NYC Middle Class Blues

New York City’s middle class has fled from the dense, overcrowded inner city before.
Back when Queens still consisted mostly of open farmland and saltwater marshes, they took the 5-cent IRT train and settled down in two-family houses like the ones being built in Forest Hills Gardens or Sunnyside Gardens in the first half of the last century. And when those filled up, they moved farther afield to the new tract home developments being built all over Long Island and eastern New Jersey.