Tudor Village

Tudor Village is a community of some 388 homes, most of which were built between 1927 and 1935. The majority of houses are semi-detached brick structures built in the English Tudor style, and contain six rooms and full basements. Occupying about 35 acres and the equivalent of nine rectangular city blocks in the southwestern corner of Queens County, New York, it is currently part of Ozone Park. At the time they were constructed, Tudor Village homes were at the high end of the housing market for this area of Queens County. They were built entirely of brick, not of wood, as most neighboring homes were, and possessed enhancing features such as substantial front lawns and backyards, as well as driveways and garages. In addition, sycamore trees were planted in front of every home, and a shrub-decorated mall was installed for four blocks down the center of 133rd Avenue, the Village's central street.

Attractive brick entrance pillars were also erected on either side of the principal access streets at 83rd, 84th, and 85th streets and Old South Road. Tudor Village's unique physical characteristics and those of the surrounding areas helped to forge a strong community identity among the villagers, as residents referred to themselves. Shared community goals and concerns, coupled with significant physical isolation, served to create and maintain this group identity in the early years, which has been handed down over the decades to subsequent generations of homeowners.

The streets of Tudor Village were relatively free of outside traffic during the early years, except for 84th Street, which connected Old South Road to the Sunrise Highway and Linden Boulevard. While the central street of Tudor Village is 133rd Avenue, it carried mostly local traffic because if was dead-ended on the west, and descended a steep hill on the east.

The early demography of Tudor Village was influenced by a number of factors. An ability to purchase an upper-scale home implied both a good and secure income. Thus, many original homeowners held white-collar positions with Manhattan or Brooklyn based companies, were civil servants, or else had their own businesses.

Original owners of Tudor Village homes were for the most part born in the late nineteenth or early twentieth centuries.

Memories of the Beginning of Tudor Village!

They may have called it Tudor Village. The farmers, however, called it brick village. They didn't see how those houses could stand in all that sand, and expected them to sink into the ground. We all knew that Tudor Village meant that big changes were coming, and that they would alter our peaceful way of life forever....

It was peaceful and quiet farmland, with little outside traffic. Some of the land on which Tudor Village was built was previously a dairy farm, first operated by the Goldsteins and then by the Kotchers.

Our first winter here was very bleak. There was wind-blown sand everywhere. Even with storm windows, it got into the house.

Gods Little Acre in NYC...