Tuesday, September 14, 2021 – WHAT STARTED OUT AS AN EXCLUSIVE ENCLAVE NOW IS THE MOST DIVERSE COMMUNITY
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER14, 2021
The
468th Edition
From the Archives
GARDEN CITY
MOVEMENT:
QUEENS 2
Stephen Blank
Jackson Heights in the early 20th century was largely rural. Jackson Heights Beautification Group
Garden City Movement: Queens 2
What do Jackson Heights, Forest Hills, Sunnyside and Residence Park, New Rochelle all have in common? They (and a other communities) all reflected the Garden City Movement, a form of urban planning in which self-contained communities contain equal areas of residences, industry, and agriculture, surrounded by “greenbelts.” Ebenezer Howard, a Londoner, dreamed up the idea in 1898. In these Garden Cities, residents would live in harmony with nature and be free from urban stress. Jackson Heights in the early 20th century was largely rural. Jackson Heights Beautification Group
The Garden City Movement
To Howard, the Garden City movement was the solution to the problem of crowded cities that harmed the health and well-being of their citizens. The “Master-Key was to restore the people to the land—that beautiful land of ours, with its canopy of sky, the air that blows upon it, the sun that warms it, the rain and dew that moisten it… [and create] a portal through which, even when scarce ajar, will be seen to pour a flood of light on the problems of intemperance, of excessive toil, of restless anxiety, of grinding poverty….”
Howard’s highly detailed (and rather weirdly) planned Garden City would house 32,000 people on a site of 9,000 acres. The Garden City was not planned as a commuter community. It would be self-sufficient and when it reached full population, another Garden City would be developed nearby. Howard envisaged a cluster of several garden cities as satellites of a central city of 58,000 people, linked by road and rail.
What is remarkable about the Garden City movement is that something so odd and utopian could become so successful and have a lasting impact. Earlier utopian experiments were dreamed up by fringe idealists and went belly-up quickly. The Garden City movement, while it too disappeared, still left a lasting legacy in urban planning. In Queens.
Howard’s diagram of autonomous Garden Cities surrounded by countryside, orbiting around a central city
Queens? Yes, Edward A. MacDougall, founder of the Queensboro Corporation (in August 1909), worked with Howard to create the first Garden City community in the United States. The Corporation would develop what was then Trains Meadow. MacDougall renamed the area Jackson Heights, after Jackson Avenue (now Northern Boulevard), the main east-west road at the time. Though the land was not especially known for its elevation, the addition of the term “Heights” echoed the prestige of the neighborhood of Brooklyn Heights and indicated that Jackson Heights was meant to be an exclusive neighborhood.
Jackson Heights in the 1920s, Jackson Heights Beautification Group
In contrast to traditional suburbs of single-family houses, the Queensboro Corporation built upscale apartment buildings distinguished by shared garden spaces. Laurel Court became the nation’s first Garden City apartment, completed in 1918. This was followed in 1919 by the construction of the Linden Court. The two sets of buildings each, separated by a gated garden, included parking spaces with single-story garages, the first Jackson Heights development to do so; a layout that provided light and ventilation to the apartments, as well as fostered a sense of belonging to a community. With abundant land available, all unused space was used for parks and gardens, or for recreational areas that included a golf course.
Linden Court 37-22 85th Street 32 Jackson Heights Queens NY – Linecity – NYC Apartment Rentals and Sales https://www.linecity.com/listing/2163116/Linden-Court-37-22-85th-Street-Jackson-Heights-Queens-NY-Sale
Target customers were middle class New Yorkers who could afford to live in the suburbs. High quality apartments had ornate exteriors and fireplaces, parquet floors, sun rooms and built-in bathtubs with showers.
They were exclusive: A US HUD study of Jackson Heights says that the neighborhood “was envisioned as an exclusive suburb for a native, White, middle-class fleeing a city that was not only crowded, but increasingly culturally diverse. Initially advertised as a ‘restricted residential community,’ Jackson Heights’ early developers specifically barred both Jews and Blacks, by custom and restrictive covenants.”
Jackson Heights could be reached by streetcar and ferry from Manhattan, though this was a lengthy process. While the Queensboro Corporation was influenced by the Garden City Movement, it was still committed to increasing the number of residents many of whom would be commuters. With the arrival of the subway, the planners sought to blend Howard’s Garden City ideals with the needs of an urban neighborhood that was quickly becoming a commuter hub. Inevitably, the influence of the Garden City Movement decreased. In the 1920s, Jackson Heights grew rapidly. In 1923, only 3,800 residents lived there; by 1930, its population was 44,500.
For Edward MacDougall, it was an incredible success, but it wasn’t just the architecture that drew people to Queens. In 1919, the Corporation began pushing another innovation by converting nearly all its apartment buildings from rentals to co-ops. The corporation promised current tenants “the opportunity to buy their apartments for $500 down and mortgage payments of about $52 a month.” The Queensboro Corporation stayed on as the managing agent.
The further expansion of Jackson Heights was hit hard by the 1929 crash. During the 1930s, the golf course was leveled, and, in its place, only one new major building complex, Dunolly Gardens, was built. The opening of Dunolly Gardens was a sign that Jackson Heights was still a desirable neighborhood, but it also marked the beginning of the end of MacDougall’s vision of Jackson Heights.
The population was changing. Some new residents were gay, and, says the HUD report, “with little public notice, Jackson Heights developed into a gay haven—a remarkable contrast to the intolerance toward ethnic and racial minorities in the area.” In the 1940s, restrictive covenants that barred people by race or religion were struck down as illegal, and the Jewish population of Jackson Heights slowly began to rise. However, as the HUD report also points out, black residents had a hard time renting or buying in the area until the passage of the Fair Housing Act in 1968, and, indeed, the percentage of African Americans in the neighborhood’s population remains low.
Meanwhile, the wholesale rewriting of America’s immigration laws in 1965 meant that many South and Central American immigrants began to reach New York City in the late 1960s, along with South Asian and Chinese immigrants. By 1990, the demographics of the area had shifted such that no group was the majority, and while the sizes of each demographic continue to change, that remains true to this day.
This shift in Jackson Heights’ ethnic makeup stands as a rebuke to MacDougall’s original idea for a whites-only enclave. A century ago, a neighborhood with such massive diversity—halal butchers down the street from Indian restaurants that buy fresh produce from the same vendors as the nearby Peruvian diners—would have seemed like an unlikely place to foster a strong sense of community.
Jackson Heights, Queens | NYC Neighborhood Guide
https://www.nycgo.com/boroughs-neighborhoods/queens/jackson-heights/
But, still, while Edward MacDougall may have envisioned a Garden City in his own image—white, Protestant, and middle class—he built a neighborhood that was able to transform into something more economically and culturally diverse without losing its innate sense of place.
Sunnyside Gardens, built from 1924-1928, was another community influenced by the English Garden City movement. Called by some America’s first successful experiment with garden-city design, it is now a National Register Historic District. Sunnyside Gardens is a 77-acre planned community led by a group including Clarence Stein, urban planner Louis Mumford (one of the Garden’s first residents) and then-schoolteacher and future first lady Eleanor Roosevelt to provide affordable working-class housing. Designed “for living not for selling”, the project sought to show civic leaders they could solve social problems and beautify the city, while making a small profit.
The novel design of the Gardens included large areas of open space. Construction costs were minimized, allowing those with limited means the opportunity to afford their own homes. Rows of one- to three-family private houses with co-op and rental apartment buildings were mixed together and arranged around common gardens, with stores and garages placed around the edges of the neighborhood. Just about every interior window in the Gardens offers a view of a landscaped commons.
Artists and writers were also attracted to Sunnyside Gardens. In its early years, it was sometimes referred to as the ‘Greenwich Village annex’. Residents included painter Raphael Soyer, singer Perry Como and actress Judy Holliday. Crooner Rudy Vallee, NYPD Blue actress Justine Miceli, “Rhoda’s mom” Nancy Walker, and tough-guy actor James Caan also lived in Sunnyside.
Much more to write about. (I love Station Square in Forest Hills.) But space and (your) time are limited.
Thanks for reading.
Stephen Blank
RIHS
September … 2021
TUESDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY SEND TO ROOSEVELTISLANDHISTORY@GMAIL.COM
MONDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
The Al Weinstein Tree at the Tram Plaza
NINA LUBLIN AND ED LITCHER GOT IT RIGHT.
FROM THOM HEYER
Dear Judy– I’m so sorry to hear about how 9/11 was “officially” commemorated on the Island, but glad to hear it was acknowledged in a heartfelt way later that day. Sept. 11, 2001 was a horrible day for any New Yorker who lived through or lost someone on that horrible day. Stephen & I have vivid memories of that day because we were still living in Chelsea’s Flower District at the time. Our friend Erika lost her husband John that day after only working at his new job for a week. He was “Person #3” registered as “missing” at the Armory that day as we went with her to register there with hundreds of other New Yorkers. Union Square quickly became the place of candles, shrines & pictures asking “Have you seen this person?” We tried to give blood that day at St. Vincent’s when it was still a hospital & not luxury apartments. We were turned away because they did not need blood donations–no one had been brought to the hospital because no one had survived….. John’s memorial was held at our apt. & packed with people shoulder-to-shoulder who didn’t know where to go with their grief…… On Sept. 11, 2002, there was an unofficial memorial at Union Square commemorating the one year anniversary of that horrible day. Everything had changed, including people’s hearts. Our country was at war. People seemed defensive & argumentative in the park that day. We had turned a corner in our psyche & not for the better that day. I’m sorry I didn’t know about the gatherings until after-the-fact on Saturday. Thank you for the photos & thank you & the others who were present that day to pay your respects….. All the best: Thom
Text by Judith Berdy
Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS
Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website
Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
Sources
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2021/07/the-need-for-a-new-garden-city-movement
https://ny.curbed.com/2017/4/19/15328342/jackson-heights-queens-history
https://www.millermicro.com/sunnyside.html
FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
Copyright © 2021 Roosevelt Island Historical Society, All rights reserved.Our mailing address is:
rooseveltislandhistory@gmail.com
Leave a comment