Far Rockaway Beach Bungalow Historic District

Only about 120 summer beach bungalows remain in Far Rockaway, built in the 1920s for resort use by the middle class near the oceanfront. A cluster of the bungalow homes remains, due to local preservation efforts, between Beach 24th and Beach 26th Street, from the Far Rockaway Boardwalk on the south to Seagirt Ave. on the north. The area was designated the Far Rockaway Beach Bungalow Historic District and listed in the National and New York Registers in 2013. Some of the scenes from the first episode of the cable series Boardwalk Empire were shot in the historic district.

Developers from the New York City area created a number of beach bungalow communities in Queens and Long Island in the early 1900s. By 1910, Far Rockaway's population swelled to about 30,000 in the summers; during the winters, many of the seaside hotels and casinos closed for the season, but around 8,000 folks lived in the town. Far Rockaway was reachable by train via the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR), which ran about 35 trains per day to and from Manhattan. A promotional pamphlet for the area from 1910 called Far Rockaway the beautiful "City-by-the-Sea," where millionaires from New York City who came to rent cottages for the summer were buying and building year-round homes. The Ocean Crest and Wave Crest sections of town afforded "unobstructed and grand views" of the Atlantic Ocean. The town's brick avenues and macademized streets were touted for those who traveled by car or by horsepower. It was said of the Rockaways peninsula that once you lived here for a year and moved away, you were bound to come back.

The easy access by rail and the development of dance pavilions, casinos, and an amusement park in the Rockaways attracted working-class New Yorkers. Renting a tent site to camp for a week's vacation in the summer became popular in the early twentieth century. Developers began to build cottages for summer rentals in the 19102; some companies, like Bloomingdale's, began renting cottages in the Rockaways and offering paid vacations to employees. Thousands of bungalows were built in the Rockaways, resembling smaller versions of the popular house style.

Architect of one new summer beach bungalow resort in Far Rockaway was Henry Hohauser; construction began in 1921 on what had been the Dickerson Estate along Beach 24th to 26th Streets. Hohauser went on to design some of the iconic Art Deco hotels in Miami Beach, Florida. Isaac Zaret from Massachusetts was the builder. The bungalow neighborhoods used to stretch from Beach 4th Street on the east across Far Rockaway and most of the rest of the Rockaway Peninsula to the west, with a short walk to the boardwalk and the ocean beaches. Most were one-story, brick, with two to three bedrooms, one bathroom, a small kitchen, and an open-air front porch. Lot size was usually 25 by 50 feet. Each bungalow was typically 17 to 20 feet wide and 30 feet long, including a front porch. Most of the original foundations were support posts of locust. Roofs were either hipped, gable, or clipped gable style; many have dormer windows. Inside, most of the cottages had a living room in the front and a kitchen in the rear, with three bedrooms and a bathroom along a hall in between. Attic storage space was reached via a pull-down door. A boiler in a rear corner was accessed from an exterior door. Many of the bungalows in the historic district have been renovated since the 1980s, with many of the original design features being restored. A few have been resided with synthetic materials.

Many of the bungalows were lost to neglect after the resort's heyday ended in the 1950s. Some of the area's bungalows were converted into public housing for Manhattan residents, declined in condition, and were lost to urban renewal. The Beachside Bungalow Preservation Association of Far Rockaway (BBPA) founded by Richard George in 1988 and was successful in keeping this cluster of bungalows intact (with some modern infill structures). Hurricane Sandy in October 2012 caused only minor flooding in a handful of the bungalows in the district. The historic district has been recognized by the New York and National Registers of Historic Places. For additional protection, there have been efforts to designate the neighborhood a New York City landmark.

American Photograph Company. Far Rockaway, Rockaway Beach, Rockaway Park, Long Island. Illustrated America. New York, NY. American Photograph Company, 1910.

Autz, Lisa. Far Rock man stands up for bungalows, QNS. July 29th 2013. Accessed July 2nd 2022. https://qns.com/2013/07/far-rock-man-stands-up-for-bungalows/.

Solomon, Nancy. NRHP Nomination of Far Rockaway Beach Bungalow Historic District, Queens County, NY. National Register. Washington, DC. National Park Service , 2012.