Now lined with trendy restaurants, fun bars, and interesting stores, its easy to imagine that Metropolitan Avenue is part of a new New York, but its history stretches back much further. Metropolitan Avenue was laid in 1813 following an American Indian Trail. It runs nearly eight miles between Brooklyn and Queens, connecting the East River with Jamaica Avenue.

Sackett & Wilhelms Lithographing and Publishing Co., 1952. The Sackett & Wilhelms Lithographing and Publishing Company had a problem. One of their publications was an illustrated humor magazine called Judge. The weather in New York, hot an humid, made the pages expand and the color of the graphics bleed. The moisture also made it difficult for the inked pages to dry in an appropriate timeframe. The company looked to a recent Cornell graduate named Willis Haviland Carrier who had developed a method to dry and cool the air. His invention controlled temperatures, humidity, air circulation, and ventilation and cleaned the air. In 1902 Sackett & Wilhelms installed Carrier's machinery, their publications dried better and faster and modern air conditioning was born! The factory building still stands today and is the home of the International Studio & Curatorial Program, a visual arts residency program.