The Chateau

34-47 80th Street | Jackson Heights | built 1922

Open on the map3 entries

The lot about 1940
About 1940. Via 1940s.nyc
The lot about 1985
About 1985. Via 80s.nyc

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.

  1. 1922

    Andrew J. Thomas caps the Chateau's end building with a corner tower and a slate mansard roof

    The Chateau, designed by Andrew J. Thomas for the Queensboro Corporation and built in 1922, is twelve freestanding U-shaped buildings, six on 80th Street and six on 81st, arranged in an A-B-C-C-B-A pattern. No. 34-47 is an outer "A" building: a five-story center flanked by a six-story projecting wing and a corner tower marking the end of the complex. Slate mansards with dormers, diaperwork brick on the tower, and stone entry portals with hoods complete the design. Its permit was NB 569-1922.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  2. 1922

    Thomas draws on French sources for the Chateau, named with the French word for castle

    Andrew J. Thomas looked to France for the ornament of this complex, whose name is the French word for castle. Every building got a mansard roof at its top story, and the taller end buildings, this one included, were given patterned diaperwork brick. The end buildings are also more elaborately ornamented than the others, so that they close off each row.

    “Thomas drew upon French inspiration for the ornamental style of the Chateau -- the French word for "castle…”

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  3. 1922

    The Chateau's garden joins the Towers' across a planted 34th Avenue to form a two-block greenway

    The report ranks the Chateau (1922) and the Towers (1923-25) among the grandest Jackson Heights garden apartments, each filling nearly a block. Passages between the buildings let passersby see the interior garden, which at the 34th Avenue end runs right to the lot line. When both were built, 34th Avenue had a wide planted median, so the two long gardens read as one green corridor two blocks long; part of the effect survives though the median planting is gone.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

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All 509 buildings with stories in Jackson Heights