Mathews Model Flats

Mathews Model Flats, also called Mathews Flats, are a type of low-rise brick apartment house built in Queens, New York City, United States, mostly between about 1908 and 1930. They were the work of the G. X. Mathews Company, which built more than 3,000 buildings in Queens. The flats became the characteristic residential building of Ridgewood. The buildings are New Law Tenements, designed to comply with the 1901 New York State Tenement House Act. A typical example is three stories tall above a basement; it contains six apartments, two on each floor, on a lot about 27.5 feet (8.4 m) wide. Each apartment has five rooms and a private bathroom, offering more space, light, and sanitation than the older tenements of Williamsburg and the Lower East Side. The street fronts consist of pale Kreischer brick from Staten Island and are finished with cast-stone trim, a pressed-metal cornice, and iron railings at the stoops and areaways. In 1915 the New York City Tenement House Department displayed the Mathews Model Flats at the Panama–Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco as an example of affordable working-class housing. Mathews Flats exist as contributing properties within Ridgewood historic districts designated by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission and are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.