Pest Control in South Richmond Hill, Queens
South Richmond Hill lies south of Atlantic Avenue, roughly between Woodhaven and the Van Wyck Expressway, and is widely known as Little Guyana. Liberty Avenue, under the elevated A train, is the neighborhood's lively commercial spine, lined with roti shops, sari stores, jewelry shops, Indo-Caribbean music stores and groceries. The side streets hold two-family frame houses and attached brick homes, many with small front gardens. The neighborhood is home to large Guyanese, Trinidadian, Punjabi Sikh and South Asian communities, and gurdwaras, mandirs, mosques and churches stand within a few blocks of each other. The annual Phagwah celebration draws big crowds to Liberty Avenue and to Phil 'Scooter' Rizzuto Park.
Also known as: Little Guyana.
About South Richmond Hill
The area developed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as the southern extension of Richmond Hill, which had been laid out in the 1860s as a planned suburb. Frame houses with porches went up along the new streets, and the Fulton Street elevated line brought commuters to Liberty Avenue. For much of the twentieth century the neighborhood was Irish, Italian and German American. Beginning in the 1970s and 1980s, immigrants from Guyana and Trinidad bought homes here and transformed the commercial corridor.
Common Pest Problems in South Richmond Hill
Liberty Avenue's many restaurants, bakeries and groceries generate large volumes of food waste, and rats thrive behind storefronts and in the alleys and backyards of nearby homes. German cockroaches spread through mixed-use buildings where apartments sit above food businesses, and mice move freely between attached two-family houses through shared basements and walls, particularly in older buildings with cracked foundations. Restaurant grease and produce scraps left in open containers after closing time are a major draw, and burrows often appear in the small front gardens of homes close to the avenue.
Pigeons roost on the elevated A train structure and on the cornices of commercial buildings along Liberty Avenue, creating droppings and noise problems for residents living in upper-floor apartments. Many of the neighborhood's century-old frame homes have wood porches, wooden basement stairs and stucco-covered framing, and these are common entry points for subterranean termites that can cause hidden structural damage over time. Homes near the elevated tracks may also hear pigeons nesting in air conditioner brackets and window ledges.