Firehouse, Engine Company 305 111-02 Queens Boulevard John R. Sliney, 1922-24 NYC Individual Landmark Following the arrival of public transportation to Forest Hills, the population increase necessitated municipal services. This neo-Medieval style firehouse was one such amenity. Constructed of red brick in Flemish bond with patterned brickwork and limestone accents, the building features asymmetrical massing, steep gables with copper roofs, two square towers with arched window openings and a tall square chimney along its western façade. Sliney, in his capacity as head building inspector for the fire department, was responsible for about 70 firehouses across the five boroughs between 1902 and 1933. The firehouse is a New York City Individual Landmark.

At the turn of the 20th century, the sparsely populated borough of Queens was on the brink of immense change. With little public transportation, its population was roughly 150,000. Between 1900, when the Pennsylvania Railroad purchased, expanded and electrified the Long Island Railroad, and 1910, when a groundbreaking tunnel underneath the East River was unveiled, the population of Queens nearly doubled. One of the first residential developments of these early years of the 20th century was Forest Hills, a 600-acre parcel of farmland previously known as the Hopedale section of Whitepot. Purchased by the Cord Meyer Development Company in 1906, the parcel was renamed in honor of its proximity to Forest Park and its elevation above the surrounding area. For this new development, George C. Meyer stipulated the layout of a suburban community, with lots designated for houses, schools and churches, as well as utilities and plantings. Aesthetically, the area would be united by its architecture. Meyer hired architects Robert Tappan and William Patterson to design single-family houses that would complement one another. Cord Meyer began the development of these lots in 1906, mostly north of Queens Boulevard. The area roughly bounded by 68th Avenue on the north, 72nd Road on the south, 108th Street on the west and Grand Central Parkway on the east is still referred to as the Cord Meyer section of Forest Hills. The Long Island Railroad opened a station in Forest Hills in 1911, and in 1913-14, a trolley service began operating along Queens Boulevard from 71st Street to both Manhattan and Jamaica. Several events put Forest Hills on the map, including the 1915 relocation of Manhattan’s West Side Tennis Club to Forest Hills, where it would host the U.S. Open for the next 62 years (its 14,000-seat stadium opened in 1923). The neighborhood also gained fame in 1917, when Theodore Roosevelt gave a speech at Station Square at the onset of World War I. Roughly 142 acres of Forest Hills was almost immediately sold by Cord Meyer to Mrs. Margaret Olivia Slocum Sage, widow of Russell Sage, a very successful railroad magnate and financier. Through the Russell Sage Foundation, Mrs. Sage established Forest Hills Gardens in 1909, and the community was completed in 1912-13. This incredibly short period of construction can be attributed to the use of pre-fabricated concrete units, a revolutionary and influential technique at the time. Station Square forms the magnificent entrance into this planned suburb, which was largely designed by architect Grosvenor Atterbury and landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. As further advancements to the area’s infrastructure were made, such as the widening of Queens Boulevard, development continued in Forest Hills through the 1920s in much the same style, with a mix of single-family houses, small-scale apartment buildings and townhouse-style residences. The first apartment building constructed in Forest Hills Gardens was the Forest Arms, built in 1924. Apartment buildings also cropped up along Queens Boulevard. Arbor Close and Forest Close, small townhouse complexes with shared gardens, were constructed in 1925 and 1927, respectively. The opening of the IND subway in Forest Hills in 1936 led to a major shift in development patterns to larger, mainly six-story, apartment buildings. After World War II and up until today, some private houses have been demolished to construct large apartment buildings, especially along Queens Boulevard.

Organized firefighting has long been a part of New York City’s history. Groups of volunteer firefighters were first formed by Dutch colonists in the 1640s and the more formal volunteer Fire Department of the City of New York was established in 1737. It wasn’t until the 19th century that volunteers began to be replaced by professional firefighters. In 1865, the New York’s state legislature established the Metropolitan Fire Department to serve the residents of Brooklyn and Manhattan. In 1870, when the new city charter relinquished control of the city from the state, the name was reverted to the Fire Department of the City of New York (FDNY). When the city expanded to include all five boroughs in 1898, the various departments were unified into a single citywide firefighting organization. Some volunteer firefighters still remained in sparsely populated areas, but were disbanded or absorbed by the FDNY in the early 20th century as new paid companies were installed. Professionalization of firefighting also led to standardization of fire stations and equipment. An increasing number of stations were built throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Between 1880 and 1895, Napoleon LeBrun & Son was the official architectural firm of the FDNY. After 1895, the FDNY employed in-house architects, including FDNY superintendent of buildings Alexander Stevens, and outside architects, including Walter E. Parfitt, Herts & Tallant, Hoppin & Koen, Satterlee & Boyd and Dennison, and Hirons & Darbyshire. At the turn of the century, new stations were built with neo-classical details, following the principles of the City Beautiful movement. The expansion and professionalization of the FDNY are exemplified in the large number of projects reviewed by the Art Commission in the early 20th century, including fire alarm boxes and over 60 fire stations in all five boroughs.

Survey photo documenting Queens Boulevard road conditions prior to IND subway construction; October 3, 1930. The worker is posed on the sidewalk east of 75th Road, with the FDNY Engine 305, Hook & Ladder 151 firehouse in the background. The Neo-Medieval firehouse was completed in 1924, in order to provide services to the growing community of Forest Hills, and new residents of the Queens Boulevard and LIRR corridors. The firehouse was designated an individual New York City Landmark in 2012, in recognition of its unique character among the city's early 20th century firehouses. As New York's population grew and improved transit options drove residents into new neighborhoods in the outer boroughs, the Fire Department kept pace with the expanding demand for services by designing new facilities in-house, rather than commissioning outside architects. By the 1920s, the FDNY's default architectural style incorporated Georgian Revival elements "compactly massed to conform to the rectangular tax lots of the city." In a departure, the Engine 305 firehouse is highly asymmetrical, and features towers and steep gables more common to ecclesiastical architecture. The Landmarks Preservation Commission's Designation Report ventures two theories for the firehouse's heterodox design: a desire to achieve contextual harmony with the Tudor-style architecture of nearby Forest Hills Gardens, and the freedom to experiment afforded by the neighborhood's lesser density. The firehouse's eccentricity was not lost on the department: an internal report from 1924 referenced “the most pretentious fire engine house in the Greater City.” Today, it's celebrated for the features that made it an outlier.