All the Queens Houses: An Architectural Portrait of New York’s Largest and Most Diverse Borough
Reviewed by Katie Uva
Recently, I was at Grand Central Terminal perusing The Constant Future: A Century of the Regional Plan. The exhibit delved into the origins, the goals, and the impact of the Regional Plan Association, whose 1929 report articulated a vision for the future of New York City based on more closely linking the city to neighboring areas through ambitious infrastructure projects. Lavish images and illustrations suffused the show and invited visitors to contemplate the city from a variety of perspectives: street-level, aerial, cross-section. I also overheard a lot of perspectives from visitors: people criticizing Robert Moses for his excesses, wishing for more bike and streetcar infrastructure in the present, remembering the impact of disinvestment in the Bronx in the 1970s. And one particular conversation I’ve been mulling over ever since: two people were debating what “the quintessential New York building” is.
As I left the exhibit and walked through Midtown, I wondered what my answer would be. Which “quintessence” would I want to emphasize in choosing a particular building? The historically significant and nationally recognizable, like the Empire State Building? The vanished and mourned, like old Penn Station? The hybrid of past and present, like the Weeksville Heritage Center? I found myself wanting to go somewhat against the grain and emphasize the outer boroughs, the residential, the everyday. The things that people from outside the city might be unfamiliar with, but which might kindle an immediate feeling of fondness or recognition from locals.
All the Queens Houses: An Architectural Portrait of New York's Largest and Most Diverse Borough
by Rafael Herrin-Ferri
Jovis, 2021
272 pages
In a sense, emphasizing the vernacular architecture of New York City as quintessential to its character is the project undertaken by Rafael Herrin-Ferri in All the Queens Houses: An Architectural Portrait of New York’s Largest and Most Diverse Borough. The book is an outgrowth of his Instagram, which since 2018 has cataloged more than 600 domiciles throughout different parts of Queens and attempted to describe their incredible eclecticism and flamboyance. The book features a little over 200 houses, photographed on uniformly cloudy days and from a standard angle across the street, usually incorporating neighboring houses to highlight contrasts between houses on a single block. A foreword by Herrin-Ferri discusses how the idiosyncrasies of the houses he encountered to him is closely representative of Queens: smaller-scale, neighborhood-oriented, multicultural, striving. He also includes a brief but interesting biographical note about his journey through Queens: when he moved to New York, he originally lived in Sunnyside in an area of six-story prewar brick apartments, and as time went on and he wandered farther from the subway he encountered more and more single-family homes or attached houses. He also became aware of the major contrasts between the landmarked parts of Sunnyside and the areas not subject to such restrictions; in the latter he found “clashing alterations…a mix of different roof profiles, larger window sizes, and more accent colors. In most cases, they have traded their front yards for a patio or parking space. Kitschy precast ornaments abound.”
It is this appreciation for the personalization of Queens houses that makes the book charming, engaging, and informative. Having grown up in Queens myself, I used to praise the orderly, the unaltered, the symmetrical, and look down on newer adaptations like boldly patterned brickwork, lions on gateposts, or the increasingly popular stainless steel fence. But it is these features that give neighborhoods their specificity and their dynamism, and Herrin-Ferri turns a cheeky yet appreciative eye to the way homeowners have communicated their cultures, their ambitions, and their challenge to/accommodation of lot sizes (as in the case of the “Sun Deli Penthouse” or the “Peach Tudor with Side Porch”).
The book is consciously modeled on a travel guide; it opens with a map of Queens and the houses are grouped by region. Herrin-Ferri did apparently talk to some of the homeowners, and quotes them briefly in the foreword, but the main text of the book adopts a slightly academic tone that focuses solely on the author’s impressions that I perceived as gently satirical; time and again the houses defy categorization and Herrin-Ferri comes up with witty names for them, including “Everyday Deconstructivist” (Flushing) “Commuter Tudor” (Douglaston), and “X-Box” (Floral Park). Despite the houses’ tendency to elude categorization, the brief descriptions are often deeply informative; Herrin-Ferri makes studious observations about rooflines, cladding, pilasters, columns, brick patterns, color choices, and how the houses conform to or diverge from formal architectural styles.
A brief but substantive introduction by Joseph Heathcott helpfully contextualizes Queens and its houses, explaining a little about the older history of Queens and especially focusing on Queens’ rapid development from the 1910s onward as the “borough of homes.” He notes several key moments, including the 130% growth in the population of Queens during the 1920s, and the impact of the Hart-Cellar Act in 1965 on opening the door to the enormous diversity and massive immigrant population in Queens today.
Heathcott and Herrin-Ferri share a passion for Queens, a deep knowledge gained by dedicated observation and research, and a humble recognition that Queens is both fascinating and inscrutable. This book is a great tribute to the diversity, the idiosyncrasy, and the compelling character of Queens’ built environment and its people.
Katie Uva is an editor at Gotham, an Adjunct Lecturer at Baruch College, and a Research Associate at the New York Public Library’s Center for Educators and Schools.