Andrew J. Thomas
Andrew Jackson Thomas (1875–1965) was a self-taught American architect who was known for designing low-cost apartment complexes that included green areas in the first half of the twentieth century.
[4] During World War I (1914–1918) the United States Shipping Board set up the Emergency Fleet Corporation to finance expansion of shipyards.
[6] After the war Thomas was architect for a number of projects for the Queensboro Corporation, including important work in Jackson Heights, Queens.
[3] John D. Rockefeller Jr. noticed Thomas's work and employed him to design the Dunbar Apartments (1926–1928), a non-profit cooperative for African Americans in Harlem.
[6] Talking of his Linden Court complex, the architectural critic John Taylor Boyd Jr. said: It is evident that the block has been designed as a whole in a simple, but comprehensive, and highly coordinated architectural design.... [The garden's] benefits are apparent when it is remembered that the streets are the only playground of New York children, including the children of the rich; even the luxurious Park Avenue apartment houses make a poor showing in this respect....It is evident that from the point of view of convenience, comfort, cheerfulness, even of beauty, this group closely approaches an ideal type of housing....As architecture goes, it could hardly be improved upon.
[9]In 1919 Thomas was a member of the jury of a competition launched by New York State for a plan to rehabilitate a tenement block on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.
[11] Thus Thomas's entry to the 1921 tenement house competition, sponsored by the Phelps Stokes Fund, featured a large central court.
[12] In a typical Thomas design, twelve U-shaped buildings would be arranged round the perimeter of a central open space.
Thomas designed several clusters at Jackson Heights such as Linden Court and the Château as cooperatives for upper-middle income residents.
By 1924 the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company had funded a housing project designed by Thomas in Long Island City, Queens.
Fifty-four buildings, using a modified version of his U prototype designed to minimize costs, provided accommodation for 2,125 low-income families.
[20] The 1928 Thomas Garden Apartments project in the Bronx with 170 middle-income 5-story walk-up units was started by a union consortium and completed by John D. Rockefeller Jr.
[17] The corner windows, considered very innovative in the 1930s, lent a Moderne/Art Deco style to the exteriors, and gave the apartment interiors a more spacious feeling.
[27] Andrew J. Thomas was selected architect for the Forest Hill neighborhood, an ambitious planned community to be built in part of John D. Rockefeller's estate in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, which his son had bought in 1923.
[29] The houses were conceived as a village of Norman farmhouses, but were built to the highest standards of the day using the best materials, with innovations such as first-floor laundry rooms, basement living space where the children could play and multiple bathrooms.
