NYC Sidetrip: The Chateau, Jackson Heights

I spent several hours enjoying the Jackson Heights historic district last week, my visitors' guide in hand as I walked from one landmarked complex to the next.  I could easily wax (and post) poetic on the impressive buildings in this Queens neighborhood for days, but, for now, will offer up one more of the 1920's complexes that reached out to me.

The Chateau, 3405-3447 80th Street and 3406-3448 81st Street, Jackson Heights, constructed in 1923, designed by A.J. Thomas.  This French Chateau-style complex covers an entire city block and is just across 34th Avenue from The Towers (see last post).  The steep mansard roofs, topped with original slate, are distinctive crowns on the ten buildings, and one of the first things you notice as you approach.

Carved limestone entries lead to intimate lobbies with only two apartments per floor.  The Chateau and its neighbor The Towers were considered the most elegant of the complexes developed by the Queensboro Corporation in Jackson Heights.

The apartment entrances face one another across the lobby; the elevator is on the right just beyond the apartment entry.  The lobbies are not as elaborate as the building's exterior, but are tasteful and match the overall elegance of the complex.

The interior garden of The Chateau was designed by the Olmstead Brothers company of Brookline, Massachusetts.  The step-brothers inherited the nation's first landscape architecture firm from their famous father, Frederick Law Olmstead, one of the designers of Central Park, which is just a train ride away.  The garden is visible from the 34th Avenue side of the complex.

The legacy of the garden city movement, which started in England in 1898, includes The Chateau and similar complexes in the Jackson Heights historic district.  Two other Queens neighborhoods, Forest Hills Gardens and Sunnyside, are also outgrowths of this movement.  Today's New Urbanism stems in part from the garden city movement.

The cat in the picture above had her eye on a bevy of squirrels in the shrubbery outside The Chateau; it's a tranquil scene just minutes away from some of New York's most bustling, energy-filled streets in this colorful neighborhood.  I'll share more of the landmarks of Jackson Heights in future posts, but tomorrow will take you across the East River for a look at one developer's attempt to compete with complexes like The Chateau with a skycraper version of the garden city movement!  

     

NYC Sidetrip: Jackson Heights Historic District

We just returned from Open House New York Weekend with a lot to share!  In the interest of showing you something you don't already know about this city of iconic buildings and neighborhoods (or at least something you're less likely to know), here is one of the many notable 1920's apartment developments located in the historic district of Jackson Heights, Queens.  The district contains the nation's first large-scale co-op garden community, a collection of complexes developed by Edward MacDougall's Queensboro Corporation, and described by architect Robert A.M. Stern as "a model urban suburbia that demonstrates as none have since what high-density housing in the city could be." 

The Towers, 3315-3351 80th Street and 3316-3352 81st Street at 34th Avenue, Jackson Heights, constructed in 1924, designed by A.J. Thomas in the Tuscan style.  According to the Jackson Heights Beautification Group, this mammoth eight-building complex may be the most elaborate garden cooperative in the neighborhood, and is noted for its signature towers, its griffined limestone and brick entry gates to the garden, and its baldacchino (don't worry-- I had to look it up too: a stone or marble structure built in the form of a canopy, especially over the alter of a church) in the Noel Chamberlain-designed garden.

Like most of the complexes within the historic district, The Towers is a series of buildings with a spacious interior private park (or garden), a reflection of the international garden city movement at the turn of the 20th century.  Edward MacDougall's overall plan transformed three hundred acres of farmland in Queens into a community of apartment buildings, row and semi-detached houses, commercial areas, places of worship, and recreational facitities. 

Apartments are spacious and have multiple exposures for maximum light.  Interior rooms face the beautiful, well-maintained courtyard gardens.  The development of what is now the historic district began with the completion of the elevated train (now the 7 line) between Manhattan and Flushing.  Jackson Heights was marketed as a home for middle and upper-middle class workers from Manhattan, and was, originally, a restricted community.  It is now the heart of the city's most diverse single neighborhood! 

Impressive towers crown each corner of this complex, which covers nearly a full city-block.  The buildings are rich with architectural features and ornamentation, and easily hold their own when compared to many Manhattan apartment houses, with an important distinction: these were (and are) affordable family-sized apartment homes.

Nothing says "you have arrived" better than a handsome entrance to the building you call home.  The Towers provides just the front door to welcome you with that sentiment.  Doesn't it feel good?   

The Towers is beautiful and welcoming, nearly ninety years after it was built.  The Jackson Heights Beautification Group notes that complexes like The Towers are part of a neighborhood that established a prototype urban plan that was important in the 1920's and remains important today, because the plan still works.  They're right.  I'll share another gem from this exciting neighborhood tomorrow.