LPC Grants Long Island City's Clock Tower Landmark Status

May 13, 2015 — An inevitable consequence of all these new apartment towers rising across the Five Boroughs is that some neighborhood icons become collateral damage. Locals in Long Island City worried that the Queens Clock Tower was doomed, especially as "Queens Plaza undergoes rapid development — including a plan to build a 70-story apartment tower, the borough's tallest, right next door" to the beloved structure, DNAinfo reported. Today, their efforts to preserve the building paid off: "The city's Landmarks Preservation Commission [LPC] voted unanimously to landmark the former Bank of Manhattan building in Queens Plaza." The clock tower has been part of Long Island City's landscape and skyline for nearly a century. Built in 1927, the former bank building at 29-27 41st Avenue was "known at the time as 'the first skyscraper in Queens' and was honored by the Queens Chamber of Commerce as the borough’s best business building, according to the LPC." Sometimes the good guys really do win.

Photo by Jim.henderson (Own work) [CC BY 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons