Forest Hills Gardens, Queens

Forest Hills Gardens is a community located in Forest Hills, in the New York City borough of Queens. Its streets are privately owned but open to traffic. The Northern Border runs along the L.I.R.R. tracks and Burns Street, the western along Dartmouth Street and Herrick Street, the eastern along Union Turnpike, and the southern border along Kessel Street, Roman Street and Harrow Street.

Plan

The area consists of a development, fashioned after a traditional English Village, that is one of America's oldest planned communities and the most prominent American example of Ebenezer Howard's Garden city movement. The community, founded in 1908, consists of about 800 homes, townhouses, and apartment buildings, mostly in Tudor, Brick Tudor or Georgian style, in a parklike setting designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., son of noted landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted and partner in the Olmsted Brothers firm. Designed with transportation access in mind, the community's central square is adjacent to the Forest Hills Long Island Rail Road station. The largest apartment buildings stand closest to the station, while more distant buildings are smaller and have larger yards. Although most buildings are single-family homes, the development also includes garden apartment buildings and retail space. Today, the area contains the most expensive housing in the borough of Queens, and some of the most expensive in all of New York City.

Architect Grosvenor Atterbury proposed an innovative...
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