Read original...In the early 1920s when the Rockaways was a popular summer resort for the city's middle- and working-class families, thousands of bungalows covered a large swath of the peninsula. Today, urban renewal and a changing landscape have contributed to leaving fewer than 200 of the largely single-story, three-bedroom structures.
The remnants are mostly clustered between Beach 24th and Beach 26th streets and the three blocks from Seagirt Boulevard to the boardwalk in Far Rockaway.
Some, decrepit and vacant, are among the peninsula's dwindling pockets of blight. Others are owner-occupied or rented.
But as a building boom sweeps across the Rockaways and developers replace bungalows with taller, wider, oceanfront structures, efforts are under way to protect and preserve the endangered structures.
Artists, lawyers and other professionals from Manhattan are buying and restoring bungalows; some as year-round residences, others as summer retreats. Jeanne DuPont, 39, a costume designer for films, and her husband, John Nishimoto, a graphic designer, are among the latter. The couple live in the West Village.
Two years ago, they purchased a bungalow on Beach 25th Street. It cost $130,000, compared with about $90,000 the houses fetched when they were first built.
"I just saw the architecture, and I thought it was amazing," DuPont said. "A lot more people like myself are coming out to save them."
DuPont started the Rockaway Waterfront Alliance in the hope of helping to protect the bungalows from developers' bulldozers.
"Mine was in horrible shape," she said. "It was the worst on the whole street; now it's the best. You can do a lot with these things. It's just that a lot of people don't have the vision or the money."
More than 20 years ago, Richard George - an artist who lives in a bungalow on Beach 24th Street - founded the Beachside Bungalow Preservation Association of Far Rockaway for its stated purpose.
George, the president, purchased several of the wood, brick and stucco homes, which feature hipped or gabled roofs and front porches, and is renovating them. One is an arts studio and gallery. His mother, Carmela, also an artist, owns bungalows as well.
George believes a documentary, "The Bungalows of Rockaway," that Manhattan filmmakers Elizabeth Logan Harris and Jennifer Callahan are filming for public television will be "a plus for our area."
Like DuPont, Callahan, 42, also a writer and a researcher for documentary film companies, and Harris, 45, a producer and writer as well as filmmaker, were struck by the bungalows' style.
"I couldn't believe these little bungalows were part of New York architecture," said Callahan. "I thought walk-ups, high-rises, chrome and glass."
Harris said, "I grew up going to the sea in North Carolina where they had cottages from the '40s and '50s. I was taken with them [the bungalows], because they are somewhat similar."
A work-in-progress screening of the film is scheduled for Oct. 24 at the Museum of the City of New York. Queens Borough President Helen Marshall, whose office provided some of the project's funding, said the film will "evoke fond memories from many residents of Queens."
As for today, Jonathan Gaska, district manager of Community Board 14, said, "We're working with the Department of City Planning and the community to come up with zoning that would not allow large buildings there."
DuPont is encouraged. She said, "I hope that somebody does try and protect this community."
