Salerni, Guerino | Honorable Mention | Demolished | Douglaston | Residence | 1957 | More than one residence of the Romorini Family won Queens Chamber of Commerce Awards, but this one is no longer extant. Largely altered at this time of this survey, the standard two story house with attached garage was gutted down to the frame and the brick, stone, and wood facade removed. The property exists on a quiet cul de sac abutting the campus of the Queens Chamber award-winner Cathedral College.
Lama Proskauer Prober | Honorable Mention | Extant | Douglaston | Commercial Building | 1962 | The former Shell station consists of a plain brick building with four bays and a hipped roof at the rear of the lot. The site is now used as parking for a nearby restaurant. While not particularly interesting, the service station was designed by Lama, Proskauer, Prober, a prolific but largely unheralded firm, that designed hundreds of buildings, mainly service stations, but also apartment complexes across the city. The firm was active for a long span of time, from the 1920s until at least the 1980s. As real estate prices have continued to rise and service stations, especially in Manhattan, have been replaced by new development, this firm’s body of work is rapidly shrinking.
Sole, George J. | Honorable Mention | Extant | Douglaston | School or College | 1960 | George Sole, this building’s architect, is known mostly for designing buildings for the Catholic dioceses including prominent commissions at JFK Airport and near the United Nations. Here however, he designed an international-style public school on a steeply sloping site. The entrance, at the intersection of 60th Avenue and Marathon Parkway is one-story, clad in fieldstone and topped with a curved roof overhang. The school then spreads out behind the entrance, dropping to five stories above ground at the rear of the site. Other materials used include blue and red brickface, tan enamel panels, and aluminum detailing at the entrances and window surrounds.
Marks, Irving M. | Honorable Mention | Extant | Douglaston | Residence | 1956 | This ranch-style house extends along a gently sloping lot near Little Neck Bay. The building is of frame construction but does incorporate brick cladding around the lower half of the exterior. There is a garage under the structure at the lowest part of the slope. The residence is sited within the Douglaston Historic District.
Structural Engineering Bureau of Con Edison | Honorable Mention | Extant | Douglaston | Other | 1952 | This honorable mention is mostly a minimally landscaped plot. Con Edison used evergreen trees and shrubs to shield the substation equipment from the surrounding residential neighborhood. Today the evergreens have grown substantially with no branches at the bottom, making the equipment considerably more visible behind smaller shrubbery. In addition, the neighborhood has continued to expand, with houses and a later mid-century Jewish Center directly abutting the Con Ed property. This makes the need to hide this equipment possibly less of a necessity than when the area was more remote and bucolic.
