The Lafayette
69-40 Yellowstone Boulevard, near 69th Road and Queens Boulevard, Forest Hills, Queens
BBL 4021410001 · BIN 4051289
- Year built
- 1942
- Type
- Cooperative
- Units
- 127
- Floors
- 6
- Landmark
- No
- Amenities
- Attended entrance, resident superintendent, elevators, fitness center, laundry room, bicycle storage and garage
- Financing
- Minimum 25% down payment — confirm with the managing agent.
- Flip tax
- None — confirm with the managing agent.
Own an apartment here? See what it would sell for.
A Private Pricing Opinion — what your apartment at The Lafayette would likely sell for today, what it costs to sell, and what you’d walk away with — reviewed personally against condition, exposures, renovation quality, and the competition actually on the market.
The Lafayette is a broad, six-story cooperative with 127 residences on Yellowstone Boulevard. Its early-1940s construction places it within Forest Hills' stock of substantial brick elevator apartment houses. A landscaped entrance and decorative portico mark the approach to a building whose residential footprint extends well beyond a narrow street frontage.
The apartment inventory ranges from studios to larger multibedroom homes. Sunken living rooms, entrance foyers and distinct dining areas appear in the layouts, giving the interiors a different organization from a contemporary open-plan condominium. Larger homes can include separated bedrooms and more than one bathroom.
The building combines that older apartment stock with an attended entrance, gym, laundry facilities and garage. Ownership is through Lafayette Owners Corp., so buyers acquire cooperative shares and occupancy rights. The cooperative's board application forms part of the purchase process.
Architecture and unit composition
The exterior is brick, with a symmetrical entrance composition and a substantial frontage. The building rises six stories, spreading its residential area across a wide site. Elevators serve the upper floors, and the larger floor plate accommodates apartments with different orientations and depths.
Prewar-era interior details include hardwood floors, high ceilings and arched openings in some homes. Sunken living rooms create a change in level between entry and principal living space. That arrangement can give the living room a defined perimeter, but it also introduces a step within the apartment.
The larger layouts offer a different purchase from the compact studios and one-bedroom homes. Some have an entrance foyer that functions as a separate transition space, while others use a dining area adjoining the main room. Room dimensions and circulation deserve attention because the same bedroom count can encompass markedly different amounts of usable area.
Corner apartments can have windows on more than one exposure. Certain larger homes have windowed kitchens and bathrooms, and separated bedrooms occur in the inventory. These are apartment-specific characteristics; a photograph of one corner layout does not describe the interior light of every home in the building.
Renovated kitchens and bathrooms coexist with more original interiors. A buyer purchasing an older apartment is also choosing the scope of work needed within a cooperative that controls alterations. Original room proportions can remain intact even after cabinets, appliances and plumbing fixtures have been replaced.
Building operations
The Lafayette has an attended entrance and a resident superintendent. Shared facilities include a fitness center, bicycle storage and a laundry room. Garage parking is subject to a waiting list, so having a garage doesn't guarantee a space will be available when an apartment closes.
The gym and bicycle facilities carry separate charges in current descriptions. Their costs should be distinguished from the base monthly maintenance when comparing homes. The apartment's advertised maintenance and the expenses associated with optional facilities are different parts of the ownership budget.
Heat, hot water and cooking gas are included in maintenance. The cooperative owns the underlying property and pays its building expenses, while shareholders pay maintenance according to their allocated shares. A larger apartment's maintenance may reflect its share allocation in addition to its interior floor area.
DOF places the property in Class 2 and shows no building-wide abatement. This tax class has no assessment-growth cap. Real-estate taxes are an expense of the cooperative and reach shareholders through maintenance, so there is no separate condominium apartment tax bill to compare against the monthly charge.
Policy framework
The current purchase terms call for at least 25% down, and pets are permitted — confirm with the managing agent. Subletting is described as available after two years of residency, also subject to confirmation of the current rule and approval procedure. These terms affect the amount of cash needed to purchase and the timing of any later rental use.
A buyer planning immediate investment use should address the residency requirement before committing to the purchase. A cooperative resale and a sponsor sale can involve different approval circumstances; the seller's status should be clear in the proposed transaction.
Recent sales
Recent transfers at this building, curated by The Roebling Team research desk. Prices are the transfer amounts recorded with the NYC Department of Finance; apartment-level detail is checked against the building’s own file in The Roebling Research Library before publishing.
| Date | Unit | Apartment | Price | PPSF | vs. Ask |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mar 25, 2025 | 421 | 2 BR · 2 BA · 1,500 sf | $660,000 | $440/sf | -4.3% |
| Aug 24, 2015 | 520 | 1 BR · 1 BA | $265,000 | +2.4% |
Market read. Most recent trades (2025) cleared a median $440/sf across 1 sale.
Sales sourced from NYC Department of Finance recorded transfers (BBL 4-02141-0001) and verified listing data. Apartment-level facts (line, condition, asking-price context) curated and cross-verified by The Roebling Team research desk. Not all transactions cross-verify with ACRIS records — sponsor and LLC purchases sometimes record at stipulated values rather than market price; square footage on co-ops is not officially recorded, figures shown are approximate.
Buying here? Co-op closing costs typically run 2 to 3% of the price. See NYC co-op and condo closing costs, line by line.
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Comparable buildings
- Lane Towers: A nearby cooperative offering a taller, postwar alternative to The Lafayette's six-story form.
- Kennedy House: A much larger Forest Hills cooperative tower for comparing service, amenities and upper-floor inventory.
- The Summit Condominium: A condominium alternative in the broader area for buyers weighing cooperative ownership against separate unit ownership.
- Plymouth Hall: A farther Queens comparison in Sunnyside, with prewar cooperative interiors in a six-story building.
- The Crescent House: An Astoria cooperative of similar overall residential scale, with a postwar six-story form.
More Forest Hills buildings
- The Chatham, 108-25 72nd Avenue — 1939 co-op
- The Dorian, 72-11 110th Street — 1948 co-op
- The Fairview, 111-45 76th Drive — 1936 co-op
- The Milana, 106-20 70th Avenue — 2012 condominium
- The Pinnacle Condominium, 112-01 Queens Boulevard — 1991 condominium
- The Sunrise Forest Hills, 109-17–109-19 72nd Road — 2017 condominium
The neighborhood
For the full neighborhood — its buildings, character, and market — read The Roebling Team Guide to Forest Hills.
The full playbook — what goes in the package, how boards read your financials, the interview, and the timeline — plus sample cover, reference, and personal letters you can adapt.
How to read the facts on this page. Items attributed to an offering plan describe the building as it was offered at that filing — unit mix, square footage, the amenity program as planned. They are not a statement about how the building operates today. Tax and compliance figures are sourced separately to current City records and carry their own dates. House rules, staffing and fee policy can change by board resolution without any public filing: treat every policy line here as a starting point for diligence and confirm it with the managing agent. Where this page compares one building or neighborhood to another, that is our analysis of the recorded record — it names the measure, the period and the sample it rests on, and it is an observation about medians rather than a prediction about any particular apartment.
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