Affable Grotesques

Fifteen years ago, Kevin Walsh, the terminal nostalgist behind the long-running website Forgotten New York, griped in the comments of a Gothamist article (headline: “A Home Is a Queens Castle”) about the impact new zoning laws were having in Forest Hills. “Look, architecture is over,” Walsh portended, referring to the perceived takeover of the Tudorful neighborhood by Bad Taste. In the early aughts, Bukharan Jewish immigrants, after fleeing the chaos of post–Soviet Union Central Asia, staked out their vision of the good life in this corner of central Queens. Some began buying homes and converting them to mondo manors. Distended to embassylike proportions and churlish in demeanor, these piebald palazzi incorporated a few orientalish signifiers—Persian pointed windows, lovey-dovey wrought iron—but otherwise hewed to received McMansion models. Any elaborations thereof were unsystematic, unless one accepts …