Community United Methodist Church

81-10 35th Avenue | also 81-02 35th Avenue | Jackson Heights | built 1954

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. 1920

    Jackson Heights' Community Church starts building on land given by the Queensboro Corporation

    The congregation began as a mix of Protestant denominations meeting in a storefront supplied by the Queensboro Corporation. In 1919 it voted to join the Methodist Episcopal Church, which promised a resident pastor and $50,000 for a building fund. The Corporation then donated this corner on condition that work start by September 1920; the cornerstone carries that year, and the church was finished in 1923.

    “The Queensboro Corporation in turn donated the land on which the new building would stand, with the stipulation that construction begin by September, 1920.”

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  2. 1923

    F.P. Piatt's firm completes the church in a neo-Tudor style of rough stone and slate

    Designed by the firm of F.P. Piatt, the church filled the western half of the 35th Avenue blockfront between 81st and 82nd Streets. Its walls are random stone ashlar under a steep slate roof, with a short square tower, small buttresses on 81st Street, Tudor-arched leaded windows framed in limestone, and wooden doors hung on strap hinges. A matching wing dated 1953 later linked it to a plain two-story Sunday school of 1953-54 on the 82nd Street corner.

    “The firm of F.P. Piatt designed the building in a neo-Tudor manner. The church, with its facades of random stone ashlar…”

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  3. 1938

    Alfred Mosher Butts devises a word game and tests it, as Lexiko, in the church's social room

    Architect Alfred Mosher Butts set out in 1938 to invent a game that blended anagrams and crossword puzzles and rewarded both skill and luck. He tested the early version, then called Lexiko, in the social room of Community United Methodist Church. Revised rules turned it into Criss-Crosswords, and it was later sold as Scrabble. An oval plaque high on the wall of the church's classroom building on 35th Avenue now marks the game's birthplace.

    Source: atlasobscura.com

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