This one-story bank still sits at the beginning of Queens Boulevard, sited by itself along the road with a large expanse of parking behind it. The orientation has changed with the entrance moved to the other side of the building and all original details are now obscured or removed.
The Kew Gardens Hills branch of the Queens County Savings Bank is a high-style interpretation of Philadelphia’s Independence Hall. Like that building, this one is a two-story brick structure with a central six-segment central tower. The details are also similar to Independence Hall, with the tower incorporating four clock faces, a cupola, spire, and weathervane. The main building has wings of two bays wide instead of three like Independence Hall. the interior is decorated with several significant illustrations of American history, most notably a replica of the Liberty Bell inside the lobby. The double-height banking hall has decorative wood paneling, moldings, a decorative cornice, and large reproductions of paintings including Washington Crossing the Delaware and the Signers of the Declaration of Independence behind the teller counter.
St. John’s Chapel at St. John’s Cemetery is a modern take on a gothic structure. The small, 160-seat chapel is immediately adjacent to the cemetery’s administration building inside the main Victorian-era entrance gates at 80th Street and Metropolitan Avenue. The building is clad in granite and limestone and features several limestone carvings above the front entrance as well as on a tower at the rear of the building. The interior includes modern figurative stained glass and wood interior detailing including decorative painted details on the ceiling trusses. The metal steeple on the small tower adjacent to the main structure is of a more modern design seen on buildings of this era.
This one-story shopping center curves along Kissena Boulevard and originally featured glass storefronts with an enormous 800 car parking lot in the rear, highlighting the increasing focus on the automobile in mid-century design. Many of the original features of the shopping center have vanished including a tall 66-foot vertical tower and several of the street-side windows have been bricked in to reorient the shopping toward the parking lot. An original mosaic cornucopia still decorates the facade on the street and the original brick facade and limestone detailing is also visible.
This is another fairly traditional bank branches in the Georgian Revival style. The entrance portico is supported by columns and the symmetrical facade uses brick face, a wood cornice, a slate roof, and a cupola to illustrate historical design. The banking hall was originally double height with an arched ceiling. This branch predates Carlson’s masterpiece, the Kew Gardens Hills branch of the Queens County Savings Bank, also done in the Georgia style as a replica of Independence Hall. That commission could possibly be based on the success of the design of the Douglaston branch.