Elmhurst means ‘a grove of elms’, a name chosen for old Newtown in 1897.
The village here was long called Newtown. Cord Meyer, who bought land at Broadway and Whitney Avenue in 1896, proposed renaming it Elmhurst, and in 1897 the change was made. It partly celebrated the elm trees that abounded in the area and partly distanced the town from nearby Maspeth and the smelly, polluted Newtown Creek.