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Neighborhood planned as a "Garden City"
Place Details
Borough : Queens
Neighborhood : Jackson Heights
Place Matters Profile
By Ricki Sablove
A middle-class enclave modeled on philanthropic housing, a garden city laid out on an urban grid, Jackson Heights is one of the most distinctive and, today, diverse communities in the United States. Loosely based on Ebenezer Howard’s Garden City concept, it originally developed through the confluence of various social, economic, and technological factors during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Founded in 1909 by Edward Archibald MacDougall, the Queensboro Corporation would become the most significant catalyst in the design and growth of the new community called Jackson Heights. Queensboro purchased 350 acres of farmland and spent several years working on the planning of streets and infrastructure. MacDougall also used his political influence to extend the subway to Queens; the dual system, with its underground and elevated lines, opened today’s 7 line in Queens in 1917.
The consolidation of the five boroughs of New York City in 1898, followed by the completion of the Queensboro Bridge in 1909, provided an
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By Ricki Sablove
A middle-class enclave modeled on philanthropic housing, a garden city laid out on an urban grid, Jackson Heights is one of the most distinctive and, today, diverse communities in the United States. Loosely based on Ebenezer Howard’s Garden City concept, it originally developed through the confluence of various social, economic, and technological factors during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Founded in 1909 by Edward Archibald MacDougall, the Queensboro Corporation would become the most significant catalyst in the design and growth of the new community called Jackson Heights. Queensboro purchased 350 acres of farmland and spent several years working on the planning of streets and infrastructure. MacDougall also used his political influence to extend the subway to Queens; the dual system, with its underground and elevated lines, opened today’s 7 line in Queens in 1917.
The consolidation of the five boroughs of New York City in 1898, followed by the completion of the Queensboro Bridge in 1909, provided an escape hatch for Manhattan dwellers weary of overcrowded conditions. The demand for greener pastures, combined with rumors of an imminent subway extension to Queens and the abundance of land ripe for development, led to the formation of Queensboro.
Queensboro’s initial idea involved the building of concrete bungalows. But a trip to Europe by the corporation’s directors changed their minds. Inspired by the modern cluster housing they saw in Berlin and other cities, they decided to build something different: a housing type that would become the “garden apartment.” At the same time, the Manhattan tenement reform movement captured the imaginations of the developers. (One of Queensboro’s principal architects, Andrew Thomas, received his early training in philanthropic housing.) Conceived as a means of improving the living conditions of the working class, it emphasized minimal land coverage and maximum interior light and air. Although the audience Queensboro had in mind was different from the lower middle classes who benefited from tenement reform, the company’s directors believed that this medium-density housing would be equally attractive to more affluent people, particularly if the buildings were surrounded by landscaping.
Queensboro realized that there were economic advantages to apartment development, compared with the building of single family homes that dominated working-class Sunnyside, Queens, and the aptly named Garden City, Long Island. The company’s new concept would bring distinctively urban multi-unit buildings to a suburban setting. Because there was so much open land in Jackson Heights, Queensboro was able to turn open space into a selling point. Undeveloped lots were used for temporary community gardens, and there were even tennis courts, a skating rink, and a golf course. The abundance of inexpensive land made relatively low density economically viable. The New York City Zoning Resolution of 1916 imposed strict zoning standards in Jackson Heights; residential areas were to consist of a high density central core, surrounded by lower density areas to the east and west. Ultimately, the lower-density western residential zone was developed with a higher proportion of private homes mixed in with apartment buildings. Although the law stipulated that buildings could cover up to 70 percent of a lot, Queensboro strove for only 30 to 50 percent coverage.
The plan of Jackson Heights combines the greenery of a garden city with an urban street grid, instead of curved lanes. Like Manhattan, Jackson Heights has a system of numbered streets and crisscrossing avenues. But, unlike the Manhattan grid, the longest blocks in Jackson Heights run north to south, thus bringing sunlight into both the front and rear of the buildings. In addition, Queensboro maximized the potential for green space through coordinated full-block landscaping. Each block was lined with a continuous grass strip, planted with trees and shrubbery, between the street curb and the sidewalk, and buildings were set back to allow for extra planting areas. Queensboro’s philosophy can thus be summarized in five main points: 1) comprehensive full-block development; 2) maximum sunlight and ventilation; 3) setbacks to provide distance between buildings and increased space for planting; 4) buildings designed in detached or freestanding clusters, thus providing more corner rooms and increased exposures; and 5) picturesque silhouettes.
Queensboro also used a novel approach for commercial development. Instead of using the least desirable land for retail, its planners used one of the best areas, centered on 37th Road. The company then strictly regulated shops in order to shape the district’s image. The centerpiece of the retail area, English Gables, is a Tudor Revival structure that blends with Jackson Heights’ residential architecture. This resulted in a more attractive shopping area and more leisurely shopping.
A row of single-family houses had existed on 83rd Street and Roosevelt Avenue since 1911, but the Queensboro Corporation itself did not begin building until 1913. Its first apartment project, designed by George Wells, was Laurel Court, which consisted of four five-story walk-ups on 82nd Street, with retail on the ground floor of one. Wells built a number of Queensboro apartment complexes; his Colonials of 1915 represented a turning point for apartment design in Jackson Heights, with separate entry vestibules projecting from six attached buildings. The Greystones, the first “garden apartments” in Jackson Heights, were built in 1918. These were different from Queensboro’s later complexes, full-block developments that featured elaborate interior gardens. At the Greystones, the buildings are set back on two sides of the same street with extensive landscaping at their fronts.
Unlike Garden City and Sunnyside, Jackson Heights was always geared to the upwardly mobile middle class. (Garden City had started with housing for low-income residents, although it was soon recognized as an ideal of its type and became a restricted community.) There was no question that Queensboro wanted to attract a select audience. For one thing, the prices were prohibitive to all but affluent members of the middle class; for another, the developers were unabashed in their marketing of Jackson Heights as an exclusive community. They may have been the first real estate developers to use radio commercials, in a series of ads beginning in August 1922 on WEAF. Print ads were a major part of their marketing campaign. In at least one, the phrase “restricted community” was actually used in the copy. As one resident said, there were “no Catholics, Jews, or dogs in those days.” The exclusivity of the community was further enhanced by the introduction of the cooperative concept, which allowed residents not only to own their apartments, but to decide who their neighbors would be. Linden Court, Queensboro’s first cooperative building as well as its first true garden apartment, with back-to-back buildings forming a long, internal courtyard, opened in 1919. Several existing rental buildings were also converted to cooperatives.
Amenities at Queensboro’s apartment buildings became increasingly more lavish as the community took shape, and the prices rose proportionately. Garages became a regular feature; Jackson Heights was one of the first planned communities in the country to accommodate the automobile, blending driveways and garages with the main buildings. The culmination of this move toward luxury was the construction of the Chateau and the Towers, the two most opulent cooperative complexes in Jackson Heights.
While apartment buildings dominated the community in the mid-1920s, Queensboro decided to reach a broader audience through the construction of single-family houses. Like the apartment buildings, the “English Garden Homes” were designed in historical styles and were made of expensive materials, which kept their prices too high for lower-middle-class buyers. There are more than 15 blocks of these houses throughout Jackson Heights. In addition, the late 1920s saw the genesis of the “boulevard buildings,” with retail stores on the first floor and rental apartments on the next five. These buildings, and those that became more common in Jackson Heights over the next three decades, covered more than 50 percent of their lots.
Queensboro’s successful first decade ended with the opening of its first headquarters in Jackson Heights -- ere five months before the stock market crash of October 1929. The three-story structure’s lavish fittings, exorbitant cost, and prime site reflected Queensboro’s bright vision of the future, as well as its desire to project an image of power and prestige. At the time, Queensboro sought to reinforce its image by building a posh apartment-hotel on an adjacent lot.
The stock market crash, however, caused the company to put aside such grand plans. And after 1929, no more single-family houses were built in the community. Many of the cooperatives failed, as well, and some cooperative buildings were changed to rentals.
Queensboro maintained its hold, however, over the development of Jackson Heights until a few years after MacDougall’s death in 1944. Andrew Thomas designed a new Queensboro headquarters, at 79th Street and 37th Avenue, in 1947. Before MacDougall’s death, however, things had started to change. The construction of Dunnolly Gardens in 1938, for example, marked the end of the beloved golf course, and the end-block gardens ceased to exist. By the 1950s, with the construction of different style developments like Roosevelt Terrace, there was no more vacant land on which to build in Jackson Heights.
Despite its economic ups and downs, Jackson Heights retains much of its original use and many of its original features remain intact. Gardens still bloom in the spring and summer, and picturesque gables, towers, and mansard roofs still dominate the skyline. One important thing has changed, however. Happily, Jackson Heights is no longer the restricted community it once was, and the infusion of diverse ethnic groups has added much vitality and texture to the neighborhood.
[Adapted from an article written by Ricki Sablove for the program book of the 2006 Vernacular Architecture Forum conference, held in New York City. Courtesy of the NYC Planning Committee. Edited for Place Matters by Seth Johnson.]
Sources
Richard Plunz,A History of Housing in New York City(1990); Jeffrey Kroessler, Building Queens: The Urbanization of New York's Largest Borough(1991); Daniel Karatzas, Jackson Heights, A Garden in the City(1990); New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission, Jackson Heights Historic District Designation(1993).
