2/9: Jamaica Savings Bank, Grace Episcopal Church Memorial Hall & Queens General Court Building to be heard at LPC
The Landmarks Preservation Commission will hold public hearings on the proposed designations on Tuesday, February 9 ,2010.
Hearings will place in the Commission’s offices in the Municipal Building, 1 Centre Street, 9th Floor North, Manhattan.
Information and photos below courtesy of NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission.
Jamaica Savings Bank: Public Hearing Item 1, 9:45-10 am
One year after the end of the Civil War, the Jamaica Savings Bank was founded in the basement of the old county clerk’s office (later the Registers office). The growth of the Jamaica Savings Bank paralleled the growth of the Borough of Queens. As the bank steadily prospered, business necessitated the establishment of several branches to accommodate the expanding company, and to better serve their customers. By 1939 Jamaica Savings Bank was thoroughly invested in the community of Jamaica, New York, with one large main office on Jamaica Ave. and another branch in Queens Village. The lot was purchased in 1934 in anticipation of the rapid growth of Jamaica. The erection of the general court house on Sutphin Boulevard, and the extension of the Eighth Avenue Subway line, all had influenced the bank’s decision to build a new branch on the northwest corner of Jamaica Avenue and Sutphin Boulevard.
Morrell Smith, celebrated for his designs of commercial bank buildings, designed this branch of the Jamaica Savings Bank in 1939. Set on a trapezoidal lot, the monumental one-story building faces the intersection with an angled façade and corner entrance. It is clad in Indiana limestone with a polished granite base, and has a longer frontage along Sutphin Boulevard. Tall rectangular windows present a vertical rhythm across the façades and a stylized Greek entablature provides a crown to the building. The windows are slightly recessed with spandrel panels at the top that are ornamented with stars and a geometric design in low relief. The entablature is suggested by decorative bands in low relief, and an eagle is located above the entrance, which is through an ornamental bronze doorway. A flagpole on the roof is part of the original design. The building, now North Fork Bank, has minor alterations that include the addition of removable signage. In 1939, the Chamber of Commerce of the Borough of Queens gave the bank—as one of seven recipients for different building types—an annual architectural award for a commercial building showing excellence in design and construction.
Moderne in style, with simple details and dignified proportions, the building at Jamaica Avenue and Sutphin Boulevard utilized the most modern building design and construction methods of its time, from the state-of-the-art air conditioning system designed specifically for this building, which controlled temperature, humidity, also removed dust and odors, to the introduction of new sound absorption materials. All of these elements; contributed to the unique design qualities of this impressive bank building.
Grace Episcopal Church Memorial Hall: Public Hearing Item 2, 10-10:10 am
Grace Church Memorial Hall forms part of one of the most historic church complexes in New York City. The church itself and its historic graveyard are already designated as a New York City Landmark.
Founded in 1702, Grace Church is one of the country’s earliest Protestant Episcopal parishes, the oldest parish on Long Island, and in New York State second in age only to Manhattan’s Trinity Church. The existing Gothic Revival style church building – the third on the site – was constructed in 1861-62 to designs by Dudley Field. In 1901-02, the church was expanded with the addition of a chancel, designed by the firm of Cady, Berg & See. Behind the church stretches the graveyard, whose burials represent many families important to the history of the city, including Van Rensselaer, Gracie, Delafield and King. At the far end of the graveyard sits the Memorial Hall.
The Memorial Hall was built in 1912 to provide a meeting place and social center for the congregation, including a gymnasium, an auditorium, meeting rooms and offices. The three-story tall brick structure was designed by the architectural firm of Upjohn and Conable in the Tudor Gothic style, to complement the design of the existing church. It consists of two gabled sections with three-sided bays joined by the central auditorium/gymnasium section. Architectural details include a handsome gabled wooden portico with Tudor detailing; a double-height bay window; a large slate roof, with a smaller slate roof over the porch; stone banding; and stepped buttresses echoing those along the nave of the church.
Queens General Court Building: Public Hearing Item 3, 10:10-10:20am
The Queens General Court Building is a grand, neo-Classical, Depression-era monument built in the late 1930s, paid for half with City funds and half with a Federal grant from the Public Works Administration. Mayor LaGuardia laid the cornerstone in 1937, and presided over the building’s dedication in 1939. The new courthouse was considered a major public improvement, and convenience, for the borough of Queens, consolidating various court facilities in downtown Jamaica. The building originally housed the offices of the Queens County Clerk, the City Court, the Supreme Court and the Surrogate’s Court, and was meant to handle all the civil cases in Queens.
Architect William W. Knowles was a native New Yorker and Queens resident, educated at City College and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Knowles designed several important Queens County buildings including the Queens County General Hospital, the Terminal Buildings in Flushing, the Flushing Post Office (in association with Dwight James Baum) and a Children’s Shelter in Jamaica. Alfred H. Eccles, also a Queens resident, served on a number of architectural committees during the 1930s, and was chairman of the Long Island Real Estate Board’s building code committee.
An excellent example of American Modern Classicism of the 1920s and 1930s, the courthouse is faced with Alabama limestone and is articulated with Federal-style ornament. Its most prominent architectural feature is a triple-height colonnade – not quite half the building’s total height – composed of monumental fluted Corinthian columns supporting a heavy entablature with a bracketed cornice. Within the colonnade are handsome stone balconies and arched openings set off by sculptural panels depicting famous lawgivers. The colonnade reflects a long New York (and national) tradition of modeling government buildings on classical precedents, almost always focused on imposing colonnades. Other notable features include swagged relief panels beneath many of the windows, the heavy cornice with block modillions above the seventh story and the balustrade extending in front of the eighth-story windows. The blocky-massing, emphasis on flat, planar wall surfaces, simple ornament, and lack of window trim reflect both neo-Classical precedent and the growing taste for reductive design in the 1930s. The result is one of the most imposing public buildings anywhere in the borough.
(hearing times are approximate)
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