Mercaz HaTorah of Belle Harbor

American Airlines Flight 587 was a regularly scheduled international passenger flight from John F. Kennedy International Airport to Las Américas International Airport in Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic. On November 12, 2001, the Airbus A300B4-605R flying the route, crashed into the neighborhood of Belle Harbor, on the Rockaway Peninsula of Queens, New York City, shortly after takeoff. All 260 people aboard the plane (251 passengers and 9 crew members) were killed, along with five people on the ground. It is the second-deadliest aviation accident in U.S. history behind the crash of American Airlines Flight 191 in 1979, and the second-deadliest aviation incident involving an Airbus A300.The location of the accident, and the fact that it took place two months and one day after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in nearby Manhattan, initially spawned fears of another terrorist attack, but the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) attributed the disaster to the first officer's overuse of rudder controls in response to wake turbulence from a preceding Japan Airlines Boeing 747-400 that took off minutes before it. According to the NTSB, the aggressive use of the rudder controls by the first officer stressed the vertical stabilizer until it separated from the aircraft. The airliner's two engines also separated from the aircraft before impact due to the intense forces.

Belle Harbor is a small residential neighborhood in the New York City borough of Queens, located on the western half of the Rockaway Peninsula, the southernmost area of the borough. Belle Harbor commonly refers to the area from Beach 126th to Beach 141st Streets.The neighborhood is part of Queens Community Board 14. According to the 2010 United States Census, the neighborhood, coupled with nearby Neponsit, had a population just over 5,400. Belle Harbor was the site of the 2001 crash of American Airlines Flight 587, which killed 265 people.

Rockaway Park is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Queens. The area is on the Rockaway Peninsula, nestled between Jamaica Bay to the north and the Atlantic Ocean to the south. The neighborhood of Rockaway Beach lies on its eastern border while the community of Belle Harbor is situated on its western side. The neighborhood is part of Queens Community Board 14.

HMS Liverpool was a 28-gun Coventry-class sixth-rate frigate of the Royal Navy. Launched in 1758, she saw active service in the Seven Years' War and the American Revolutionary War. She was wrecked in Jamaica Bay, near New York, in 1778.

Tribute Park is a 0.83-acre (0.34 ha) public green space in the Rockaway Park neighborhood of Queens, New York City. It is located at the corner of Beach Channel Drive and Beach 116th Street, facing Jamaica Bay.At the time of the September 11 attacks, the park site was an undeveloped lot that provided an unobstructed view of the collapse of the World Trade Center. Following the attacks, local residents used this waterfront lot as a place to gather and remember the victims. The Rockaway Chamber of Commerce and the Tribute Park Committee lobbied the city to designate this space as a park with a memorial. The garden section of the park was designed by Lynden Miller, and its pavilion by artist Patrick Clark. The park features a mosaic centerpiece pointing directly at Downtown Manhattan, a central path containing custom-inscribed memorial bricks designated as the "Fireman's Walk," the pavilion with a stained-glass dome, and a granite rock carved in the shape of a fireman's helmet engraved with the names of all 343 firefighters killed on September 11. The park was dedicated by Mayor Michael Bloomberg on November 6, 2005.

Neponsit is a small affluent neighborhood located on the western half of the Rockaway Peninsula, the southernmost area of the New York City borough of Queens. The area starts at Beach 142nd Street and ends at Beach 149th Street. It borders the neighborhood of Belle Harbor to the east and Jacob Riis Park on the west. Jamaica Bay and the Atlantic Ocean are the northern and southern borders. The neighborhood is part of Queens Community Board 14. As of January 1, 2007, the neighborhood's population reached just over 2,000, making it one of the smallest communities on the peninsula and in the entire borough of Queens.

Curley's Atlas Hotel and Baths was a long-standing institution in Queens, New York City. The hotel was founded in 1876 by John J. Curley on the beachfront at present-day Beach 102nd Street, in the neighborhood now known as Rockaway Beach or "Irishtown". The hotel was moved to its larger longer-lasting site at Beach 116th Street (then known as Fifth Avenue) in 1900. Curley's remained extremely popular well past World War II, and was mentioned in a comedy routine by George Carlin as the place where he was conceived.The hotel was destroyed by fire on March 31, 1968. After the fire, the lot remained empty for forty years.

The Rockaway Park–Beach 116th Street station is the western terminal station on the IND Rockaway Line of the New York City Subway, located on Beach 116th Street near Rockaway Beach Boulevard in Rockaway Beach, Queens. It is served by the Rockaway Park Shuttle at all times and ten daily rush-hour A trains in the peak direction.

Stella Maris High School was an all-girls, private, Roman Catholic high school on the Rockaway Peninsula in Queens, New York. It was located within the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn. The highlight event of this school was "Blue And Gold," a school spirit event where the freshman and seniors competed against the sophomores and juniors in a series of events. This school overlooked a beautiful beach scenery and the Atlantic Ocean.

Neponsit Beach Hospital, also known as Neponsit Beach Hospital for Children, Neponsit Hospital, Neponsit Children's Hospital, and various other names, is a former municipal tuberculosis sanatorium located adjacent to Jacob Riis Park and the Neponsit community on the western end of the Rockaway peninsula in Queens, New York City. Originally oriented towards the treatment of children, the hospital treated military veterans during and after World War II, but closed in 1955 due to a declining need for tuberculosis hospitals. Afterwards, it operated as the Neponsit Home for the Aged, later the Neponsit Health Care Center, a city-run nursing home until its controversial closure in 1998.

The Rockaway Beach Hotel, also known as the Hotel Imperial, was a very large hotel built in Rockaway, Queens, New York City during the late 1870s and early 1880s by the Rockaway Improvement Company. The hotel, promoted as the "biggest hotel in the world", ran along the Rockaway beachfront from the present-day Beach 110th Street to Beach 116th Street, thus locating it in the contemporary Rockaway Park neighborhood rather than Rockaway Beach as the name implies. The hotel, the product of an age of superlatives which also produced the Brooklyn Bridge, was 1184 feet (360.9m) long and 250 feet (76.2m) wide. Construction of the hotel was beset by labor difficulties and lack of capital; a railroad station opened in front of the hotel on August 26, 1880, but, except for one wing which was pressed into service for the summer of 1881, the hotel, although construction was completed, never actually opened for business. It was torn down for its lumber in 1889. The name "Rockaway Beach Hotel" has been used for at least two smaller hotels since the original's demolition.

Ruffle Bar is a 143-acre (58 ha) island located in Jamaica Bay in the borough of Brooklyn in New York City, off the coast of Canarsie. The island is part of the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge, and lies just east of the former Barren Island, where Floyd Bennett Field is now located. One of the early inhabitants of Ruffle Bar was Jacob Skidmore, who built a house on the island. In 1842, Skidmore moved his house and family to Barren Island.: 14  Skidmore had disassembled his house piece-by-piece. According to one story, a storm blew his disassembled ceiling across the bay to Barren Island.During the Civil War, Ruffle Bar became a stop for ferries traveling between Canarsie and Rockaway. The Windward Club started sponsoring boat racing around Ruffle Bar in the 1880s. By the next decade, a hotel on the island had opened. Ruffle Bar was considered to be part of the public land of the town of Flatbush until the 1890s, when parts of the island were sold to 24 private owners.: 59 Ruffle Bar was so isolated that when Jamaica Bay froze during the winter, the island's few residents were cut off from the rest of civilization for three months. One newspaper article compared the situation to isolated communities in the Arctic. Making reference to an Arctic explorer named Otto Sverdrup, the newspaper wrote, "For all that the city does for Ruffle Bar, it might as well be in Sverdrup Land."In 1913, the city proposed to build a garbage incinerator on Ruffle Bar. Brooklyn residents strongly opposed building an incinerator at this location because the smell could drift northward into Flatlands, so the incinerator was ultimately not constructed on Ruffle Bar. Pierre Noel's Ruffle Bar Association began constructing structures on Ruffle Bar in 1914, for the purpose of developing it as a resort. The association leased the city-owned portions of Ruffle Bar from the New York City Department of Docks for ten years starting in 1914.: 59  Through the 1920s, landfill was added in order to expand Ruffle Bar's area. The island became the center of a successful clam and oyster industry. At one point, there were more than 40 structures on the island that supported the industry, with most of these buildings being located on the south shore.: 59 Fishing activities ceased when the water was deemed by the New York City Department of Health to be too polluted for the breeding of shellfish. The Great Depression caused most of the residents to move elsewhere, but a few squatters remained. By 1940, there were twenty-five structures left on the island.: 59  The last resident, a fisherman, was thought to have moved away in 1944. However, The New York Times showed that Census Enumerators visited Ruffle Bar as late as 1950 to collect Census data from the remaining residents. The island is uninhabited and, along with other islands in Jamaica Bay, has been designated as a bird sanctuary. Due to its remoteness, kayakers have sometimes become stranded on the island.