Kew Gardens, Queens

Kew Gardens covers roughly 1,700 tax lots, the smallest lot count of any neighborhood in this cluster of file entries. Despite that smaller footprint, its building record includes something none of the neighboring files do: 2% of recorded buildings rise above 6 floors, a small but real share of taller construction in an otherwise low-rise area. The median building height across the neighborhood still sits at 2.5 stories, and the parcel record carries no flagged data gaps, so every figure here draws on a complete recorded set rather than a partial sample — a coverage baseline worth keeping in mind given how small this particular lot count is compared with the neighborhoods around it.

Construction history here skews heavily prewar: 75% of buildings predate 1940, and the median building dates to 1925. Only 12% of the stock was built during the 1945-to-1975 postwar boom, and 6% has gone up since 2000 — a relatively high recent-construction share for a neighborhood whose overall median age is this old. One-family classifications cover 46% of buildings, two-family buildings 21%, and walk-up apartment buildings 14%, with land use split 67% one- and two-family, 14% multi-family walk-up, and 5% mixed residential-and-commercial, a mix more varied than the single-classification-dominated pattern recorded in several larger neighborhoods nearby.

Lots run a median of 3,080 square feet, though the largest on record reach 9,975 square feet, a wide spread for a neighborhood this size and one of the larger top-end lot figures recorded in the area. Recorded floor area sits below the district allowance on 83% of lots, with a median residual of 0.4 in floor-area-ratio terms. The flood and historic-district record both read 0% here, meaning no share of lots currently carries either designation on file — a statement about the current regulatory map and designation list, not a claim about the land beyond what's recorded, and one that holds even alongside the neighborhood's small pocket of taller construction described above.

Residential use covers 91% of lots, together holding 11,745 housing units on record — a substantial unit count for a neighborhood of only 1,700 lots, and one of the higher unit-to-lot ratios recorded among the neighborhoods profiled in this cluster. Forest Hills, Jamaica, Jamaica Hills-Briarwood, and Richmond Hill border Kew Gardens, each with a separate lot-by-lot record in the same municipal file, and none matching Kew Gardens' small pocket of taller buildings or its unusually old median construction year.