Queensboro Corporation

The Queensboro Corporation was a real estate company founded by Edward A. MacDougall that played a major role in developing the Jackson Heights area of Queens, New York City.

It planned the community, divided the land into blocks and building lots, and installed streets, sidewalks, power, water and sewage.

[3] The elevated IRT Flushing Line reached Jackson Heights in 1917, reducing the travel time to Manhattan to twenty minutes.

[3] The target customers for the Queensboro Corporation were middle class residents of New York who could afford to live in the suburbs.

[8] The apartments were of high quality with ornate exteriors and features such as fireplaces, parquet floors, sun rooms and built-in bathtubs with showers.

The corporation encouraged development of the commercial area that surrounded the 82nd Street subway station, and assisted in setting up a community board to ensure the growth of civic institutions.

With abundant land available, all unused space was used for parks and gardens, or for recreational areas that included a golf course.

[12] On August 28, 1922, the Queensboro Corporation paid $50 to the WEAF radio station to broadcast a ten-minute sales pitch for apartments in Jackson Heights.

[14] Mr. Blackwell of the Queensboro Corporation then urged his audience to: seek the recreation and the daily comfort of the home removed from the congested part of the city, right at the boundaries of God's great outdoors, and within a few minutes by subway from the business section of Manhattan ...

The cry of the heart is for more living room, more chance to unfold, more opportunity to get near Mother Earth, to play, to romp, to plant and to dig ... Let me enjoin upon you as you value your health and your hopes and your home happiness, get away from the solid masses of brick ... where your children grow up starved for a run over a patch of grass and the sight of a tree...[15]The Queensboro Corporation employed the well known architect Andrew J. Thomas, already an advocate of garden apartments.

[17] Linden Court was the first development to include parking spaces, with single-story garages accessed via narrow driveways.

[18] Thomas built variants on the Linden Court design aimed at upper-middle income customers with the Château and Towers projects.

[21] In the mid-1920s the Queensboro Corporation also built attached and semi-detached homes for single families, with brick facades in American Colonial or English Tudor styles.

[10] After a severe drop in property values in the early 1930s, the Queensboro Corporation struggled financially throughout the decade.