Queens: The Borough of Homes and Industry

In 1906, the NY Times reported that The Degnon Terminal Company had acquired some 362 building lots found amongst the “sunken meadows south of Jackson Avenue” from the estate of Governor Roscoe P. Flower at prices ranging from $1,000-$1,500 each. This furthered the company holding in the area, which they had already heavily invested in to the tune of 2.5-3 million dollars.

This is in 1906 money, of course.

According to online inflation calculators, the 2013 equivalent of $362,000 would be $9,526,315.79 and 2.5 million would equate to $6,578,947,368.42. That’s some investment the Degnon Terminal Realty Company made in Queens, which involved a massive reclamation effort (landfill) in the “sunken meadows.”

I’ve seen the area also referred to as the “waste meadows” in the historic record. This was a vast intertidal zone which modernity would refer to as “vital wetlands,” of course. The swampy lowlands were filled in with spoils produced by the East River Belmont subway tunnels, another Degnon project, which raised the street grade to modern declinations.

Mr. Michael Degnon was one of the principal builders of the 20th century incarnation of Long Island City, known as the workshop of America until well past the 2nd World War, and his Degnon Terminal in LIC added some 3 million square feet of industrial real estate to the area. The center piece of his project was the Loose Wiles or Sunshine Biscuit factory, known today as the IDCNY building…

…The IDCNY spelled out on the giant sign atop this iconic LIC structure is an acronym for “International Design Center of New York,” which was a not so successful attempt back in the 1980’s to get the interior design and furnishing industries to relocate to Queens and resuscitate a moribund real estate market in LIC. The building serves as Building C of CUNY’s LaGuardia Community College today.

When it was went up, in 1909, this structure was built to house the Loose Wiles Biscuit Company, and it became known as the “Thousand Window Bakery.” The building was the largest factory building under one roof in the United States and was connected directly to the rail. They manufactured the company’s “trademark” Sunshine Biscuits here, as well as Krispy Saltines, Hydrox Cookies, and Animal Crackers.

Degnon Terminal had its own railway, which offered connections to Sunnyside Yard and to the LIRR, but that’s not all. There was an intermodal terminal which offered dock to rail and dock to truck connections via a tributary of the infamous Newtown Creek- Dutch Kills. The terminus of the tributary was canalized and a turning basin established. In the shot above, this intermodal facility was found where the yellow cement trucks are.

An aerial shot from within the former Loose Wiles biscuit factory in 2010 which shows the totality of the Dutch Kills turning basin and the properties which surround it. Special notice of the cement company (NYCON) should be taken, and the Hunters Point Avenue Bridge and Long Island Expressway are also pointed out for context.

Additionally, notice the two sunken barges in the lower left hand corner of the shot, they’re still there.

– Photo from 1921′s ”The Newtown Creek industrial district of New York City By Merchants’ Association of New York. Industrial Bureau,” courtesy google books

In this historic shot from virtually the same perspective, taken in 1921, you can see what was here in the early days. The Hunters Point Bridge is in place, as is the turning basin and the terminal railway. When walking around Dutch Kills and the former Degnon Terminal, you will still find rusted train stops and skeletonized tracks are often observed protruding from the pavement.

Newtown Creek Alliance Historian Mitch Waxman lives in Astoria and blogs at Newtown Pentacle.