Design
This Architecture Historian Wants You to Respect Queens
It’s time to look beyond Manhattan, according to architectural historian Frampton Tolbert. His new project documents the overlooked postwar buildings of Queens.
When it comes to highlighting New York’s great postwar architecture, Manhattan always gets the attention. But the outer boroughs have plenty to boost as well.
“It’s the narrative of Manhattan being the center of the highest of high-style architecture and where wealth was based, where influence was based,” architectural historian Frampton Tolbert recently told CityLab. Tolbert’s project, Queens Modern, surveys, documents, researches, and promotes mid-century, modern architecture in Queens, New York. Featuring a database of Modernist buildings in the borough, Queens Modern draws from the Queens Chamber of Commerce Building Awards program, first organized in 1926 to honor excellence in design and construction.