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.