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The Big Six Towers, Queens Boulevard between 59th and 61st Streets, were developed, like Electchester in Flushing, by a trade union. In 1961 the New York Typographical Union (Local 6) completed the project in 1963 and one-third of its current tenants are active or retired union members. The AFL-CIO invested heavily in the towers in 2008 to help keep its apartments affordable for middle-class families. There are still some retired lithographers and printers among the residents.

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While other large residential developments have joined the Big Six Towers on this stretch of Queens Boulevard, the small terra cotta former Childs’ restaurant outlet holds firm on the NW corner of 60th Street. The building hosts a laundromat, bodega, Irish bar and pizza parlor on the ground floor.

Childs, launched in 1889 by brothers Samuel and William Childs, became NYC’s first chain restaurant, with dozens of locations in New York and hundreds countrywide. Most of their restaurants featured trademark terra cotta decorations of  seashells, wriggling fish and/or seahorses; one of the best-preserved Childs’, on the Coney Island boardwalk, features medallions depicting the Golden Hind, Neptune with his trident, and every class and genus of sea life imaginable. Why Childs’ went in for ichthyic scenes on its ornamentation isn’t immediately apparent, since seafood wasn’t a specialty at Childs’ though the menu had seafood items.

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Woodside and Sunnyside are well-known for their Irish immigrant populations. At the NW corner of Queens Bouelvard and 52nd Street, across from holy Calvary Cemetery, we have a brick building containing two worthy institutions with venerable, handcrafted signs: VFW Post 2813, and a Queens branch of the Irish Apostolate.

Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 2813 was established in 1933 and named for John F. Daniels, Jr., killed in action in France in World War I, whose parents were Sunnysiders. After a number of moves, 2813 has been here on 52nd Street since 2005.

The Irish Apostolate, founded in 1987 by Catholic bishops in the Boston and NYC Dioceses, seeks to attend to the spiritual needs of recent Irish immigrants.


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