Birnbaum, Philip | Bronze Plaque for Apartments | Extant | Bayside | Apartment Building | 1962 | Designed by prolific apartment designer Philip Birnbaum and built by noted Queens developer Morton Pickman, this 14-story apartment complex still towers over the Bayside neighborhood around it. The design is fairly standard for Birnbaum, efficient yet state of the art, providing amenities such as an Olympic swimming pool, rooftop garden, and private terraces. Some “of-the-moment” features are noted in the awards writeup, such as music played throughout the public spaces and an oriental style lobby. These elements have not survived to the present day, although the severe marble lobby has glints of its past.
Samuel Paul and Seymour Jarmul | Bronze Plaque for Commercial-Retail | Demolished | Bayside | Commercial Building | 1967 | The Water’s Edge Building is one of the few intentionally temporary structures in the Queens Modern pantheon. It was constructed by the Birchwood Park Organization as a showroom for the neighboring Water’s Edge community, a large planned development that also won its own award. The exhibit center included a landscaped garden, a model of the entire Water’s Edge community, and access to model homes. In the late 1960s it was replaced with a somewhat banal group of townhouses.
Perlstein, Jerome W. | Bronze Plaque for Residences | Extant | Bayside | Residence | 1964 | The Felixon Residence is sited on an extremely narrow corner lot coming to its narrowest where the driveway enters the property and leads to the garage under the house. The shape of the lot allows for an expansive frontage at the street with a wall of windows to the right of the entrance and a trellis running along the length of the facade to the right of the entrance. The central entrance hall opens into a living room with cathedral ceiling and sloping roof above. As with other Perlstein-designed projects, the exterior includes several materials, primarily wood but also stone veneer, brick, a shingle roof, and a large stone fireplace. The gently sloping front yard is covered in elaborately shaped plantings which add another element of unusualness to the design.
Samuel Paul and Seymour Jarmul | Bronze Plaque for Commercial-Retail | Demolished | Bayside | Commercial Building | 1967 | The Water’s Edge Building is one of the few intentionally temporary structures in the Queens Modern pantheon. It was constructed by the Birchwood Park Organization as a showroom for the neighboring Water’s Edge community, a large planned development that also won its own award. The exhibit center included a landscaped garden, a model of the entire Water’s Edge community, and access to model homes. In the late 1960s it was replaced with a somewhat banal group of townhouses.
Cahn, Morton S. | Bronze Plaque for Rehabilitations and Alterations | Extant | Bayside | Social Services Facility | 1969 | This building is a typical suburban style office structure of two floors featuring rows of international style windws and minimal exterior decoration. The structure was created by rehabilitating an older mixed use building in disrepair through years of neglect into a new, modern building for social services provided to youth with special needs. In 2006, NYABIC left the building and it has since become Chabad Lubavitch of Northeastern Queens.
