Northward from its Queens Boulevard commercial strip, Forest Hills is also a 24-block business and residential artery along 108th Street to the Long Island Expressway. Here a typical block offers Mario's Restaurant, the Shalom Food Center (''Kosher, Israeli, American''), Tong's Garden Chinese Restaurant, Calabria Haircutting, Zion Pizza, a Russian-emigre candy store and a French dry cleaner's with an Oriental proprietor.

Forest Hills is also Austin Street, overflowing its traditional four-block commercial stretch near the former Forest Hills Inn (now a co-op apartment house with a Beefsteak Charlie's in its old dining room). Austin Street, originally known to Gardens residents as ''the village,'' has blossomed with restaurants, movie houses, boutiques and fancy-food shops into a year-round magnet for much of Queens and Nassau County.

''New York style at Queens prices,'' is what many residents as well as merchants like to tell outsiders. ''It's a very lively scene, quite international, and at its peak on Saturdays,'' a resident said.

''D ESPITE the traffic crush, we equate ourselves with a small town,'' said Paul Klotz, president of the Forest Hills Chamber of Commerce. His gift shop on Austin Street offers greeting cards in ''16 or maybe 20'' languages.

Nearby restaurants include the Cafe Continent and My Kitchen, both running from quiches to $10.95 steaks; the Irish Cottage, featuring shepherd's pie, the Wine Gallery and the Stuffed Bagel. (On Queens Boulevard, at the 71st Street-Continental Avenue subway stop, is the T-Bone Diner, a favorite with locals if a surprise to visitors - an authentic former railroad car offering full bar-service with meals.)

Among the hand-crafted toys and English-style prams at Lewis of London on Austin Street, 24-karat-gold-plated cribs and cradles were tagged at $1,000-$1,200,

''There are a lot of solid-gold babies around here,'' said Joel Rallo, the proprietor. ''And it's not just the high-income families - middle-class people, you know, they get Grandma and the relatives involved.''

Advertisement Continue reading the main story

The 1980 census showed the Forest Hills population up only slightly to 50,000. The public elementary-school population is 5,000. According to the City Planning Commission's Queens office, the census count was 89 percent white, 7 percent Asian, 2 percent black and the rest other. Eight percent said they were of Hispanic origin.

Some 5,000 Russians have arrived since the late 1970's. The latest immigrants are Iranians (largely Jewish, but also some Moslems) and Pakistanis. There are also some North Africans.

''These 'new Americans' have lent some spice to our community,'' said Anthony H. Atlas, chairman of Queens Community Board 6 and a lawyer with a Manhattan practice.

Newsletter Sign Up Continue reading the main story Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up You will receive emails containing news content , updates and promotions from The New York Times. You may opt-out at any time. You agree to receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services. Thank you for subscribing. An error has occurred. Please try again later. View all New York Times newsletters.

Buddhist and Moslem centers have been added to the Forest Hills array of six Protestant churches, two Catholic and nearly a score of Jewish congregations and community centers. There are two yeshivas, two parochial schools and a private school.

Public schools rank high in a district that is among the city's upper 10 in reading scores, according to Dr. Arnold Raisner, Community School District 28 superintendent. The two junior high schools, he said, have recently ranked first and third as ''feeders'' for Stuyvesant High School, which accepts students only on the basis of achievement examinations. Forest Hills High School ''has perhaps a greater academic emphasis,'' Dr. Raisner said, but ''Hillcrest High offers a wider variety of courses.'' ROBBERIES, auto thefts and other grand larcenies reported to the 1 12th Precinct in 1981 were up 8 to 10 percent over 1980, but b urglaries declined. Homicides dropped from 9 to 5 and rape c omplaints remained at just over 20.

Only 100 or so Forest Hills commuters regularly travel by Long Island Rail Road now - 14 minutes by timetable to Penn Station from 70-year-old Station Square. Most go by express or regular buses or the E, F, N and GG subway trains.

Strangers who drive or walk in Forest Hills (or Rego Park or Kew Gardens, for that matter) should not be unsettled by the peculiar illusion that they are only moving in place. The repetitive streetgrid north of the Long Island Rail Road -progressing grudgingly from, for example, 63d Avenue to 63d Road to 63d Drive -resulted from later subdivision of supersized ''country'' blocks formed by the original layout of the avenues.

The ''co-op fever'' that Mr. Atlas said ''has hit Forest Hills harder than any place in Queens or maybe outside Manhattan'' is fueled by prospective buyers price-squeezed out of Manhattan or Brooklyn Heights. For co-ops, which outnumber condominiums, one broker estimated $15,000 to $25,000 per room. Others cited total prices from a ''rare but possible'' $40,000 or $60,000 for a onebedroom (maintenance $275-$300) to $80,000 to $125,000 for up to three-bedrooms -though there are luxury apartments in Forest Hills priced far higher.

Asserting that few except nonresidents can afford to buy, tenant groups are urging a two-year freeze on co-op and condo conversions. They have managed to change a good many conversions to noneviction plans.

Advertisement Continue reading the main story

Single-family attached houses sell for up to $100,000, two-family for perhaps $115,000 to $200,000. Free-standing private homes also vary widely.

''North of Queens Boulevard in Old Forest Hills, the price for a four-bedroom house, circa 1927, on a 50- or 60-by-100-foot lot,'' according to one broker, ''would be $200,000 and up'' - up, in fact, to $350,000, according to another. Competition From Next Door

Aside from cooperatives, the hottest current issue in Forest Hills actually centers a block or two into Rego Park - at the proposed site of a shopping mall, the Forest Hills Galleria.

Plans now before the Board of Estimate call for it to include a major Sears store, 80 or so other stores or shops and multilevel parking space for 2,400 vehicles. The site, at Queens and Junction Boulevards, is the present Alexander's parking lot.

The Forest Hills Chamber of Commerce, originally formed to fight the loss of the tennis Open, opposes the Galleria because of the additional traffic and pollution problems it would create as well as the shoppers it might lure away from local merchants.

''Our own single greatest problem is congestion and inadequate parking space - we could use some funding for that,'' said Paul Klotz, an Austin Street merchant who is the Chamber of Commerce president.

In a kind of first-strike response to the competitive threat, the chamber is about to deck out Forest Hills proper with gala, fourcolor banners - changing with the four seasons - that will hang from 200 lamp posts along Queens Boulevard, Austin and 108th Streets and Continental and Metropolitan Avenues.