Boak and Raad | Bronze Plaque for Commercial | Extant | Kew Gardens Hills | Retail or Shopping Center | Today this shopping center looks quaint and a little ragged, but when it opened, shopping strips like this were considered novel by orienting the entire site toward parking. The building is L-shaped with the anchor supermarket in the central corner. Portions of the flat canopy over the pedestrian sidewalk still remain and the painted brick facade is still visible. Originally a wooden post and rail fence surrounded the parking lot.
Weston, Martyn N. | Bronze Plaque for Commercial | Extant | Flushing | Retail or Shopping Center | 1953 | 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.
Barbanel and Levien | Bronze Plaque for Commercial | Demolished | Queens Village | Office Building | 1957 | Sadly this building, a little Miesian box in Queens Village, is no more. It is unclear when it was vanished but today the building is covered in huge awnings and houses a fruit and vegetable seller, although the framework of the building may exist under all that.
