Street corner in Queens to be renamed ‘Little Manila’ in honor of Woodside Filipino community

May 23, 2022

A street corner in Queens, New York, will be renamed to “Little Manila” to reflect the large Filipino community in the area.

The southwest corner of Roosevelt Avenue and 70th Street in Woodside, Queens, will officially be known as “Little Manila” after the New York City Council Committee on Parks and Recreation unanimously voted in favor of the proposal in December 2021.

A petition to install the street sign garnered more than 3,000 signatures last year, leading councilmember Jimmy Van Bramer to sponsor the legislation.

“I wanted to honor the Filipino and Filipino American community who are an important part of the Woodside community,” Van Bramer told the Sunnyside Post.

Woodside has been home to a large concentration of Filipino Americans for decades. Many of the residents were nurses who were recruited in New York hospitals due to a nursing shortage in the 1990s. They started immigrating to the area in the 1970s following the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act in 1965.

Today, the area is known for its Filipino businesses, including the first-ever branch of Jollibee in New York City. The most recent census found 86,000 Filipinos and Filipino Americans residing in the city, with about 54 percent living in Queens.

“The footprints of the Philippines are here,” Dennis Nepomuceno, co-owner of Kusina Pinoy Bistro restaurant, told CBS News. “Very happy and very proud of that. At least we have that small dot on the map that says Little Manila and that is something for us.”

Featured Image via CBS New York

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