[There was a video here]

Early Sunday morning, the fifth in a series of purposefully-set fires engulfed a home in the the Cord Meyer section of central Queens’ Forest Hills neighborhood, an enclave where many Bukharian Jews have settled. Police said they believe a single arsonist is behind the fires, the New York Times reports.

The most recent fire was set just after midnight on Sunday, on 69th Road. This was the second time someone had tried to burn down the construction site, property owner Rabbi Zalman Zvulonov told the Times. “It’s not pleasant,” he said. “It’s not pleasant.”

The first fire was set at 68-60 112th Street on November 8th, the second at 112-35 69th Road on November 15th, the third at 108-43 66th Avenue on November 17th, and the fourth at 108-43 67th Drive on November 25th.

The fifth was at the same site as the November 15th fire. Police are also looking into fires at 70-35 113th Street on October 20th and at 108-13 67th Road on November 10th, which were set at empty buildings (not construction sites, and not owned by Bukharian Jews) in the neighborhood.

The arsonist left a clue at the scene of the November 25th fire, the New York Post reports, challenging authorities: “Decode this message to find the person who caused the fire.” The Post reports that police have a name, although no one is in custody.

On Sunday, ABC New reports, police released a photograph taken by a resident of a man wearing a scarf over his face, astride a motorcycle. He is wanted for questioning.

Community leaders estimate that some 50,000 Bukharian Jews immigrated to New York City, largely from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and have largely settled in Queens. From the Times, in 2008, on changes in Cord Meyer, where all of the suspected arson attacks have taken place:

There, Bukharians have been tearing down the neighborhood’s sedate Tudor, Georgian and Cape Cod-style homes, paving over lawns and erecting white-brick edifices that borrow from old Europe, with sweeping balustrades, stone lions bracketing regal double doorways, chateau-style dormers and pitched roofs, Romanesque and Greek columns and ornate wrought-iron balconies accented with gold leaf that glints in the sun.

But while the Bukharians’ arrival has been a boon for the area’s residential construction industry, it has been a bane for some neighbors. These residents have complained about the Bukharian tendency to build boldly and big, saying that the new houses are destroying their neighborhoods.

“There is a lot of history in the Cord Meyer area and a lot of historical houses that have a specific aesthetic character in that community,” said Melinda R. Katz, a city councilwoman whose district includes Forest Hills. “A lot of the houses that are going up there are just simply too big relative to the other houses that are there and have been there for generations. They are out of character.”

“Our people, they’re hardworking, hard-building,” Rafael Nektalov, the editor of the Russian-language weekly newspaper Bukharian Times, told the New York Times this weekend. “We want to have a beautiful life in beautiful buildings.”

“It’s America!” Nektalov said. “People come here, change their life, change their way.”

“It’s the history of immigrant people.”

Video via Kemberly Richardson. Contact the author of this post: brendan.oconnor@gawker.com.