Jackson Heights Life

sadly, the teardown was scheduled more than two years ago, and no one was able to pony up the seven figures needed to save it/buy it.


having lived right here for 15 years, and in the general area my entire life, i will miss it. unfortunately, new york has become a city where the past is considered to be something to be scraped off a collective shoe.

 There was something off going on in this house long before it was sold. You used to see vans pull up and groups of Asian men, sometimes women, who
looked like they were being herded from prison into the van were walked from the side of the house. I think it was some kind of illegal immigration racket. Then when there was electrical work being done on the corner I think that they just vanished and let anything happen to the house for money
as they had no concern for the look of the house only that it was big enough to hold a lot of people in one place. The mansion across the street
disappeared in a nanosecond and we were told it was still beautiful inside with all kinds of built-in cabinetry and lighting.
 We tried to get attention for this building long ago as it was scary and so close to the school...

The Police said it was a church too. Go figure. But the neighbors found it odd that a Korean church could have someone out front of the building in a tank top, smoking and being the only one seen coming or going out of that entrance. On the side where the people were scolded and herded into the vans
was another story. Scary to watch. But apparently churches come in all shapes and sizes. The good thing is the ambiguity of what is happening is now over as the school board takes over. The family of the initial builder still lives on the street and they have been heartbroken to see the demise of those two beautiful homes.

I was just told that IS230/BOE has purchased the property and will use both corners which I think is a bit silly to have kids cross the streets for gym/etc

FYI, here's the old thread on this topic.
http://www.jacksonheightslife.com/community/index.php?topic=525.0

while i certainly agree with the sentiment that this use -- school annex, that is -- is preferable to an ugly box apartment building, i'm curious where you got your information about the "rotten" condition of the building's interior? even when it was vacant and the yard overgrown, one could see through the window that the place was still viable and not a shell.....

One of the greatest challenges in NYC has been the balance between new needs vs preservation. Both are important. Jackson Heights is a microcosm of those same questions.

Regarding that corner, 34th Avenue & 74th Street, the north-west (opposite the school) is an empty lot now while the north-east has the mansion we speculate about. The still standing mansion is the nicer of the two.

Has anyone ever considered the possibility of trying to satisfy both needs? The school can have the empty lot to build on and keep the mansion there. Now that Jackson Heights is historic and a hundred years old should we consider a museum of the area? Maybe it could also have community center space?

A museum/community center could be educational as well as preserving and enhancing the neighborhood. Can history repeat itself once again? The Queensboro Corporation had preserved the old home that sat in the middle of the golf course as a meeting center. Perhaps we need to look backwards in order to carefully move forward.