Queens Borough Hall

Queens Borough Hall is a public building in the Kew Gardens neighborhood of the Queens borough of New York City which houses the Office of the Queens Borough President and other city offices and court space.[1] It is located in the Kew Gardens municipal facilities stretch bounded by Queens Boulevard and Union Turnpike among other roads.

Queens Borough Hall
Queens Borough Hall is located in New York City
Queens Borough Hall
Location within New York City
General information
Location120-55 Queens Boulevard Queens, New York
Coordinates40°42′49″N 73°49′41″W
Completed1940
Design and construction
Architect(s)William Gehron and Andrew J. Thomas

Designed by architects William Gehron and Andrew J. Thomas in the stripped classical style,[1] it was built between March and November 1940 at a cost of some $1,800,000, low for its size.[2] Featuring a red brick facade,[3] was 580 feet long upon construction and four stories high; the office suite for the borough president and his or her cabinet was designed for the center of the building.[2] The building was opened on December 4, 1940, with Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia and many other city officials in attendance.[2] The structure subsequently won a design award from the Queens Chamber of Commerce.[1] The building bares a striking resemblance to the Naval Ordnance Laboratory Administration building in Maryland, (now Food and Drug Administration headquarters) which was built in the same stripped classical style.

A previous Queens Borough Hall, built around 1910, had been located in the Long Island City neighborhood.[4]

Queens Borough Hall was designed to serve as the center of civic life, and had other functions, such as a post office, when first built.[1] It has become a popular spot for marriages, with some 9,000 of them being performed in the hall during 2006.[3] Fridays are the most popular day for the ceremonies, which are presided over by the borough's deputy city clerk in a small chapel.[3]

Frederick MacMonnies's heroically scaled and controversial marble allegory of Civic Virtue (1909–22) was moved outside Queens Borough Hall in 1941, and decades later was still drawing criticism from those who viewed it as depicting "masculinity as virtue and femininity as vice".[5] In 2012 it was moved to Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn.

At the east end of Queens Borough Hall on 82nd Avenue, a retired New York City Subway redbird train, R33 car #9075, was previously on display signed as a 7 train.[6][7][8] The Redbird car was formerly a visitor center for the Queens Borough Hall, but the visitor center closed in 2015 due to low patronage,[9][10] and the car was then briefly used as a landmark and for movie shoots.[11] Following years of degradation and neglect caused by apathetic Borough Hall officials, it was decided the car would be put up for auction; It sold for $235,700 in July 2022.[12] This is part of a greater overall effort by Borough President Donovan Richards of "reimagining the surroundings at borough hall".[13]

See also

References
Civic Virtue
  1. "Queens Borough Hall". New York City. Retrieved August 2, 2013.
  2. "New Queens Borough Hall Will Open Today; 3,000 Will Be Guests at a Buffet Luncheon" (fee required). The New York Times. December 4, 1940.
  3. "Love Is All Around". The New York Times. June 17, 2007.
  4. "Gresser Besieged by Irate Citizens" (fee required). The New York Times. April 7, 1910.
  5. Fried, Joseph P. (October 13, 1987). "Statue Showing Women as 'Evil' May Be Moved". The New York Times. The slow-paced commission of the sculpture, its execution by the Piccirilli brothers and public resistance to its erection in City Hall Park in 1922 form a chapter in Michele H. Bogart, Public Sculpture and the Civic Ideal in New York City, 1890-1930 (University of Chicago Press), 1989:259-70.
  6. Frishberg, Hannah (September 18, 2014). "Visiting The Retired Redbird Subway Train In Queens". gothamist.com. Gothamist. Archived from the original on 10 May 2015. Retrieved 30 June 2015.
  7. Brown, Kim (2005-02-03). "The Last Redbird Subway Car Is Installed At Borough Hall". Queens Chronicle. Retrieved 2016-07-01.
  8. Freudenheim, Ellen (2006). Discover Queens, New York City's Best-Kept Secret!. Macmillan Books. p. 156. ISBN 0-312-35818-0.
  9. Whitford, Emma (2015-07-10). "Say Goodbye To The Queens Tourism Center That's Housed In An Old Subway Car". Gothamist. Archived from the original on 2015-09-18. Retrieved 2016-07-01.
  10. Levy, Nicole (2015-07-14). "Five Possible Sites for a New Queens Tourism Center". DNAinfo New York. Archived from the original on 2016-08-21. Retrieved 2016-07-01.
  11. Ngu, Rebecca; Small, Eddie; Kern-Jedrychowska, Ewa (2016-03-25). "'The Get Down' Filmed a Subway Scene in Queens' Retired Redbird". DNAinfo New York. Archived from the original on 2016-08-21. Retrieved 2016-07-01.
  12. Duggan, Kevin (17 July 2022). "SOLD! Vintage 'Redbird' subway car fetches nearly quarter-million dollars at online auction". amNewYork.
  13. Barron, James (23 June 2022). "The Tangled Tale of Eric Adams's Apartment in Brooklyn". The New York Times.
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