt either.
Schools — Education in Forest Hills
For families with children, school quality is often the deciding factor in where to buy — and Forest Hills delivers on this front in ways that consistently surprise people who assume good public schools are confined to certain Manhattan zip codes.
Public Elementary and Middle Schools:
PS 101, known as The School in the Gardens, serves the Forest Hills Gardens area and has a strong reputation for academics and community involvement. PS 144, the Col. Jacob Ruppert School, is another well-regarded option in the district. The neighborhood falls within Community School District 28, which generally performs above city averages across its schools.
High Schools:
Forest Hills High School on 67th Avenue is the neighborhood’s flagship public high school and one of the most storied in Queens. It has an alumni list that includes figures from Burt Bacharach to Ray Romano, and it offers a wide range of academic programs including specialized courses and extracurricular activities. The school’s size — it is one of the larger high schools in the city — means it offers breadth that smaller schools cannot.
Private and Parochial Options:
Several private and parochial schools are accessible from Forest Hills, providing additional options for families seeking alternatives to the public system. Our Lady Queen of Martyrs is a well-regarded Catholic school in the neighborhood. For families considering specialized or independent schools, the relative proximity to other Queens and Manhattan institutions broadens the choices further.
Libraries:
The Forest Hills branch of the Queens Public Library on Queens Boulevard is a genuinely excellent neighborhood library — well-stocked, well-staffed, and home to regular programming for children, teens, and adults. It’s the kind of library that makes you feel good about public institutions.
Parks & Green Space — Nature in an Urban Setting
One of the most common misconceptions about New York City is that green space is scarce. In Forest Hills, that misconception collapses quickly.
Forest Park:
The crown jewel of the neighborhood’s outdoor offerings, Forest Park stretches across more than 500 acres along the southern edge of Forest Hills into neighboring Woodhaven and Richmond Hill. It is one of the largest parks in Queens and one of the most undervisited by people who don’t already live nearby.
The park offers miles of hiking and nature trails through a landscape that feels genuinely wild — mature oak trees, glacial kettles, ridge lines that offer surprising views. There are bridle paths, cycling routes, a carousel, athletic fields, a bandshell that hosts summer concerts, and enough space to spend an entire Sunday outdoors without retracing your steps. For families, for runners, for anyone who needs regular access to nature, Forest Park is a significant quality-of-life asset.
Flushing Meadows–Corona Park:
A short drive or bus ride north brings you to Flushing Meadows, the 1,255-acre park that was home to two World’s Fairs and remains one of New York’s grandest public spaces. The park contains the Queens Museum, the New York Hall of Science, Citi Field, the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center (home of the US Open), Meadow Lake for kayaking and fishing, and vast open lawns that feel genuinely expansive. For Forest Hills residents, this is your backyard playground on a grand scale.
Maple Grove Cemetery and Nearby Green Corridors:
Forest Hills is laced with smaller green spaces, tree-lined corridors, and the kind of street-level landscaping that makes walking through the neighborhood a genuinely pleasant experience in every season. The mature street trees along Burns Street, Greenway North, and the residential blocks of the Gardens create a canopy effect that is increasingly rare in dense urban environments.
The Tennis Stadium:
Though no longer used for professional tennis at the level it once was, the West Side Tennis Club and its famous stadium are part of Forest Hills’ identity. The club hosts local events and remains an architectural landmark — a reminder that this neighborhood once hosted the US Open and has always attracted people who appreciate quality.
The Housing Stock — What You’ll Actually Find Here
Forest Hills offers a diverse range of housing types that accommodates different budgets, lifestyles, and family configurations.
Cooperative Apartments (COOPs): The dominant housing type in Forest Hills, particularly along the major corridors near Queens Boulevard and the subway lines. COOPs in Forest Hills range from prewar classics with original details — parquet floors, high ceilings, ornate lobbies — to mid-century buildings with efficient layouts and strong financials. Prices range from the mid-$300,000s for studios to over $1 million for large three-bedroom units in premier buildings. Understanding COOP finances, board requirements, and maintenance structures is essential before buying — it’s a different process than purchasing a condo or single-family home, and one where having an experienced local broker matters enormously.
Condominiums: Less common than COOPs but available, condos offer more flexibility — they’re easier to finance, easier to sublet, and generally have fewer board restrictions. They tend to command higher prices per square foot than comparable COOPs as a result.
Single-Family Homes: Concentrated primarily in Forest Hills Gardens and the quieter residential blocks south of the LIRR tracks, single-family homes in Forest Hills are genuinely special properties. Tudor-style detached and semi-detached homes, brick rowhouses, and Colonial Revivals make up most of the stock. These properties rarely come to market, and when they do, they move quickly.
Multi-Family Properties: Two and three-family homes exist in the neighborhood and represent an interesting opportunity for buyers who want to offset their mortgage with rental income while living in one of Queens’ most desirable areas.
The Intangibles — What Makes Forest Hills, Forest Hills
I’ve spent this entire guide talking about concrete things — streets, trains, schools, square footage. But if you ask anyone who lives in Forest Hills why they love it, the answer is usually harder to quantify.
It’s the sense that your neighbors actually know you. It’s the Halloween house on 69th Avenue that draws a crowd every October. It’s the way the light filters through the oak trees in Forest Park on a late afternoon in October. It’s the LIRR pulling in just as you arrive at the platform. It’s the fact that you can walk to a great dinner, a good bookstore, and a park with actual trees — and that the subway will take you to Lincoln Center in half an hour if you want something grander.
Forest Hills is for people who want the energy and opportunity of New York City without sacrificing the feeling of belonging somewhere specific. It’s a neighborhood with a memory — one that has been housing families, welcoming newcomers, and rewarding people who choose it for over a hundred years.
If you’re considering a move to Forest Hills, I’d love to show you around personally. As a broker who has lived here for nearly two decades, I can show you not just the listings but the life — the blocks worth knowing, the buildings with the best financials, the spots that will become yours once you’re here.
Frederic Sandy is the licensed broker and owner of Orion Homes Realty, based at 87-23 69th Avenue in Forest Hills, Queens. He has lived in the neighborhood since 2007 and has helped buyers and sellers navigate the Forest Hills market for over a decade. Reach him at (718) 825-1940 or visit orionhomesrealty.com.
