Queens Mulls Opposing Visions of Its Own High Line and a Commuter Rail Line
Plans for Queensway park (Courtesy of Friends of the Queensway)
Two competing plans for an abandoned rail line in Queens, New York—a linear park and a commuter rail line—have neighborhood groups scratching their heads. Advocates for the proposed High Line-esque park called the QueensWay are slowly making some headway, but are still facing an uphill battle against a few community groups. The organization, Friends of the QueensWay, is pushing to transform the defunct LIRR Rockaway Beach Branch into 3.5 miles of new parkland that would stretch from Rego Park and Forest Hills down to Ozone Park. The Regional Rail Working Group, however, has another vision for those tracks, proposing a commuter train service to the Rockaways.
Wanted: Neighborhood for Aluminaire
The Aluminaire House being dissasembled last month. (Courtesy Aluminaire House Foundation)
The Aluminaire House is homeless once again. Built in 1931 for the Allied Arts and Industry and Architectural League Exhibition, the house introduced prefabricated design methods espoused by Le Corbusier to an American audience. Corbu disciple Albert Frey designed the house with A. Lawrence Kocher, onetime editor at Architectural Record. After more than 100,000 visitors passed through, the architect Wallace Harrision snapped it up and placed it on his estate to be used as guest house. The building later was featured in Hitchcock and Johnson’s 1932 MoMA exhibition and in their book The International Style. Eventually, the house came under the care of the New York Institute of Technology and onto their former Islip campus. Last month, the house was dismantled once again and handed over to the newly formed Aluminaire House Foundation, run by architects Frances Campani and Michael Schwarting of Campani and Schwarting Architects.
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