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2003 August 15

In a Pocket of Queens, 'City' Meets 'Garden'

By PETER HELLMAN

The homes along Greenway Terrace in Forest Hills Gardens show the hand of
Grosvenor Atterbury, the supervising architect on the planned community, which
was begun in 1910.

The commercial clutter at the intersection of Austin Street and 71st Avenue in
the heart of Queens is lively but ordinary. It's hard to imagine that one block
away lies the verdant, precisely planned community of Forest Hills Gardens. Not
to be confused with the surrounding sprawl known simply as Forest Hills, this
147-acre enclave has a population of about 4,500. It remains, almost a century
after its founding, the most successful and durable American example of the
"garden city" movement, which took hold in England in the late 19th century as
an antidote to the grimness of factory towns.

Until 1977, thousands of tennis fans poured into Forest Hills Gardens each
August for the United States Open at the West Side Tennis Club. Now that the
event has moved to Flushing, the Gardens, with its privately owned streets,
sidewalks, parks and even sewers, has receded into year-round seclusion,
almost as if it were a gated community. Yet the Gardens, less than 30 minutes
from Manhattan by subway or 15 minutes on the Long Island Rail Road, beckons
anyone interested in experiencing what was accomplished, beginning in 1910,
when a free hand was given by the Russell Sage Foundation to the visionary duo
of Frederick Law Olmsted Jr., landscape architect, and Grosvenor Atterbury,
supervising architect.

Walk two blocks south from the subway stop (the E, F, R, G and V lines) at 71st
Avenue-Continental and pass under the railroad trestle. As you arrive on the
red-brick-paved Station Square, the natural starting point for a walking tour of
Forest Hills Gardens, the familiar is left behind. With its quirky high and low
towers, half-timbered facades, steep, terra-cotta-tiled roofs, arcaded walks and
covered bridges, Station Square evokes a medieval town platz in Germany. The
architect Robert A. M. Stern calls this public space "the finest of its kind" in
America.

The square, completed in 1911, is anchored by Atterbury's train station, perched
beside the elevated tracks, and his Forest Hills Inn, whose nine-story main
tower, topped with a spray of small windows and a dome shaped like Kaiser
Wilhelm's helmet, is the tallest structure in the community. (A needlelike tower,
rather like an off-center spike on the helmet, is currently in storage.) The inn
was converted to apartments in 1967 and became a cooperative in 1981.

The sharp eye will be rewarded by quirky Arts and Crafts Movement details on
Station Square and beyond. Midway up the steps of the railroad station, for
example, silhouettes on the lantern brackets show a full-skirted mother pulling
her recalcitrant child and the Long Island Rail Road's signature dashing
commuter clutching briefcase and umbrella. Above each figure, a crow peers
down.

Forest Hills Gardens can be said to owe its existence to the miserliness of Russell
Sage. Upon his death in 1906, the unphilanthropic financier left his intact $70
million fortune to his elderly wife, Olivia Slocum Sage. She created the Russell
Sage Foundation. Her interest in creating affordable housing resulted in the
purchase of several tracts, including, in 1908, one adjacent to the recently
improved railroad line.

Olmsted Jr., a worthy successor to his illustrious father, and Atterbury, a pioneer
in modern building methods and the designer of the American Wing of the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, were hired by Mrs. Sage's lawyer, Robert de Forest.
Their charge was to show that suburban development geared to modest wage
earners need not be haphazard. Development of the Gardens would be
controlled right down to the width of home setbacks, the precise color of exterior
trims, even the placement of oriel windows.

Forest Hills Gardens was not meant to be a nonprofit enterprise. In a 1908 letter
to Olmsted, who was then investigating the best of town planning in Europe, de
Forest wrote, "I believe there's money in taste." But not in overtly expensive
taste. In keeping with the Arts and Crafts ideal, a sense of visual modesty was
to rule the design. In a sharp-tongued, lengthy article in Scribner's Magazine
(July 1916), Atterbury wrote that "model towns in America most closely
resemble the renowned chapter on snakes in Iceland; for, with but one or two
exceptions, there are none." And he warned against those "who would deck out
our modest villages in Paris finery and ruin their complexions with architectural
cosmetics."

Beginning the Walk

In the center of Station Square are two sturdy police kiosks erected in 1916,
when the nearest precinct house was in Elmhurst. Now they serve as storage for
the gardening supplies of the Friends of Station Square, a volunteer group
formed in 1991 to fend off the railroad's plan to tear down the station, which had
fallen into disrepair. From its steps, on Independence Day, 1915, Theodore
Roosevelt gave his "100 percent American" speech, castigating conscientious
objectors.

Beyond Station Square, gently curved residential streets and narrow lanes
ribbon out toward the south, east and west. Tucked among them are an
occasional secluded circle or close. Only the two "feeder" arteries, Continental
and Ascan Avenues, run straight. Visitors accustomed to Manhattan's rectangular
grids may well lose all sense of direction upon entering the Gardens. "When I
call a car service," says Andreas Krueger, who lives on Middlemay Circle, "I
always allow an extra half-hour for them to find us."

In keeping with the asymmetric plan, the village green called Greenway Terrace
slants off from behind Station Square. While the hands of many architects are on
homes and apartment houses in the Gardens, the residences along Greenway
Terrace are all Atterbury's. The one at No. 65, with its roofed and trellised
sidewalk entrance, once belonged to the actress Thelma Ritter, remembered for
films that include "Rear Window" and "Miracle on 34th Street."

At the circular seating area of high-back benches at the head of the village
green, residents still gather in the shade of chestnut trees to chat in good
weather. Just beyond is Flagpole Park, dominated by the former mainmast of the
yacht Columbia, America's defender of the America's Cup in 1898 and 1901.
One hundred feet tall, capped with the figure of a seagull that is often mistaken
for an eagle, it was an early 1920's gift from the Harriss brothers, residents of
the Gardens. Also on the green is a World War I monument by the sculptor
Adolph A. Weinman, whose "Civic Fame" caps Manhattan's Municipal Building.
The "Mercury" dime and "Liberty" half dollar were also his designs. Weinman's
former home at 23 Greenway South is dominated by the triple height window of
his studio.

Distinctive Houses

Soaring land costs quickly pushed Forest Hills Gardens out of reach of the
working families Olivia Sage hoped to house. But Atterbury did try to keep costs
down by creating attached homes throughout. Their impact, however, is quite
different from the dreary phalanxes of "side by sides" that define much of
Queens. Where tiny Archway Street cuts through a group of attached homes on
Greenway Terrace, for example, Atterbury designed paired apartments over the
arch, with large bay windows overlooking the green.

Or consider the trellis-fronted cottage at 18 Park End Place. Viewed front-on, it
appears to be free standing. From around the corner, one sees that the
"cottage" is actually an end unit on a group of nine attached houses that face the
one-and-a-half-acre Hawthorne Park, one of two private parks in the Gardens.
(Olmsted Jr. felt no need for more parks, as the 535-acre Forest Park is
adjacent to the Gardens.)

On a recent Sunday afternoon, Jane and Miles Siegel, former Upper West Siders
who moved into 18 Park End Place four years ago, were gardening in their small
but flower-filled yard. "The first time we walked under the trestle, it was like
magic to find that this place could exist," Ms. Siegel said.

The homes on Park End Place, like many in the Gardens, have hollow concrete
walls that were precast off site. Atterbury used this technique throughout Forest
Hills Gardens, sometimes mixing into the concrete "soup" broken shells, ceramic
tile and pebbles to give color and texture. "Our walls are incredibly strong," Mr.
Siegel said. "The only problem is trying to hang a picture."

The fabric of life in Forest Hills Gardens — more small town than big city — is
influenced heavily by volunteer committees. The Christmas Eve caroling on the
train station steps, Santa's sleigh ride through the community and his home
delivery of gifts to children are planned by the celebrations committee. An
informal committee got the tower clocks on the inn back on time after a long
hiatus. A temporary committee is now raising money to restore Flagpole Park.

Perhaps the most onerous volunteer duty is the architectural committee, which
tries to maintain the standards set down by Atterbury and Olmsted. Showing a
visitor around the Gardens one recent evening, Elizabeth Murphy, president of
the community association, made note of a driveway that had been widened
without permission, white window frames in one unit of attached homes that
should have been brown like the others, a newly surfaced entrance path to a
house that should have been flagstone but wasn't, and a high hedge that was
"unfriendly."

Erring homeowners are asked by the architectural committee to bring their
homes up to standard. "Some new people think our volunteers are just cute little
things and that they can bully us," said Ms. Murphy, who grew up in the Gardens.
"If they have that attitude, they will see us in court. Our right to protect the
appearance of this place has always been upheld."

Prominent Names

Early on, Forest Hills Gardens was a white community that voted Republican. In
recent years, Asians, Russians, Indians, Iranians and a few black families have
moved in. An Orthodox rabbi lives on Dartmouth Street. Still, a surprising
number of old-time families stay rooted in the Gardens. Robert M. Hof, president
of a local real estate brokerage, and his wife, Susanna, president of the Friends
of Station Square, can each trace five generations in the community: their
grandparents and parents lived here, their daughter was married in the rose
garden of the West Side Tennis Club, and their grandchildren are now growing
up in the Gardens.

The most imposing houses in the Gardens are on the broad arc of Greenway
North. The Norman-style stone mansion at No. 123 once belonged to Trygve Lie,
the Norwegian who was the first secretary general of the United Nations
(1946-53). It faces a group of much humbler attached houses, about the same
length as the mansion. No. 150, now split into two homes, was the home of the
vaudevillian Fred Stone, who played the scarecrow in the 1903 Broadway
production of "The Wizard of Oz." At stately No. 167 lived Michael Miranda,
among those arrested at the infamous gathering of Mafia dons in Apalachin,
N.Y., in 1957.

The finest house in Forest Hills Gardens is at 8 Markwood Road, just off
Greenway North. Its setting on spacious rolling terrain is exceptional in a
community devoted to efficient land use. The house's steep, multiple rooflines,
its use of decoratively infused concrete divided by brick perimeters, its
wrought-iron gates and fine carving make this house the essence of Atterbury.
Indeed, local lore has it that the architect intended to move in, but there is no
proof that he ever did.

Separated from this house by a stone wall is that rarity in New York: a privately
owned park that is open to all. Named Olivia Park in honor of the creator of the
Russell Sage Foundation, this bowl-shaped green acre is where generations of
local children first sledded. Facing the park, at 22 Deepdene Place, is the house
where the family of Geraldine Ferraro lived until a few years ago. Nearby is the
home where the journalist Jimmy Breslin and his first wife, Rosemary, raised
their children. Olivia Park is an ideal spot for a walker in the Gardens to rest or
even picnic.

The most influential local person was not from the world of politics, crime or the
arts, but from sports. Branch Rickey, general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers
in the 1940's, lived in the red brick house at 34 Greenway South. In October
1945, after two months of secrecy, the story broke that Rickey had signed
Jackie Robinson, setting in motion the desegregation of major league baseball as
well as of other professional sports leagues. (But decades would pass before the
first black family moved into the Gardens.)

Rickey was then a member of the interdenominational Church in the Gardens, a
village-style church designed by Atterbury on Ascan Avenue and paid for by
Olivia Sage. In a letter to Rickey that October, its minister, John Lawrence
Casteel, wrote: "I noticed in the paper this week the statement concerning the
signing of Jack Robinson to the team. This morning, as we were repeating the
Statement of Faith, and you were standing just in front of the reading desk, we
used the expression `the relation of human brotherhood' and I could not help
thinking to myself, `Well, here is one man who has done at least one
outstanding thing to make this come true.' "

Pointing out Rickey's house, Jeff Gottlieb, president of the Central Queens
Historical Society, said, "Nobody famous lives in the Gardens anymore." What
does still live in this community, however, is Olmsted and Atterbury's vision of a
model city, still fresh as it approaches its centenary.

The careful eye catches a wealth of details at Forest Hills Gardens, like this
lantern bracket at Station Square, with its umbrella-clutching commuter dashing
for the train.
Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company
See also WiReD NY.