For many years, this was the site of a telephone booth manufacturer.
The Met's publication center is fittingly located in the Metro Mall on Metropolitan Avenue.
The Department of Corrections operates its training academy on the top floor of the Metro Mall.
The city's Central Storehouse occupies 300,000 square feet inside the Metro Mall here in Middle Village. From a 1983 NY Times article:
The municipal depot in Queens, where the city keeps commonly used supplies, could accommodate more than 50 supermarkets, or eight football fields, or nearly half the Chrysler Building. To feed the poor, hospitalized and imprisoned, the General Services Department buys, stores and delivers everything from soup (429 gallons of canned chicken noodle in storage) to nuts (4,104 pounds of peanut butter).The city also stores its voting machines here — 5,157 of them as of late 2011.
In stock for breakfast are 745,560 eggs, 13,632 pounds of regular grind coffee and 146,090 individual servings of corn flakes. There are also 303,996 toothbrushes - listed as "Brush, Tooth."
Waiting for delivery to the bureaucrat who does not have everything are 1,844,916 No. 2 pencils, 74,010 boxes of photocopying paper, 5,594 bottles of red ink and 1,094,400 aspirin tablets. "While You Were Out" pads are out of stock, but 36,804 are on order.
For the heavier-duty jobs are 543 step ladders, 1,322 dustpans, 8 10-gallon garbage cans with covers, 84 gallons of green-olive latex paint, 470 fire extinguishers and 46 scythes.
Most nightmarish logo I've seen so far, I believe. Here's a closer look.
Looks like they went back and got the sign. So much for being "loathe to risk relocation"! I hope the 12-pound "spare tire" loaves have been able to adjust to the new "local weather patterns".
They've covered some ground since we last crossed paths out in the Rockaways. (It's the same van; I checked the plates.)
An unexpected sight in this low-slung residential neighborhood...
It's the Fresh Pond Crematory (wider shot here), which was the first such facility in the state when it opened in 1885. At that time, cremations were almost unheard of in the US: there were only 45 bodies cremated in the entire country that year. (Here's a brief history of cremation, for those interested.)
On display inside is a promotional book from the 1930s extolling the virtues of cremation. There is a page entitled "What Some Well Known People Think of Cremation" featuring pro-cremation quotations from various public and religious figures, including Andrew Carnegie, E. Burton Holmes, Ella Wheeler Wilcox, and William Fletcher McNutt, who said:
Most of the objections urged against cremation are the offspring of sentiment, superstition and usage. It is called unchristian, revolting to our senses, etc. To those who call incineration revolting, could they once witness the exhumation of a body that has been buried a year or two, they would never be buried themselves, nor advise their friends to be buried. In modern cremation there is nothing repulsive. It is a last baptism by incandescent heat; a purification by fire whereby the corrupt takes on incorruption, as the mortal takes on immortality.
This "eccentric widow of Tarrytown", who "lived like a miser" and "was in the habit of placing her money, bonds and jewels in a black bag and hanging it on a limb of a tree outside her bed chamber" left $300,000 to charity when she died in 1901.
Inside the columbarium at Fresh Pond. I think each victim is represented by a flag pin of his or her country.
Lining the walls of the columbarium, these niches contain many old photographs and other personal mementos in addition to the ashes of the deceased.
Honoring combat service in the Franco-Prussian War, this is one of many military decorations on display in the various niches at Fresh Pond.
Dedicated in 1962, this eye-catching church is embellished with elements of Lithuanian folk art (close-up here). The parish was established in 1908 to serve the burgeoning Lithuanian population of Queens, and it looks like there's still one Lithuanian Mass per month held here.
This traditional (I guess) wayside shrine was erected as "a memorial for those who have died in Lithuania for their faith and freedom."
