Construction is finished on Lost Battalion Hall Recreation Center, a two-story recreational building at 93-29 Queens Boulevard in Rego Park, Queens. Designed by 1100 Architect and built by D & S Restoration, Inc. for the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, the $25.9 million project entailed a top-to-bottom reconstruction of the 36,000-square-foot structure, which now houses a gymnasium with a newly painted basketball court, a weightlifting area, a spin studio, and multipurpose recreation spaces, along with a redesigned entrance and lobby, new locker and changing facilities, and upgraded safety and building systems.
1100 Architect’s intervention reorganizes the entry sequence with a glass-enclosed stair connecting the upper and lower levels under the city’s Active Design initiative. The lower level accommodates dedicated fitness rooms, a spin studio, and a weightlifting platform behind an aluminum mesh enclosure, with glass partitions and acoustic separation allowing simultaneous programming. The gymnasium’s WPA murals, painted in 1938 by Oscar Julius and restored in 1995, were carefully covered and protected throughout construction.
Image via NYC.
Accessibility drove much of the scope: A former storage room was converted into accessible restrooms, undersized bathrooms became changing rooms, and the entrance stairways were relocated and enclosed, with a new staircase added on the east side. New fire alarm and sprinkler systems, a rooftop generator, a water line, water heaters, and a heating and cooling system join modernized stormwater, mechanical, electrical, and plumbing infrastructure.
Lost Battalion Hall was constructed in 1939 after the Works Progress Administration appropriated $100,000 for a facility with a firing range and drill hall for the Queens Veterans of Foreign Wars and the American Legion. Named for the 500-plus soldiers of the U.S. Army’s 77th Division surrounded by German forces in the Argonne Forest in October 1918, the Art Moderne building came under Parks jurisdiction on December 6, 1960; the New York Knicks used its gymnasium as an auxiliary practice facility in the 1960s, and the center nurtured talent including Queens native Kenny “The Jet” Smith.
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This stands just west of an imposing Brutalist AT&T building in dark brick and granite.