MoMA PS1 22-25 Jackson Avenue 1892; addition: Andrew Berman Architect 2011 This Romanesque Revival structure, featuring variegated brick patterns and a plethora of arched windows, was built in 1892 as the First Ward School for the independent Long Island City. The bright red brick façade is enhanced by ornate terra cotta detailing, including floral motifs on the gables, which were supplied by the nearby New York Architectural Terra Cotta Company (see site #9). The school’s original 35 classrooms could accommodate up to 1,000 students, and its southwest corner once boasted a grand tower holding a clock and bell. After the school closed its doors in the early 1960s, the Institute of Art and Urban Resources took over the building for use as a gallery and studio space. The Institute ultimately evolved into the P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, which merged with the Museum of Modern Art in 2000 to become MoMA PS1. This affiliation has kept MoMA involved in contemporary developments in the art world, while providing this remarkable building with more visibility and responsible management. The success of the merger and the continuing vibrancy of the PS1 building are best represented by the cast concrete addition constructed in 2011 to serve as a new entrance and art display space for the growing museum.

Public School 1, ca. 1939. 21st Street, at the northeast corner of 46th Road, showing Public School No. 1. The view is from Jackson Avenue (tracks) across a triangular area occupied by a gasoline station. 21st Street is on the left. The First Ward School was built in 1892 in a Romanesque Revival style rendered in red brick and terra cotta. The school which originally served the independent Long Island City had 35 classrooms. The school closed in 1963 due to underenrollment. Over the last century there were numerous alterations to the building: in 1904 a small addition and in the 1970s the clock and bell tower at the southwest corner was removed. The original MoMA P.S. 1 began in 1971 as the Institute for Art and Urban Resources Inc. In 1976 this organization, which aimed to use underutilized and abandoned spaces across New York City as exhibit spaces, opened their first major exhibit in the old school building. In 2000 the organization then called P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center merged with MoMA to create the current museum.

Ludwig Baumann and Co. warehouse, 1948. Ludwig Baumann was a Bohemian immigrant who arrived in New York in the mid 19th century and became a clerk in a grocery store. During the Civil War, he and his brother opened a popular furniture store. Ludwig himself died in 1904 but the company maintained under the helm of his sons and partners. This building was built in 1924 as a furniture warehouse and would remain in that function until the late 1950s when the company offered it for sale as part of a major liquidation sell off.

The Metropolitan Building, located at 27-42 Thomson Avenue, was home to the Zeese Wilkinson Company from 1921 until 1950. The company was listed in an advertisement in the "American Printer" on June 20th, 1922, stating that the company occupied "115,000 square feet of floor space...in the 5th and 6th floors of the new Metropolitan Building." The company closed in 1950. The Metropolitan Building, now called the "Arris Lofts" is presently a luxury residential building.

Masonic Temple of Long Island City. The cornerstone of this building was laid in 1906 to much pomp and circumstance and with many high ranking Freemasons from around New York State in attendance.

Neptune Meter Company Factory, 1910.

Though most of the historic details of this large residential building have been stripped (except for the iron fencing on the roof), the wood frame building seen in this photograph still stands hidden under the vinyl siding of its current facade.

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.

Standing at 27-28 Thomson Avenue, the triangular Arris Lofts was originally constructed as an industrial building. Typical for a factory building, the façade is unadorned but dominated by large windows that provided plenty of natural light for the interior workspace. This eight-story, poured concrete structure was one of six Eagle Electric warehouses in Long Island City, producing electrical switches and other equipment and gaining notoriety for its billboards proclaiming that “Perfection Is Not An Accident.” Later, the building served as the MetLife printing plant before its conversion to luxury apartments in 2008. Architect Costas Kondylis was hired to transform this loft space into 237 luxury apartments while retaining the building’s original industrial feel.

The Long Island City Courthouse was constructed between 1872 and 1876, more than two decades before Queens became a part of the Greater New York City. The French Second Empire style building was designed by a Massachusetts architect named George Hathorne. Suffering the fate of many 19th century buildings, the structure was ravaged by fire in 1904. Between 1904 and 1908 it was completely redesigned by local Queens architect Peter M. Coco who stripped the exterior of much of its ornamentation and added two stories and two entranceway columns to create a neo-Classical courthouse. (The resulting building is seen here in 1932 and remains the same today.)

"Survey photograph documenting conditions in Long Island City at the corner of Ely and Jackson Avenues. View of intersection shows pedestrians on the sidewalk, trolley tracks, storefronts, advertising for George Ehret's Extra Beer and the Sullivan's Cafe, 1913."

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.

Elevated structure of the Flushing Line at Ely Avenue, October 1, 1920. Camera view is looking south showing columns, street, sidewalk, billboard advertisements, apartment houses and a truck. At right is No. 2 Ely Avenue (as 23rd Street was then known), roughly at the site of the present-day Court Square Diner.

5Pointz was claimed as the "World's Premier Graffiti Mecca," attracting international artists and graffiti writers to cover the outside walls of the disused factory on the outskirts of Queens. Inside, hundreds of artists occupied studios that formed a collaborative community of makers. The same developer who made the growth of the space possible would ultimately call for its demise.

(Peter M. Coco, 1904-1908) In the late 19th century, the county seat was relocated to Long Island City, which was emblematic of the area’s increasing importance as an independent municipality that boasted its own public school system, regular police force and pure water supply. The new county seat was located in a two-story, French Second Empire building on Court Square, a prominent place in the growing city. Unfortunately, the structure was gutted by a fire in 1904, so a new building was commissioned from architect Peter Coco. A graduate of Cooper Union, Coco designed the building in the neo-English Renaissance style, incorporating many interesting details, such as the pairs of eagles set above cartouches around the third story. When the boroughs were consolidated in 1898, Long Island City lost its status as the county seat to Jamaica, yet the courthouse remained in use as the county courthouse until being taken over for use by the state’s Supreme Court in 1932. This dignified four-story building has remained a focal point for judicial activity in Queens for over a century, serving as the site of many notable trials, including that of Ruth Brown Snyder and Henry Judd Gray, who were famously executed at Sing Sing Prison in 1928 after being convicted in the murder of Snyder’s husband, Albert Snyder. The trial was widely publicized and large crowds gathered outside the courthouse for the verdict on May 9, 1927.

"Looking north toward the staircase to the 45th Road- Court House Square Station, 1920." Taken only seven years after the previous photograph of the same corner, the streetscape has drastically changed. In November of 1916 the 45th Road–Court House Square station of the Corona Line (now Flushing Line or 7 Train) opened as two track, two platform elevated station.

Jackson Ave., (background) south side showing overhead the elevated branch of the I.R.T. Subway on 23rd Street, 1936. This photograph was taken as part of the New Deal era Federal Art Project, which provided jobs for out of work artists, including photographers.