One of the later Jackson Heights developments, this building is a standard brick mid-century development, using a central recessed entrance with large courtyard planting area and end balconies for the high end apartments.
Another ubiquitous late Jackson Heights apartment building, this one is of dark red brick and an entrance that originally shown with white marble and a turquoise mosaic, both now gone.
While looking from the exterior like every other red brick mid-century apartment building, the award program write-up tells another story. The description claims that Roosevelt Terrace was the first building in the country to employ terraces on both facades of each apartment, offering cross-ventilation for every unit. Primary access to units is also provided by the terraces eliminating the need for some interior hallways. No surprise that the architect for this innovation was Philip Birnbaum, the prolific apartment designer, largely forgotten today but responsible for hundreds of major scale residential buildings across the city.
The first Borough’s Outstanding Award was presented in 1953 to the Bulova Watch complex. This monumental building uses a severely classical design, evoking many European and American classical municipal structures from the 1930s. Alexander Crossett was not a prominent architect of the period so it is unclear why he was offered such a major commission. Most of his other buildings in the city were small utilitarian industrial buildings. However Aymar Embery III, Robert Moses’ chief architect and designer of many of the Depression-era pool and recreational complexes across the city was the consulting architect here, which could explain the strong 1930s classical evocation. The design was inspired by the Federal Reserve Bank in Washington, DC.
This low-rise bank was built to fit into the surrounding residential neighborhood, but its design is distinctly mid-century. Sitting on a corner lot, the building is oriented to the street with an elliptical glass and metal window bay surrounded by entrance areas clad in white brick. The drive-thru teller stations exist behind the building.