Queens Borough Hall

Queens Borough Hall
Location within New York City
General information
Location 120-55 Queens Boulevard Queens, New York
Coordinates 40°42′49″N 73°49′41″W / 40.71361°N 73.82806°W / 40.71361; -73.82806
Completed 1940
Design and construction
Architect William Gehron and Andrew J. Thomas

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.

Designed by architects William Gehron and Andrew J. Thomas in the austere 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]

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' 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] An R33 "Redbird" New York City Subway car has been outside Queens Borough Hall since after its retirement in 2001.[6]

See also

References

Civic Virtue
  1. 1 2 3 4 "Queens Borough Hall". New York City. Retrieved August 2, 2013.
  2. 1 2 3 "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. 1 2 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. ↑ Freudenheim, Ellen (2006). Discover Queens, New York City's Best-Kept Secret!. Macmillan Books. p. 156. ISBN 0-312-35818-0.

External links

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