34-20 85th Street

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.

1927
The Queensboro Corporation builds 34-20 85th Street as one of 32 garden homes designed by Robert Tappan
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The Queensboro Corporation put up this brick house in 1927 under building permit NB 2933-1927, which covered the four-house cluster at 34-14, 34-16, 34-18 and 34-20 85th Street. Robert Tappan designed all 32 houses on the facing blockfronts of 84th and 85th streets between 34th and 35th avenues, set out as eight back-to-back clusters of four. Each house got a front garden and its own garage in paired garages at the rear, reached by a shared driveway.
Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission
1928
November 5
Robert Tappan, the house's architect, makes the case for building small houses like skyscrapers
The house's designer, Robert Tappan (1883/84-1961), did much of his work in Queens and lived for many years in Forest Hills. The Landmarks Preservation Commission calls him a housing innovator in planning and structure who favored prefabricated small houses and pushed steel-frame construction, until then tied mainly to skyscrapers. He set out the idea in "A house built like a skyscraper," an article in American Architect.
Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

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