A neighborhood in the New York City borough of Queens. It is bounded by Whitestone to the northwest, the Long Island Sound and Little Neck Bay to the northeast, Douglaston to the east, Bellerose to the south, and Fresh Meadows to the west. CNN Money ranked Bayside as one of the most expensive housing markets nationally when analyzing comparable detached homes throughout the United States. Despite its large housing stock of free-standing homes, it nationally ranks high to very high in population density.
The first known written occurrence of the name Bayside was in a deed dated 1798, written as Bay Side. During the 19th century, Bayside was primarily farmland, where wealthy people from Manhattan would visit it as a rural resort. During the 1920s and 1930s, there were several movie studios in Astoria, and many movie stars lived in Bayside, some in posh homes. After the end of World War II, the residential development of Bayside increased dramatically, particularly because of its station on the Long Island Rail Road’s Port Washington Branch, where a commuter could ride one train straight to Manhattan.