Bifano, Lou with Levien, Maurice B. | Bronze Plaque for Rehabilitations and Alterations | Significantly Altered | Long Island City | Industrial Building | 1966 | Today this building is a plain brick industrial building that has been converted to educational use. But when it won an award in 1966, the building featured an unusual combination of breeze block screens, fieldstone veneer around the entrance, aluminum framing the windows, and vertical piers of marble chips embedded in white cement. Sadly, none of this remains today as an example of when companies were using eye-catching buildings to stand out from fellow competitors. The owner of the building Arnold Levien likely gave the architect and his relative, Maurice Levien, a loose hand to design as he liked when he radically altered the building from its previous appearance.
Meltzer, George J. | Bronze Plaque for Rehabilitations and Alterations | Extant | Queens Village | Bank | 1971 | The rehabilitation of this bank structure was done to address “serious deficiencies in design” according to the Queens Chamber program. The original bank was built in 1960 before zoning in the area changed so the bank management was limited in what changes they could make and were unable to extent the building substantially. Instead the space was opened up and stone walls and large glass windows with bronzed aluminum trim were used to frame the exterior.
Perlstein, Jerome W. | Bronze Plaque for Rehabilitations and Alterations | Extant | Long Island City | Industrial Building | 1967 | The Walter Lippmann Building’s rehabilitation is truly wonderful and unexpected, although now marred by modern alterations. During the rehab, to keep costs down, a large tile mural was added to several areas of the exterior, including over the entrance, providing a striking focal point for this industrial street. At some point windows were punched through the main mural, destroying its integrity but the design remains mostly intact and is an enjoyable sight to come upon.
Bifano, Lou with Levien, Maurice B. | Bronze Plaque for Rehabilitations and Alterations | Significantly Altered | Long Island City | Industrial Building | 1966 | Today this building is a plain brick industrial building that has been converted to educational use. But when it won an award in 1966, the building featured an unusual combination of breeze block screens, fieldstone veneer around the entrance, aluminum framing the windows, and vertical piers of marble chips embedded in white cement. Sadly, none of this remains today as an example of when companies were using eye-catching buildings to stand out from fellow competitors. The owner of the building Arnold Levien likely gave the architect and his relative, Maurice Levien, a loose hand to design as he liked when he radically altered the building from its previous appearance.
Neumann, Herbert W. with Ryder, Alfred H. | Bronze Plaque for Rehabilitations and Alterations | Significantly Altered | Jamaica | Office Building | 1965 | The rehabilitation of this office building consisted of recladding the first floor in white granite and adding porcelain enamel panels of blue and white to the upper floors. The building also included newly designed stylized signage including the company’s blue gas flame, a projecting blue and white sign, and blue lettering above the new central entrance. Today the building has been completely stripped of all decorative elements and paneling, although the white granite at the base is still visible around the side entrances.
