Queens Borough Hall
120-55 Queens Boulevard | also 1 Claire Shulman Way | Kew Gardens | built 1940
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The city photographed every building for its tax records around 1940 and again in the 1980s. NYC Municipal Archives.
Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.
- 1940
Queens Borough Hall opens in Kew Gardens with Mayor La Guardia attending
Architects William Gehron and Andrew J. Thomas designed the hall in a stripped classical style, and it went up between March and November 1940 for about $1,800,000, a modest sum for its size. The red brick building ran 580 feet long and four stories high, with the borough president's office suite at its center. Fiorello H. La Guardia and other city officials attended its opening; an earlier borough hall, built around 1910, had stood in Long Island City.
“The building was opened on December 4, 1940, with Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia and many other city officials in attendance.”
Source: Wikipedia
- 1941
MacMonnies's Civic Virtue statue arrives outside Queens Borough Hall
Frederick MacMonnies's large marble allegory Civic Virtue, carved between 1909 and 1922, was relocated to stand outside the new hall in 1941. For decades critics objected that the statue cast men as virtuous and women as vice. In 2012 the sculpture left Queens for Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn.
Source: Wikipedia
- 2006
Queens Borough Hall hosts some 9,000 weddings in a single year
Besides housing the borough president's office, the hall became a favorite place to get married, with about 9,000 ceremonies held there during 2006. The borough's deputy city clerk officiates in a small chapel inside, and Fridays draw the most couples.
“It has become a popular spot for marriages, with some 9,000 of them being performed in the hall during 2006.”
Source: Wikipedia
- 2022
Borough Hall's retired Redbird subway car sells at auction for $235,700
R33 car #9075, signed as a 7 train, sat at the hall's east end on 82nd Avenue and served as its visitor center until low attendance closed it in 2015. After years of neglect the car was auctioned in July 2022 for $235,700, part of Borough President Donovan Richards's plan to rethink the grounds around the hall.
“…the visitor center closed in 2015 due to low patronage ... It sold for $235,700 in July 2022.”
Source: Wikipedia
Further reading
- Queens Borough HallWikipedia
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