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.
Boegel and Allodi | Bronze Plaque for Schools and Colleges | Extant | Bellerose | Religious Building | 1966 | St. Gregory’s Auditorium is an addition to St. Gregory the Great School, itself founded in 1953. The school faces 87th Avenue but the auditorium faces a service road of Cross Island Parkway and an embankment of the parkway itself. The building’s design uses traditional materials of red brick. limestone trim, and Vermont slate on the roof. The building’s name is inscribed above the entrance.
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.
Shreve Lamb and Harmon Associates | Bronze Plaque for Schools and Colleges | Extant | Jamaica | Religious Building | 1966 | This educational building is built on a sharp slope above Hillside Avenue. The design is a simple brick faced box with peaked bays from the front connected to the neighboring church with a glassed in walkway. At the rear the building projects out over the parking lot with an additional floor exposed. A simple and effective design from the firm that gave us the Empire State Building.
Birnbaum, Philip | Extant | Forest Hills | Apartment Building | 1966 | Kennedy House was seen as the height of fashion when it was built and today still retains cache for its high end amenities and stringent board. It was designed by the prolific Philip Birnbaum and was the tallest building in the borough when completed, at 34 stories. It is set back at an angle to Queens Boulevard, taking up less than 25% of the entire site with a wide entrance drive that originally included reflecting pools. The lobby is double-height and includes an enormous chandelier, original to the building. There is a rooftop swimming pool and apartments have large smoked-glass balconies.
