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Manhattan’s got the Empire State Building, Brooklyn has its Bridge. Staten Island’s got a big orange boat, and the Bronx has a certain baseball organization with a long and successful history. Queens has everything that the other boroughs have, except the big orange boat and quite the same level of success in baseball, and we’ve got airports to boot. Despite this, there are few “icons” which you look at that undeniably say “Queens.”

Pictured above is the Unisphere at Flushing Meadows Corona Park, which is arguably one of them.

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Obvious choices include sights visible to Manhattanites via the East River, including the Queensboro Bridge (you will never get me to call it anything else, with no offense to Mr. Koch’s beloved memory intended) or the Citigroup building. Mr. Lindenthal’s Bridge is indeed iconic, and the Citi building… well… it certainly does make an impression… umm… let’s just leave the Citi building and my personal opinion of its merit out of this.

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I started wondering about this a couple of years back when I was asked to comment on a project underway over at the Noguchi Museum. They had a group of architects, planners, and artists “visioning” Western Queens and its future. A lot of imaginative solutions to current problems were offered, but it was all goofy stuff which would be difficult at best to realize under normal circumstance. Zip lines, etc.

Quirky, one of the concepts they showed me was a full embrace of the red and white stripes adorning the stacks of the Big Allis power plant, which would be adapted as a theme for the surrounding neighborhood of Ravenswood. Lamp posts would be wrapped in red and white horizontal stripes, along with fences at city parks, and the whole thing would act as a sort of way faring system designed to visually unite the heterogenous collection of architecture found hereabouts.

It was just an idea, a concept, but it made me angry. They really didn’t understand that people in Queens don’t really like living next door to a power plant, and the thought that Big Allis was an icon that said “Queens” indicated to me that they hadn’t spent much time getting to know the place or those of us who call it home.

Then, I thought, what is the actual “icon” of Queens?

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To me, the icon of Queens is the silhouette of a Weber BBQ blazing away in an Astoria back yard – alongside a beer cooler – on a July night, but that’s me.

What says Queens to you, neighbors? Is it the Queensboro Bridge, or the elevated tracks of Queens Boulevard, or the Unisphere, or… god forbid… the Citigroup Building? Speak up in the comments section, let us know what you think of when you say “Queens, NYC.”

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


What's Your Take? Leave a Comment

  1. Unisphere, hands down.

    It is not merely a grand piece of art showing Queens’ history as the site of New York’s two World’s Fairs, but the Unisphere is the best representation of Queens as the most diverse county in America; people from all around the world come to Queens, and Greeks, Haitians, and Columbians, amongst thousands of other children of immigrants in Queens happily splash around the pool around the Unisphere, showing New York and Queens in particular as the melting pot of the world.

  2. Which icon can you see from so many locations? What is the most prominent icon in our largest park? And, most importantly, what icon best symbolizes the people living in the most culturally diverse location in the entire country (if not the entire world)? The Unisphere might have begun as a symbol for the Fair of fifty years ago, but it now represents the present and future of Queens. Hands down, our icon is the Unisphere.

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