TIMESLEDGER | QNS.COM | APRIL 15-21, 2022
13
SCRABBLE INVENTOR CREATED GAME WHILE LIVING IN JACKSON HEIGHTS
In conjunction with the Greater Astoria
Historial Society, TimesLedgerNewspapers
presents noteworthy events in the borough’s
history.
Born in Poughkeepsie, New York on April 13, 1899,
Alfred Mosher Butts is the inventor of the popular
board game Scrabble. Butts was an unemployed architect
during the Great Depression when he created
the hit word game while living in Jackson Heights,
Queens.
There is a street sign at the corner of 35th Avenue
and 81st Street in the Queens neighborhood with the
35th Avenue letters assigned a Scrabble point value.
The future inventor grew up in Poughkeepsie,
graduating from Poughkeepsie High School in 1917.
Butts graduated from the University of Pennsylvania
with a degree in architecture in 1924.
He worked at an architectural firm until he was
laid off in 1931, in the depths of the Depression. The
Queens resident soon fell on hard times.
The unemployed architect did not let his difficulties
get the better of him, however. He decided to use
his abundant free time to invent a game.
As a lifelong lover of crossword puzzles, he created
a word game he called Lexiko where players selected
letter tiles at random and made words with them. Butts
had no luck selling his invention to manufacturers.
Still undaunted, he refined and renamed his labor
of love, but again did not attract any commercial interest.
Butts was eventually rehired by his employer, but
continued to work on the game in his Jackson Heights
garden apartment and with family and friends in the
Community Methodist Church on 35th Avenue.
The game slowly attracted a local following. One
of the players, a social worker named James Brunot,
partnered with Butts in marketing the invention they
would call “Scrabble.”
At first, sales were slow, with sets manufactured
by hand in an abandoned schoolhouse in Connecticut.
In 1952, Scrabble got its “big break” when the Macy’s
department store placed a large order for the board
game. The following year, more than one million sets
were sold.
Today, Hasbro owns the US rights to Scrabble,
the second most popular board game in American
history. From modest beginnings in a Queens apartment
building, 150 million sets have sold worldwide,
and the game is available in 121 countries and more
than 30 languages. About 4,000 clubs gather around
the globe to enjoy Alfred Butts’ creation.
The Queens inventor did not become wealthy from
his creation, but did manage to live off of its royalties
in his retirement.
Although best remembered for his beloved word
game, Alfred Butts also left a legacy as an architect.
Among the buildings he designed are the Charles W.
Berry housing project on Staten Island and the Stanford
Free Library in Stanfordville, N.Y.
He was also an artist, with six of his drawings
housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art collection.
Alfred Butts passed away on April 4, 1993, just 9
days before his 94th birthday. Years later, when interviewed
about the 35th Avenue street sign, a local member
of the City Council remarked, “It’s important for
communities to identify having historic places. It’s an
important piece of Jackson Heights history.”
For further info, call the
Greater Astoria Historical
Society at 718-278-0700 or visit www.astorialic.
org.
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