Loose-Wiles Company Building, ca. 1912. Once the largest factory building under one roof, the building constructed c. 1912 was called the "Thousand Windows Bakery." It housed the Loose Wiles or Sunshine Biscuit factory. They manufactured their "trademark" Sunshine biscuits as well as Saltines, Hydrox Cookies, and Animal Crackers. The factory closed in the 1980s and the iconic electric sign, which had not even been installed when this photograph was taken, was removed (though later occupants of the building have added their own signage to the still-standing metal framework).

(Morrell Smith, 1925-27) Colloquially known as the “Long Island City Clock Tower,” this neo-Gothic style building was designated as a New York City Individual Landmark in 2015, but it is a landmark in every sense of the word. Standing at 14 stories tall, the structure was Queens’ tallest until the construction of the Citigroup Building at One Court Square in 1990. Its location in one of the borough’s busiest transportation hubs has made the building a prominent fixture. Queensboro Bridge Plaza (now Queens Plaza) became an important commercial center after the 1909 completion of the Queensboro Bridge and the construction of numerous elevated transit lines that converged here. The Manhattan Company, founded by Aaron Burr in 1799 and a precursor to J. P. Morgan Chase & Co., merged with the Bank of Long Island in 1920 and established 40 branches in Queens over the next decade. This building, located in the heart of the borough, would be a showpiece for the company. Its grand, 14-foot diameter, the four-faced clock has provided subway riders with a time check on their commute to work for roughly 90 years. The clock tower itself occupies the top three stories of the building. When it opened in 1927, the Bank of the Manhattan Company occupied the basement, ground floor, and mezzanine, and the rest of the building was rented as office space. The banking hall’s interior, finished in marble with brass hardware throughout, remains largely intact, though covered in gypsum wallboard. The exterior is clad in buff brick with limestone trim, and its verticality is emphasized by bands of contrasting brick that draw the eye to the highly ornate clock tower. In addition to the clock faces, this section features reliefs of the god Oceanus, a symbol of the bank, and monograms of the bank’s initials, as well as a crenelated roofline.

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.

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.

Pan American Airways Building,1946. The large Jet Blue rooftop sign that currently graces a nearby building was not the first airline logo to top a Long Island City building. During the middle part of the 20th century Pan-Am, whose logo more memorably topped the building just north of Grand Central Terminal, also occupied a building on Queens Plaza. The building seen here in 1946 does not include the rooftop sign which was installed c.1960.