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