Brooklyn was once called the borough of churches, but Jamaica, Queens, is the neighborhood with the greatest concentration of houses of worship.
The greatest number houses of worship per thousand residents can be found in South Jamaica, Queens, according to data analyst Ben Wellington, who last week published an in-depth look at property tax exemptions for local religious institutions.
South Jamaica has five times as many houses of worship per resident than the city as a whole: the ratio of houses of worship to residents in South Jamaica is 1:271, compared to 1:1,400 in New York City overall.
For his analysis and visualizations, Wellington used a dataset prepared by programmer John Krauss and NYC Department of City Planning civic technologist Chris Whong, compiling 2015 tax bills for every lot in the city.
He found that in Brooklyn, the neighborhood with the greatest number of houses of worship per 1000 residents is Williamsburg; in The Bronx, Morrisania-Melrose; in Manhattan, central Harlem; and in Staten Island, Port Richmond.
As for where clergy live in New York City, they may be leading congregations in Manhattan, but they're definitely not making their homes in that borough. Only five clergy exemptions were taken in Manhattan in 2015. Ocean Parkway South in Brooklyn has the greatest number of clergy exemptions per 1,000 residents, at 2.5. In general, the greatest concentration of clergy exemptions were found in eastern Queens and south-central Brooklyn.
The greatest number of religious schools per capita, Wellington determined, were located in Williamsburg, followed by Borough Park, then Midwood, three neighborhoods with large Jewish populations.
