As colonial New Yorkers expanded their housing and employment options beyond Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn, southeast Queens became a destination for Dutch and English families who wanted more land and a better life.
Beyond the confines of the village of Jamaica in Queens emerged a community of strivers - farmers and entrepreneurs - who founded St. Albans in 1899. A housing boom in the 1920s and 1930s in Queens brought more residents with European heritage to St. Albans. Yankee slugger Babe Ruth spent so much time at the St. Albans Golf and Country Club that many area residents thought he lived there. Meanwhile, a racial covenant in Addisleigh Park, an affluent section of St. Albans, threatened to keep African Americans out of the neighborhood until the federal government outlawed the practice in 1948. Over time, many African American jazz musicians and entertainers along with middle- and working-class families have called St. Albans home. Today, St. Albans is a predominantly middle-class African American and Caribbean American neighborhood that continues to embrace its ambitious past through strong connections to business, civic, political, and religious groups.