Curios: Broad Church: "Abundant Wildlife But Is Almost Entirely Uninhabited By Humans"

Squeezed between Brooklyn and Queens, Jamaica Bay is a vast estuary of open water and marsh islands over 20 times the size of Central Park. The bay is home to abundant wildlife but is almost entirely uninhabited by humans except for a single neighborhood: Broad Channel.

Broad Channel lies on the southern end of Rulers Bar Hassock, which sits in the middle of Jamaica Bay’s deserted archipelago, just over two miles away from the Rockaways and mainland Queens. The neighborhood, where fewer than 3,000 people live, is isolated and not often visited. Of New York City’s 472 subway stops, the Broad Channel subway station ranks dead last in visitors, averaging about 250 travelers a day in 2006. Compare that to the 150,000 daily travelers at Times Square–42nd Street that year.

"Hidden Corners of New York City: The city’s most isolated neighborhood", "Columbia Daily Spectator; Nicholas Baum, March 20, 2024.