This warehouse was the roasting plant of the Eppens Smith Co. Coffee Plant. The company was first located on Wall Street among a variety of other merchants in the coffee and tea business. In fact, there was quite a population of dealers and roasters in the caffeine industry in the Financial District, filling their air with the aroma of roasted coffee. Eppens Smith was founded as Pupeke & Reif in 1855. The company had roasting facilities which occupied two addresses on Warren Street, both of which were destroyed by an explosion in 1900. After years of litigation, the company again found success and was able to open locations around the country. Forty years later, Pupeke & Reif, now called Eppens Smith Co., purchased a building formerly occupied by the United Drug Syndicate on Borden Avenue in the industrial neighborhood of Hunter's Point, Queens. Eppens Smith roasted coffee here until the 1950s, when they were purchased by Chock Full 'O Nuts.

Regina Horowitz Margareten was a Hungarian-Jewish immigrant American, matriarch of a kosher food dynasty, business woman and “Matzo Queen.”

Tunnel Under Construction in Long Island City,1916. The Hunter’s Point station opened in February of 1916, and in this photograph workers are building the tracks that lead out of the Steinway Tunnel to the next station, Court Square. The building under construction to the left was known for a time as the Queens Subway Building, where the County Seat was located, as well as the Degnon Contracting Company, who controlled the freight terminal nearby. The building was later taken over by Paragon Oil, and is currently a storage facility.

New York City Live Poultry Terminal, 1941. During the 1930s, the live poultry trade in New York City was the largest in the world and the prices set in New York were the benchmark for the sale of poultry nationally. The poultry market was also well known as one of the oldest mafia "rackets." From a 1910 case in which 87 poultry dealers plead guilty to running a poultry cartel to a 1953 investigation into a market inspector receiving graft from the dealers, the chicken business was rife with unethical, illegal, and dishonest dealings.

Regina Howoritz-Margareten, a Hungarian-Jewish immigrant American, quickly became matriarch of a kosher food dynasty, business woman and yes, "matzo queen" (which also sounds like a great name for a drag queen.)