Kew Gardens, New York

How Kew Gardens is governed

Kew Gardens appears to be an unincorporated community or a census-designated place, so it may have no city government of its own — services usually come from the county. The chart below is a generic template; readers can correct it if Kew Gardens does have local officials.

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• Mayor

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  The city's chief elected official. Presides over the executive branch, proposes the budget and represents the city.

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      Leads the police department.

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      Leads the fire and emergency services department.

    • Public Works Director

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      Streets, water, sewer, and city buildings.

    • Finance Director

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      The budget, taxes, and city accounts.

    • Planning & Zoning Director

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      Land use, zoning, building permits.

    • Parks & Recreation Director

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      Parks, programs, and public facilities.

• City Council

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  The elected body that passes ordinances, sets the tax rate and approves the budget.

  • City Clerk

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    Keeps the official records, runs meeting agendas and, often, local elections.

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    The city's lawyer; advises officials and prosecutes ordinance violations.

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    Citizen advisory bodies, such as planning, zoning appeals and library boards.

• Municipal Court

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  Hears traffic, ordinance and other minor cases.

  • Municipal Judge

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    Presides over the municipal court.

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History

Early development

Kew Gardens was one of seven planned garden communities built in Queens from the late 19th century to 1950. Much of the area was acquired in 1868 by Englishman Albon P. Man, who developed the neighborhood of Hollis Hill to the south, chiefly along Jamaica Avenue, while leaving the hilly land to the north undeveloped.

Maple Grove Cemetery on Kew Gardens Road opened in 1875. A Long Island Rail Road station was built for mourners in October and trains stopped there from mid-November. The station was named Hopedale, after Hopedale Hall, a hotel located at what is now Queens Boulevard and Union Turnpike. In the 1890s, the executors of Man's estate laid out the Queens Bridge Golf Course on the hilly terrains south of the railroad. This remained in use until it was bisected in 1908 by the main line of the Long Island Rail Road, which had been moved 600 feet (180 m) to the south to eliminate a curve. The golf course was then abandoned and a new station was built in 1909 on Lefferts Boulevard. Man's heirs, Aldrick Man and Albon Man Jr., decided to lay out a new community and called it at first Kew and then Kew Gardens after the well-known botanical gardens in England. The architects of the development favored English and neo-Tudor styles, which still predominate in many sections of the neighborhood.

Urbanization

In 1910, the property was sold piecemeal by the estate and during the next few years streets were extended, land graded and water and sewer pipes installed. The first apartment building was the Kew Bolmer at 80-45 Kew Gardens Road, erected in 1915; a clubhouse followed in 1916 and a private school, Kew-Forest School, in 1918. In 1920, the Kew Gardens Inn at the railroad station opened for residential guests, who paid $40 a week for a room and a bath with meals. Elegant one-family houses were built in the 1920s, as were apartment buildings such as Colonial Hall (1921) and Kew Hall (1922) that numbered more than twenty by 1936.

In July 1933, the Grand Central Parkway opened from the Kew Gardens Interchange to the edge of Nassau County. Two years later, the Interboro (now Jackie Robinson) Parkway was opened, linking Kew Gardens to Pennsylvania Avenue in East New York. Since the parkways used part of the roadbed of Union Turnpike, no houses were demolished.

Around the same time, the construction of the Queens Boulevard subway line offered the possibility of quick commutes to the central business district in Midtown Manhattan. In the late 1920s, speculators, upon learning the route of the proposed line, quickly bought up property on and around Queens Boulevard, and real estate prices soared, and older buildings were demolished in order to make way for new development. In order to allow for the speculators to build fifteen-story apartment buildings, several blocks were rezoned. They built apartment building in order to accommodate the influx of residents from Midtown Manhattan that would desire a quick and cheap commute to their jobs. Since the new line had express tracks, communities built around express stations, such as in Forest Hills and Kew Gardens became more desirable to live. With the introduction of the subway into the community of Forest Hills, Queens Borough President George U. Harvey predicted that Queens Boulevard would become the "Park Avenue of Queens". With the introduction of the subway, Forest Hills and Kew Gardens were transformed from quiet residential communities of one-family houses to active population centers. The line was extended from Jackson Heights–Roosevelt Avenue to Kew Gardens–Union Turnpike on December 30, 1936.

Following the line's completion, there was an increase in the property values of buildings around Queens Boulevard. For example, a property along Queens Boulevard that would have sold for $1,200 in 1925, would have sold for $10,000 in 1930. Queens Boulevard, prior to the construction of the subway, was just a route to allow people to get to Jamaica, running through farmlands. Since the construction of the line, the area of the thoroughfare that stretches from Rego Park to Kew Gardens has been home to apartment buildings, and a thriving business district that the Chamber of Commerce calls the "Golden Area".

Later years

Despite its historical significance, Kew Gardens lacks any landmark protection.

On November 22, 1950, two Long Island Rail Road trains collided in Kew Gardens. The trains collided between Kew Gardens and Jamaica stations, killing 78 people and injuring 363. The crash became the worst railway accident in LIRR history, and one of the worst in the history of New York state.

In 1964, the neighborhood gained news notoriety when Kitty Genovese was murdered near the Kew Gardens Long Island Rail Road station. A New York Times article reported that none of the neighbors responded when she cried for help. The story came to represent the apathy and anonymity of urban life. The circumstances of the case are disputed to this day. It has been alleged that the critical fact reported by The New York Times that "none of the neighbors responded" was false. The case of Kitty Genovese is an oft-cited example of the bystander effect, and the case that originally spurred research on this social psychological phenomenon.

Text from Wikipedia, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.

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