Woodhaven is a neighborhood in southwestern Queens, bordering Cypress Hills. It is bounded to the north by Park Lane South, to the east by 106^th and 107^th streets, to the south by Atlantic Avenue, and to the west by the Brooklyn line. The area was settled in the eighteenth century and the early nineteenth by members of the Ditmars, Lott, Wyckoff, Suydam and Snediker families. A racetrack called Union Course was built in 1821 between 78^th and 82^nd streets south of Jamaica Avenue; races were held there as late as 1868, often between the horses of plantation owners from the South and those of wealthy northerners. Another track, the Ceterville, opened in 1825 east of Woodhaven Boulevard and south of Rockaway Boulevard and was the subject of lithographs produced in the 1850s by Currier and Ives. The area was developed as a workers’ village by John R. Pitkin, who moved to Long Island from Connecticut in 1835 to build a manufacturing center in East New York. He abandoned his plan during a depression in 1837 and turned to promoting his village, Woodville, in the 1850s after persuading the railroad in 1850 to build a station. In 1853, he launched a newspaper and the few inhabitants voted to change the name of the village to Woodhaven. A shoe factory opened in 1854.

Development increased after a tinware factory was built in 1863 by Charles Lalance and Florian Grosjean, Frenchmen who improved the process of tin stamping. The factory became immensely successful, eventually covering eleven acres. Grosjean, who managed the factory, invited French workers and built company housing. During the 1880s and 1890s, the stamping works dominated the village, employing 2,100 workers; it also had a feder steel mill in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and branches in Chicago and Boston. The factory also supplied mess kits for the Spanish-American War. Several residential developments were built at the end of the century: Ozone Park (1882 – 1890), Brooklyn Hills (1889), and Forest Parkway (1900). After elevated lines were extended along Liberty Avenue (1915) and Jamaica Avenue (1917), blocks of houses were erected and thousands of Italians and Irish moved to the neighborhood. The redbrick building of the stamping works remained until 1955; in 1984 – 85 its former clock tower became a bank, and the site of the factory was used for a shopping mall.