EAGLE’S CLIPPED WINGS, Queensboro Plaza

by Kevin Walsh

At one time, Eagle Electric was a manufacturing giant in the Hunters Point area, with several plants scattered in the neighborhood’s complicated street grid. In the early 1980s I was going to interview for a production job for their catalogs, but in a minor miracle, I instead got a job with the biggest type shop in the city.

The #7 el makes a couple of S-curves after emerging from the Steinway Tunnel. It comes perilously close to scraping the handsomest of the Eagle plants, at Queens Plaza South and 23rd Streets, which has serendipitous colored terra cotta triangles and other shapes. The building has been hollowed out and is being readied for future residential units, if the new tenants can abide the screeching trains.

The framework holding the billboard used to carry a massive Eagle Electric sign, bearing the philosophy, “Perfection Is No Accident.”

With its converging el trains, the Queensboro Plaza area has always been rife for billboard displays. The massive JetBlue sign used to be a Pan Am neon sign.

Here, NY Neon takes you on a Queens Neon tour around the plaza and environs.

10/2/13

6 comments

Joann F October 2, 2013 - 11:42 pm

You couldn’t give me an apartment there. I used to ride that line. The squealing from the trains rounding that curve is horrible. Who in their right mind would want to listen to regularly – especially at night!

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ron s October 4, 2013 - 5:11 am

Another Eagle plant, by Astoria Pool, was coverted to condos.

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LarryMac October 4, 2013 - 8:26 am

As a new civilian out of the Marines in 1969 and out of 65th Street in Woodside I applied for a job in that Eagle building. The foreman, a WWII combat vet, said he’d love to hire me but that I was too bright to work in a factory. He told me to find something better and with tears in his eyes and his arm around me put me out onto the street. Damnedest job interview I ever did.

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Frank Lynch October 4, 2013 - 10:29 am

1. The links you intend aren’t actually links, there’s something wrong with the code.

2. I remembered the sign saying “Perfection is not an accident,” not “Perfection is no accident.” If you look at the link in your source code you’ll see it: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-JDFTTXCBpXM/UFH-P55G2eI/AAAAAAAACVs/chNKZBjtCcY/s1600/aa-eagle-electric-V-sm-pamela-talese.jpg

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Kevin Walsh October 5, 2013 - 8:02 am

The links work for me. I fixed the quote.

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Velvethead October 5, 2013 - 12:11 pm

In the movie Highlander, the final fight scene on the roof of the Silvercup (which was set up in a sound studio), they took the time to put a mock up of the Eagle billboard in the background for accuracy.

Reply

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