Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning; Queens Register of Titles and Deeds Building

The three-story building with the arched windows and metal balcony on the second floor was built as the Queens Register of Titles and Deeds building around 1898. The structure was enlarged with a five-story rear addition in the 1930s. The Office of the Register moved elsewhere in the 1970s and the building became the Jamaica Center for Arts & Learning (JCAL). The building has been an NYC landmark since 1974 and was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1980. It has been called the finest example of a Neo-Italian Renaissance-style building in Queens. JCAL's landmarked building was renovated/ restored in 1998 at a cost of $3.6 million.

Queens County was formed in 1683 and county deed records date back to 1686. The original county seat was in North Hempstead and later moved to the Village of Jamaica. Jamaica is even older than the county - Englishmen from Hempstead got permission from the Dutch to settle here in 1656; the Dutch called the area "Rustdorp." A natural pond named beaver Pond (now long gone) was one of the reasons this spot was chosen.

One of the earliest railroads in the country, the Brooklyn & Jamaica Rail Road Company, was formed in 1832; trains reached the Village of Jamaica in 1833. The Long Island Rail Road Company leased the corridor in 1836 and ran trains to Hicksville by 1837. The main business street in the Village of Jamaica was Fulton Street (now Jamaica Avenue), crossed by four other streets by 1836: Division, Beaver, Union Hall, and Canal. George Washington really did sleep at a former hotel named Pettit's on Fulton near present-day Parsons Blvd. in 1790. The offices of the Queens County Clerk and Surrogate were in a fireproof building in Jamaica by 1836.

The population of Queens County was about 90,000 by 1880; nearly 4,000 of them live in the Village of Jamaica. The horsecar lines were replaced by trolleys in 1887, making an easier commute for locals. By 1890, the Village of Jamaica had a population of around 5,000. John H. Sutphin was elected county clerk of Queens County in November 1897 for a term of three years; he lived in Jamaica and had the same job in 1879. Sutphin also served as president of Bank of Jamaica by 1896; the bank was established in 1890. In January 1898, Queens became one of five boroughs of the consolidated City of New York; the boundaries of Queens County became the same as those of the Queens Borough in 1899 after the towns of Hempstead, North Hempstead, and Oyster Bay joined neighboring Nassau County.

The architect who designed the new Register of Titles and Deeds building for Queens County around 1898 may have been A.S. Macgregor of Queens. The first floor of the main facade of the brick building is faced with rusticated stone; the upper two stories are smooth stone. The central doorway is framed by a rounded arch and rusticated columns that support a Doric entablature. A wrought-iron railing tops the entrance. The windows of the second story are round arched with scroll keystones. Console brackets support a stone cornice underlined by egg-and-dart molding and dentils. A low parapet wall topped the cornice.

The Queens Register of Titles and Deeds was a very busy place in the early 1910s. A record number of deeds were registered in 1914, according to County Clerk Leonard Rouff. The nearly 13,000 deeds topped the number of deeds filed in 1913 by more than 400. Part of this was due to a building boom in Queens along new rail lines, including the Long Island City, Woodhaven, Corona, and Ridgewood sections. Peter J. McGarry served as the Register of Deeds for the County of Queens in the mid-1920s.

The first two floors of the building held an art gallery by the mid-1970s; the third floor held classroom space for York College. The upper floors of the rear addition were slated to serve as spaces for art-related groups and offices of the Greater Jamaica Development Corporation. The building now serves as the headquarters of the Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning (JCAL). The Jamaica Center for the Performing and Visual Arts was incorporated in 1978. The building holds art galleries, dance studios, paint studios, music rooms, a ceramic studio, computer lab, video production facilities, and a 99-seat theater. Their Arts Center Workshops became the School of the Arts by 2020. Special events (see the link below) are held at the headquarters and at the nearby First Reformed Dutch Church, an 1858 structure that was saved from demolition and now holds a multiuse 400-seat theater and meeting rooms.

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NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission. Designation Report, The Register/ Jamaica Arts Center, 161-04 Jamaica Avenue, Borough of Queens. Volume LP-0874. NYC landmarks. New York, NY. NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission, 1974.

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