Forest Hills Inn, regoforestpreservation.blogspot 1

Mrs. Margaret Olivia Slocum Sage was a great lady. I wrote about her for Brownstoner Brooklyn several years ago, and the link to the fascinating story that was her life can be found here. I continue to be fascinated by her power and the legacy she left. After her skinflint, filthy rich financier husband died in 1904, leaving his entire fortune to her, she devoted the rest of her long life to distributing his money to worthy causes, many of which he would have never let her associate with, let alone give money to, had he been alive. In fact, her dedication to bettering the lives of others through the use of his considerable funds, in his name, to boot, would have had him spinning in his grave like a top. I always imagined she at least chuckled about it every night before she went to sleep.

Mrs. Sage was a firm believer in education, especially women’s education, and donated millions to colleges and schools, well-known and obscure. She also believed that it was necessary to better people’s living conditions, and started a foundation that would have resources long past her own lifetime to further this cause. In 1907, she started the Russell Sage Foundation with ten million dollars, and two years later, donated $2,750,000 for the development of the Russell Sage Foundation Homes, in Forest Hills, Queens.

The Homes financed a social experiment, a planned suburban community in Forest Hills Gardens. 142 acres were purchased, Grosvenor Atterbury was hired as the project architect, and Frederick Law Olmsted Junior, son of the famous landscape architect, was hired as the project’s landscape architect. The community was based on the idea of a village, and was based on a planned suburban village in England called Hempstead Garden Suburb, the brainchild of a social reformer named Sir Ebenezer Howard.

Grosvenor Atterbury designed a beautiful Tudor, Arts and Crafts and Georgian style village, complete with its own railroad station stop on the LIRR, its own churches, retail spaces, and plenty of parkland and open space. The village had single family homes, as well as garden apartment complexes. Every component of the village was designed to be part of the whole, architecturally, visually, and philosophically. Forest Hills Gardens was the first, and one of the best, planned suburban communities in the United States.

Ironically, the Sage Foundation had planned for FHG to be a middle class village for ordinary working people. After all, Mrs. Sage’s mission was to help those who couldn’t do better for themselves. But the costs of building and maintaining the Village proved to be so great, that in spite of some cost cutting innovations by Atterbury, it soon became apparent that only those of wealthier means would be able to afford to buy the homes, or live there. Forest Hills Gardens became, and still is, one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in Queens.

I plan on writing more about the design and philosophy behind the Garden City Movement, and Forest Hills Gardens at another time. The Sage Foundation, Grosvenor Atterbury and Frederick Law Olmsted’s great planned community is worthy of several posts, but today’s focus is actually on something only tangentially related to Forest Hills Gardens. It’s about social justice and the law, and a one-time mention in the newspapers about a man who worked as the headwaiter in the Forest Hills Inn, one of the many amenities built into Forest Hills Gardens. The year was 1931.

The Forest Hills Inn was part of Station Square, the heart of the village planned by Atterbury and Olmsted. The square consisted of the Inn, apartments, shops and the LIRR station. A commuter could be in Penn Station from here in less than 15 minutes. The Square was a wonderfully conceived Arts and Crafts style grouping of connected buildings. Atterbury put a lot of imagination into every detail of its construction. At the heart of it was the Forest Hills Inn, where guests had to have references in order to stay. It was more of a residential hotel, not a transient hotel, and rooms were rented by the week.

The Inn had reception and smoking rooms on a loggia which overlooked the square, and fine dining was available from rooms that overlooked the Greenway and Tea Garden. They hosted weddings and other special events, and many athletic activities could be enjoyed, including golf, billiards, squash, and of course, tennis. The famous West Side Tennis club was nearby. The Inn officially opened in 1912.

A world away from the genteel life in the manicured lawns of the Gardens was the world of the Great Depression, and the frustrated lives of people already out of work, and out of hope. This was before unemployment insurance, or welfare, or food stamps. People were basically on their own, and as things got worse in the city, those most marginalized, even before the Depression, were hurting the worst.

African Americans in New York City in the 1930s were, as a group, not doing all that well. Even the most menial labor jobs that used to be a black man’s lot were now being fought over by others who were also desperate to feed their families. New York did not have the Jim Crow laws of the South, but racism and a general nation-wide inability to see African Americans rise much higher than service jobs was taking its toll.

Of course, in spite of the obstacles, there were those who strove to defy conventional expectations, and do better. There was a small class of black professionals – doctors, lawyers, teachers, insurance men, clergy and mortuary service providers, who rose to the top of the black community, serving mostly the needs of their own communities.

It was not impossible in New York for a black man to go to law school, even an elite law school like Columbia Law, but what does he do with that degree afterward? Opportunities were few, and private practice didn’t always pay the bills. For James Stephen Glover, a black lawyer in 1931, that meant taking a job as a headwaiter in the Forest Hills Inn.

“NEGRO, HEADWAITER AT NIGHT, WINS MURDER CASE FOR CLIENT” the headlines read. James Stephen Glover had successfully defended his client in a murder case, while still holding down his job as a headwaiter at the Inn. The defendant was a 24 year old black man named Reginald Haywood, who was accused of stabbing another black man to death at a party in South Jamaica. Haywood contended that it was self-defense, and he had been attacked by James Mack, 26, and had acted to protect himself.

We know very little about the case, or anyone involved in it, but somehow, Haywood, who was from Philadelphia, had found Mr. Glover, and he proved to be a superior advocate. The papers noted that Glover, who was a middle-aged man with a quiet demeanor, and had been a lawyer for twenty years, had “an experienced air and won the praise of spectators and court attaches”. The jury came back in only a matter of hours with a verdict of “not guilty.”

The paper went on to say that Glover only practiced law occasionally, although he had been a member of the bar for twenty years. He had worked as a waiter at the Inn for fifteen years, and was well-liked by staff, management and customers. He only took cases that he could manage on his time off from work. Every judge in Queens knew him; the paper went on to say, and scheduled his court appearances around his work at the Inn. Mr. Glover took few cases, these days. He was married, and lived in Jamaica.

I spent quite a bit of time trying to track down James Stephen Glover, on the internet. His name never appears again, not in the newspapers, certainly not as a lawyer. What a shame. There he was, in 1931, defending a man on trial for his life, and he not only succeeded, he impressed the cynical world of court groupies and employees who no doubt, saw and heard it all. He was respected by the judges of Queens enough for them to schedule around him, so that he could keep his job at the Inn.

And there at the Inn, the management, staff, and customers all knew he was a Columbia Law graduate, not just last year, but for twenty years, and they were content to have him serve them dinner and pour coffee. Or as headwaiter, he probably went around checking to see if everything was alright with the guests. There is certainly a pride in that, and Glover probably made more money as head waiter than he would have as an independent black trial lawyer. It was the Depression, after all.

But again, what a shame. I wonder how he saw himself, I wonder if he was angry, sad, or just resigned to the fact that the world was not ready for him yet. I wonder if he ever was approached by patrons of the Inn for legal advice, or if any of the lawyers he served saw him as an equal, a brother-in-arms, or just the Negro putting the plate down in front of him, murmuring, “Here you go, sir, your steak.” He probably served many of the judges he stood before in court. Did he tell any of them, “Your honor, how was the pinot with your veal, last night? And oh, my client is pleading not guilty.” Did anyone think that he was wasted where he was? Did he? Did anyone try to do anything about it? We’ll never know. GMAP

(1920s Postcard: Rego-Forest Preservation Council)


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  1. Fascinating article about Glover, I had never heard of him and his story before, thanks for sharing!

    As mentioned, Forest Hills Gardens still is a very wealthy neighborhood. The homes there are beautiful, but cost well into the millions of dollars. Unforunately, there is no diversity there as is in Forest Hills proper. The contrast of the homes in the Gardens compared with the coops and attached row houses of Forest Hills is striking, although so close in proximity, they are truly worlds apart.