As Queens developed into a suburban mecca at the beggining of the last century, developers promoted its pastoral qualities with quaint references for houses such as "single-cottage" (detached house) and "double-cottage" (semi-detached house). This typology of "Small Houses" was created for the cottage-scale houses that still survive in the borough. It can be a surreal experience when one of these diminutive structures is dwarfed by a large SUV or mini-van parked in front of it. In some examples the home-owner has decided between a door and a bay window at the front façade (second row, left) where there doesn't appear to be room for both. In others, size does not seem to limit complexity: multiple gabled volumes combine and a dozen different roof planes intersect down the side elevation of a small gray house in Jackson Heights (third row, left).

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