Luongo, Vincent D. | Bronze Plaque for Rehabilitation | Extant | Ozone Park | Religious Building | 1960 | St. Stanislaus was considered an award-winning rehabilitation, but in actuality only the foundation was left standing when the original frame church was taken down and expanded. Built in Ozone Park for a growing Polish population, the new church accommodated 500 parishioners and the walls were rebuilt in brick over a steel framework. The exterior design is restrained with brick cladding and limestone detailing. The belltower above the entrance was also an addition to the new building.
Fellheimer and Wagner | Special Bronze Plaque | Extant | Flushing | School or College | 1961 | This major addition to the Queens College campus received a Special Bronze Plaque in 1961. Containing new theaters, classrooms, workshops, rehearsal spaces, a television studio, and a speech clinic, each component of the complex is a different shape. Two major theater spaces, the Colden Auditorium (originally seating 2,143) and the Queens College Theatre (seating 500) face out onto the street, while the rest of the complex faces inward. The other components are separate music and speech wings and a speech clinic. Unusually, the central component is an outdoor amphitheatre accessed by covered walkways between the classroom wings. All buildings are clad in white brick with some accents in light blue. Original metal lettering is visible throughout. From 2010-2012, the theater spaces and music building were renovated and updated by WASA Studio A, the successor firm to the original architects Fellheimer and Wagner. But other than the exterior of the Colden Auditorium, most visible major changes occurred on the interior of the complex.
Raymond Irrera Associates | Honorable Mention | Extant | Richmond Hill | Office Building | 1959 | The Leo Kearns series of funeral home facilities are unique within the Queens Modern lexicon, featuring elements of West Coast modernism and showing the influence of Frank Lloyd Wright, both rarities in the borough’s mid-century design. The former executive office building, now a daycare center is much more restrained than the two extant funeral homes, and is largely a brick cube with simple limestone and granite detailing. Raymond Irrera did this building and one of the two funeral buildings, with Meisner doing the other, so its unclear why the Kearns company employed a more restrained style here.
LaPierre Litchfield and Partners | Honorable Mention | Extant | Jamaica Estates | Bank | 1958 | This one story bank is a stripped-down version of the Colonial Revival. The Georgian and Colonial styles were popular revivals in the 1950s and 60s, continuing to be even more popular around the Bicentennial in 1976. But unlike more high-style versions such as the Queens County Savings Banks in Kew Gardens Hills and Little Neck, here the building only nods to the style with a tiny cupola and brickface.
Civkin, Victor | Honorable Mention | Extant | Belle Harbor | Religious Building | 1956 | This synagogue is located in the quiet residential setting of Belle Harbour. The building is faced with quarry stone and brick and includes some interesting temple details like the row of front doors shaped like an open book. The complex includes the main sanctuary, a balcony, a school, a chapel, a roof terrace, and a ballroom. Badly damaged during Hurricane Sandy with major flooding of its lower floors, the building only partially reopened in 2014 and has still not fully recovered. Victor Civkin, the synagogue’s architect was not particularly well-known especially in New York. However he also designed a temple using similar materials in Fairfield, Connecticut, as well as numerous residential structures in southwest Connecticut.
