As this photo reminds us, neighborhoods in Queens such as Woodside were much greener than early 20th century Manhattan and downtown Brooklyn.

Dense development, the lack of vegetation, and the unequal distribution of parks across the city left some neighborhoods with few shade trees. New York's Tree Planting Association reported that in the fifteen years following consolidation (1898), the city lost 200,000 trees due to urban development, restricted space and light, crowded root systems, hazardous pollution, and physical damage inflicted by automobiles, carriages, and horses. The Times lamented that this left swaths of residential areas two to five square miles “almost wholly without trees.”