Lincoln-Mercury Corp.

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Address: 165-08 Liberty Avenue
Neighborhood: Jamaica
Architect:  Braunstein, Benjamin
Year: 1948
Current Status: Significantly Altered
Award:  Bronze Plaque
Typology:  Commercial Building

This is the oldest auto showroom to be given a Queens Chamber of Commerce Building Award and shows the growing influence of the automotive industry, especially post World War II. Prominent architects were designing car showrooms like Frank Lloyd Wright’s Hoffman Auto Showroom on Park Avenue (constructed 1954, demolished 2013) and Morris Lapidus’s Rich Haven Oldsmobile Showroom in Woodside from 1949.

The one-story Lincoln-Mercury building featured a rounded showroom with floor to ceiling windows and finished with brick and terra cotta trim. Behind this was an open plan service station and repair shop. Schildkraut Inc. had sold Fords and Mercurys at this location since at least 1941, although its unclear if they commissioned this new building. On the site today is a rounded one-story structure that is connected to a much larger storage warehouse. Although this may be the remnant of the auto showroom, if so it has been too altered to confirm

Sources:

Desilets, Deborah. Morris Lapidus: The Architecture of Joy. Rizzolli, 2010. Print.

Long Island Daily Press (Jamaica, NY) 1 February 1941. Fultonhistory.com. Web.

NYC Loses a Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Interior. Docomomo-us New York/Tri-State. 11 April 2013. http://www.docomomo-nytri.org/2013/04/11/nyc-loses-a-frank-lloyd-wright-designed-interior/