This Street Was Clogged With Traffic. Now It Belongs to Ping-Pong.

This is Street Wars, a weekly series on the battle for space on New York’s streets and sidewalks.

Jackson Heights, Queens, has been called “the most culturally diverse neighborhood in New York, if not on the planet.” It is also a neighborhood with the some of the least green space in New York.

On Roosevelt Avenue, the elevated subway line rattles above a steady stream of car traffic. Storefronts and pushcarts on the narrow, bustling sidewalks offer all kinds of food — Thai, Chinese, Mexican, Himalayan, Indian, Colombian, Guatemalan, Ecuadorean, Peruvian and more — but it’s tough to find any calm.

Yet just three blocks north, running parallel to Roosevelt, is 34th Avenue, where a stretch of 26 blocks, running east to west, has been closed to cars from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. every day since 2020.

That’s 1.3 miles of space. And on a recent Friday, it was being used in a variety of ways.

At 93rd Street and 34th Avenue, in front of P.S. 149, an elementary school, children played chess and Ping-Pong. A few more splashed in a kiddie pool.

On 90th Street, older people were sitting at small tables, socializing. On the other side of the median, a woman pushed a man in a wheelchair.