RKO MIDWAY THEATRE 108-22 Queens Boulevard S. Charles Lee for Thomas W. Lamb Associates, 1942 Named for the World War II Battle of Midway, this theater boasts 2,000 seats. Thomas W. Lamb was a prolific theater designer, having been responsible for roughly 300 theaters across the country. This theater bears the distinction of being his last project and one of only a few designed in the Art Moderne style. Its undulating limestone façade features a large vertical beacon with letters spelling out “MIDWAY.” The structure currently houses a United Artists cinema along with a variety of shops and restaurants.

Birds-eye view of the Forest Hills Gardens development, from the top of the nine-story Forest Hills Inn tower, June 1, 1916. The street at center is Greenway Terrace. The plan of Forest Hills Gardens was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., the son of the famed landscape architect and park designer whose many projects include Central Park and Prospect Park.

International Lawn Tennis Challenge, Forest Hills, 1914. In December 1912, the West Side Tennis Club — so named for its original Central Park West location — purchased land for a permanent home in Forest Hills that would become the country’s premier tennis venue. The new West Side Tennis Club hosted the final of the 1914 International Lawn Tennis Challenge (now known as the Davis Cup), contested by the defending champion United States and Australasia, a team featuring players from Australia and New Zealand. The American team was defeated by three matches to two. The following year, the United States Lawn Tennis Association National Championship, the predecessor of the U.S. Open, moved from Newport Casino in Rhode Island, to Forest Hills. The tournament was played at West Side until 1978, when it moved to new facilities at Flushing Meadows.

The theater is named for the Battle of Midway, which took place in 1942, the same year it opened its door. It was designed by the prolific theater architect S. Charles Lee for Thomas W. Lamb Associates. Lee was an early adopter of more modern styles including the Midway’s main style, Moderne. The streamlined facade with strong vertical elements exemplifies this and is also a nice counterpoint to the Deco designs of the earlier Ridgewood Savings Bank nearby.

Excavation for the IND Queens Boulevard subway, March 17, 1930. This view of mid-construction Queens Boulevard is eastward from near Harvest Street (now 70th Road) at the site of the future 71st-Continental Avenues station (now Forest Hills-71st Avenue). Forest Hills IND stations opened on New Year’s Eve 1936.

Forest Hills Gardens, Greenway Terrace entrance and bridge, July 24, 1927. Forest Hills Gardens was designed as a planned community for New Yorkers of all social classes — a sort of American response to the English garden communities — but developed into a wealthy enclave, due to the high cost of construction and the use of restrictive covenants that, while they did not explicitly prohibit minority ownership, discouraged working class and minority residents in practice. Architect Grosvenor Atterbury’s neo-Tudor, neo-Georgian, and Arts and Crafts designs are protected by a strict design covenant adopted by the governing Forest Hills Gardens Corporation in 1922, which preserves the development’s distinctive architectural character.

Burns Street, Forest Hills Gardens, August 14, 1935.

WEST SIDE STADIUM (NOW FOREST HILLS STADIUM), CLUBHOUSE AND STADIUM Clubhouse- Grosvenor Atterbury and John Almay Tompkins, 1913 Stadium- 69th Avenue between Clyde Street and Dartmouth Street, Kenneth M. Murchison, 1921-23 This internationally renowned tennis stadium is most famous for hosting the United States National Championship tennis tournaments, which were combined in 1968 to become the U.S. Open, from 1915 until 1977, when the tournament moved to the Arthur Ashe stadium in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park. The West Side Tennis Club was established in 1892 and originally operated on Central Park West in Manhattan, giving the club its name. The clubhouse was designed in the neo-Tudor style, in keeping with Atterbury’s other work in Forest Hills. The 14,000-seat stadium was designed by Kenneth M. Murchison, a well-known architect of public institutional buildings, having also designed such distinguished structures as Penn Station in Baltimore and the Hoboken Terminal. The United States’ first concrete tennis stadium, its architectural features include blue and gold glazed terra-cotta shields bearing the WSTC logo and “1923″, archways, eagles, shields, flagpoles and cornices. In 1956, the stadium hosted a major turning point in American history, when Althea Gibson became the first African American woman to compete in a world tennis championship (she won the Grand Slam). The stadium also served as a performance venue from the 1950s to the 1990s (Frank Sinatra, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Barbra Streisand and Bob Dylan, to name a few). In 2013, after many years of neglect, the West Side Tennis Club began an overhaul of the structure to restore it for use as a music venue once more. Turn left onto Dartmouth Street to make your way back to Station Square, noting the lovely streetscapes along the way.