Boegel, William J. | Bronze Plaque for Schools and Colleges | Extant | College Point | School or College | 1960 | St. Agnes is one of William Boegel’s more contemporary designs featuring a facade of buff brick and pale green enamel panels. Boegel tended toward historicist elements on his churches and schools, employing Tudor or Gothic Revival design. Here, the school is modern and square and the main decoration is a striking, curved entranceway of red polished granite topped by a large limestone cross that sits at the roofline. The complex includes amenities typical to a school of this era including an auditorium (entered from a separate wing), gymnasium, and state of the art classrooms. The older convent sits to the south of the school and according to the awards program, passage was provided internally for the nuns to go from convent directly into the school.
Beatty and Berlenbach | Bronze Plaque for Schools and Colleges | Extant | Elmhurst | School or College | 1964 | Cathedral Prep expanded into Queens from Brooklyn, previously located in a Gothic Revival building complete with gargoyles in Clinton Hill. The L-shaped school was meant to accommodate the growing population of students for the seminary and along with the later Cathedral College of 1968 in Douglaston, represented the Brooklyn Diocese’s continued efforts to rapidly expand its facilities. However unlike the later Cathedral College, Cathedra Prep is a much more traditional take in terms of its design aesthetics. By this time, the firm of Beatty & Berlenbach was dwindling down, having had their heyday earlier in the century. The materials here are red brick, limestone, and granite and the details are restrained with only window surrounds and some limestone and granite framing. Overall a much more traditional look that speaks more to the 1950s than 60s.
Ketchum Gina and Sharp | Bronze Plaque for Schools and Colleges | Extant | Flushing | School or College | 1962 | An open plan facility, the Queens College Dining Hall features multiple dining spaces around a central kitchen. The building is one story with floor to ceiling windows throughout within aluminum frames. The entire exterior is enlivened by brickface in a variety of colors including red, brown, yellow, and grey. There is also an outdoor dining area. It is unclear how much the interior treatments remain, but it is expected they have been updated over time.
William N. Breger Associates | Bronze Plaque for Schools and Colleges | Extant | Forest Hills | School or College | 1971 | This building shows the continued move toward the minimalism of the 1970s with its largely unadorned facade of brick with plain window treatments and bold geometry of the sloped roofs above the entrance housing skylights for the interior spaces below. It was originally built as an Jewish Orthodox high school. However by 1981 the school had closed and today it is home to the Beth Gavriel Center, a Bucharian Jewish congregation.
Boegel and Allodi | Bronze Plaque for Schools and Colleges | Extant | Bellerose | Religious Building | 1966 | St. Gregory’s Auditorium is an addition to St. Gregory the Great School, itself founded in 1953. The school faces 87th Avenue but the auditorium faces a service road of Cross Island Parkway and an embankment of the parkway itself. The building’s design uses traditional materials of red brick. limestone trim, and Vermont slate on the roof. The building’s name is inscribed above the entrance.
