| Neighborhood
at risk: Richmond Hill
Richmond Hill in east central Queens was the borough’s first
planned neighborhood. The area around the town’s center, known
as the Triangle (formed by Myrtle and Jamaica Avenues meeting at
Lefferts Boulevard), is noted for its collection of houses in the
eclectic Queen Anne style. The mix of Elizabethan, Jacobean, and
classical architecture in an array of colors, patterns, and forms
creates memorable homes.
The area was a rural one until after
the Civil War. By that time, improvements in transportation including
the local railroad made commuting to the city possible for Queens
residents. Developers responded to the search for housing that would
bridge city and country life with the garden suburb. In 1867 Manhattan
lawyer Albon P. Man purchased the Lefferts and Welling farms and,
with the assistance of English landscape architect Edward Richmond,
began planning an idyllic neighborhood that they named Richmond
Hill after a London suburb. In 1869 the first home, the Kessler
House, was built, and others quickly followed on the land described
in an 1870 advertisement as “perfectly healthy.” The
area’s surviving 19th-century homes display the wide range
of the Queen Anne style. The staggered shingled technique on 85-14
111th Street creates a variety of patterns. 84-37 113th Street is
playfully decorated with pagoda-inspired details on its eaves and
porch. Another home, on 86th Avenue and 108th Street, plays up its
corner lot with a large wrap around porch.
The annexation of Queens in 1898
made this suburb a part of a city. By the turn of the century, the
neighborhood included smaller cottages in addition to the grand
original homes. Apartment buildings were also erected during the
20th century to meet the ever-growing housing need.
Besides beautiful homes, Richmond
Hill has important civic buildings, two of which sit on the Triangle.
The Richmond Hill Republican Club, now empty, was once the center
of community events. In 1908, Theodore Roosevelt dedicated the structure
that housed both the post office and the Republican Club. This intact
clubhouse is a small-scale example of Colonial Revival civic architecture.
The building was designated a New York City Landmark for its architectural,
cultural, and historical merit. Nearby is the Richmond Hill Branch
of the Queens Borough Public Library, an understated classical building
completed in 1904. The library was donated by Andrew Carnegie and
is known for its WPA mural Story of Richmond Hill by Philip Evergood.
One of Richmond Hill’s most
famous residents was photographer, journalist, and reformer Jacob
Riis, who with his family moved here in 1877. In his autobiography
Riis wrote of finding the village, “It was in the winter when
all our children had the scarlet fever that one Sunday, when I was
taking a long walk out on Long Island where I could do no one any
harm, I came upon Richmond Hill, and thought it was the most beautiful
spot I had ever seen, I went home and told my wife that I had found
the place where we were going to live.…I picked out the lots
I wanted. So before the next winter’s snow, we were snug in
the house, with a ridge of wooded hills,  between
New York and us. The very lights of the city were shut out. So was
the slum and I could sleep.” Riis’s house was placed
on the National Register for Historic Places, but such a designation
does not protect a property. The home was torn down in the mid-1970’s
and replaced with a row of attached brick houses. Today two remaining
beech trees planted by Riis in the backyard remind us of the tranquil
neighborhood that put his mind at ease.
Homes like Riis’s are still
threatened with demolition, their ample lots magnets for developers.
In reaction to the disproportionately small number of landmarked
sites and districts in the borough, the Queens Historical Society
began “Queensmark.” The first of such semi-annual awards
was given in 1996 to Richmond Hill and specifically recognized 12
buildings of architectural and historical significance, five of
which are in the proposed historic district. The following year
the Richmond Hill Historical Society reorganized. For nearly a decade
the Society has actively sought the designation of a historic district
and individual landmarks in this unique garden suburb.
For more information, visit:
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