Slate.com | Forest Hills Gardens

A walkable, transit-oriented, architecturally rich planned community, built 100 years ago.

 

Despite the medieval, Germanic appearance of the buildings, this town square isn't in Bavaria—it's in New York City. Forest Hills Gardens in Queens, N.Y., was begun in 1909, a project of the Russell Sage Foundation, which had been founded by the widow of a successful Wall Street financier. The planned community of 142 acres, which introduced the British Garden City movement to the United States, was intended to demonstrate the latest ideas in town planning, housing, open space, and building construction. It's pretty obvious that in the intervening years, Levittown, N.Y.—not Forest Hills—became the prototype for American planned communities.

 

Click on the link above for more...

 

Mariemont, just outside of Cincinnati, has a very similar feel to it and was built around the same time. The only thing it's missing is the transit component.

Forest Hills is very nice.  Reminds me of...... :wink:

...not Shaker Square (it ain't ghetto!).

 

  Mariemont had an interurban connection.

...not Shaker Square (it ain't ghetto!).

 

 

Well Madea, Forest Hills also has a bookstore. ;)

Looks a little like Mariemont. Cool!

That article is by Witold Rybczynski who wrote an interesting article on sprawl. Looks like another ideal streetcar suburb.

sort of. it might have had streetcars and inter-urbans, i dk, but the lirr is a commuter rail station. there is subway stop too.

 

i think all three c's have comparisons to parts of forest hills, some of those apts and houses would not look out of place in upper arlington either.

 

forest hills is a great example of why the brits and euros kind of look down their noses at us as far as land use and suburban living. and in this case they are right. we had great examples like forest hills and other garden city "experiments" around the country, but oh no we went and choose our own crass and wasteful levittown model instead. firmly and decisively too! ugh.

 

ps -- for music fans concerned about authenticity and keeping it real and all that, note all four ramones were from forest hills. rich kid punk poseurs-ha!

 

speaking of rich kids, donald trump is from there too. i wasnt sure about remembering that right so i checked wiki and what do you know i saw this ohio/cinci-related factoid about him:

 

"One of Donald's first projects, while he was still in college, was the revitalization of the foreclosed Swifton Village apartment complex in Cincinnati, Ohio--turning a 1200-unit complex with a 66% vacancy rate to 100% occupancy within a year. When the Trump Organization sold Swifton Village for $12 million, they cleared $6 million in profit."

 

 

Thanks for posting that LIG, I saw it on Friday but didn't have the time to post it.

I'm sure you have all heard of the game Grand Theft Auto, and the most recent installment (IV) takes place in "Liberty City" and is modeled after NYC (see here for how closely it resembles it: http://www.flickr.com/photos/matthewj/sets/72157604988911230).  Anyways, I got the game just to drive around and see how closely the city matched up to the game, and driving around Queens I stumbled upon Forest Hills Gardens and was pretty amused.

http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2002/09/01/loc_complex_was_troubled.html

That's when New York developer Fred Trump flew into town, plunked down $5.7 million at a sheriff's sale and bought the property. He sent his son, 25-year-old business school whiz Donald Trump, to Cincinnati to manage the property.

 

Just to make sure nothing is implied that Donald Trump bought the property while still in college, his dad bought it and let him manage it...

thanks for background mr. s -- oh yeah, the donald's dad was already a very big developer, he didn't start out of the clear blue sky from nothing that's for sure!