STEINWAY Village in northwest Queens was a small company town that was instituted by William Steinway, son of German immigrant Henry, who had moved his operations to Astoria on the shores of the East River, where lumber could easily be brought to the factory via the East River. William Steinway constructed a street grid layout and built the factory that still stands, workers’ housing, a Protestant church, and additional factories and workspaces. It has been reviewed in a number of Forgotten NY tours in the area, most notably in 2017.
In the cover shot you see one of the area’s most unusual pair of homes, at 40-11 and 40-19 21st Avenue east of Steinway Street. They have slanted roofs and appear to have once been part of the same building.
In fact they are both “half houses” constructed during the Steinway era. They were two houses once separated by a center wall and owned by two families apiece, as shown in the above tax photos from 1940. Since the buildings appear intact in 1980s tax photos as well, the three-story brick building in the center was likely built in the 1990s. To make room, the east side of 40-11 was demolished as was the west side of 40-19, and the new building plopped in between!
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4/1/23
4 comments
In a sense, they look like “spite houses,” houses built to use up a smaller-than-perhaps-desirable plot. If the design is structurally sound, such houses are allowed by municipal authorities to be built on the theory that you can get more RE tax revenue from an occupied house than from a small non-standard sized unimproved lot.
If the middle building is ca. 1990’s, it’s actually a bit retro in style – red brick, mullion windows, awning, etc. It looks a bit Frankenstein-ish, but that’s just how cities grow.
There is a house on the east side of Stillwell Ave next to the Belt Parkway out by Coney Island that looks like it was cut in half when the highway was built. Googlemap link for reference:
https://www.google.com/maps/@40.5837753,-73.9828549,3a,54.4y,60.32h,93.87t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1seBTJZoVpQMH_Y9NUZJ23qA!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DeBTJZoVpQMH_Y9NUZJ23qA%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D243.60338%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192
This community with the right support could be an architecual jem – something like this makes a neighbhood a laughing stock. When I take people on a tour and we pass this example of mutilatoin this one can read their faces.
With their original trim these homes were gems which made the working people proud of thier work in the factory and their community. Now, that is lost. They deserve something better.