From Forgotten-NY:
In 1893, Louis Comfort Tiffany and his business partner, Arthur Nash, founded the Stourbridge Glass Company in Corona next to the railroad tracks.
In March 2013, bulldozers were busy wrecking the old Tiffany buildings; presumably the site was sold.
Demolition photos by Jerry Rotondi
18 comments:
Arthur Douglas Nash was permitted to sign his own blown glass Tiffany Studios pieces.
He managed Tiffany Studios, at one point, I believe.
Nash's home (once featured in an early postcard) was located on Ash Ave. in the Waldheim section of Flushing, near Parsons B'lvd.
It was torn down many years ago (early 1990s?), after a fire.
The "Roman bronze Works" once occupied the Tiffany Studios building. They're long gone too.
At one point (possibly after Louis Comfort Tiffany died) Tiffany Studios was also called the Tiffany Corona Furnaces.
So why wasn't this place landmarked?
Well you did 'save' the Brinkerhoof cemetery and make lots of noise (when it was too late) on Civic Virtue.
Preservation in Queens remains a joke.
I went to the site today. Forwarded some wrecking photos.
It's going to be a new public school.
Wow brings back a lot of memories, my dad worked on this factory in the 90's.
He was a contractor, and we installed the window guards amongst other work here. It was a huge footprint factory.
At one point part of this building housed a live poultry market. Can you beat that for a comedown?
That was quite a low point from its heyday, when Tiffany "Favrille" glass was the talk of the world.
Today, a few of Louis Comfort Tiffany's top of the line leaded glass lamps (made here), are fetching in the higher 6 figures.
As far as landmark status for the site...it was never in the cards. Corona is a low class Latino ghetto for the most part and LPC wouldn't have given a crap about designating it.
Borough hall, which has a long history of hostility toward historic preservation, wouldn't have supported landmark status anyway.
If this were an old mill or factory...let's say in New England...there would have been some creative reuse for such a building with an important historical pedigree.
Uh...where was the Queens Museum on this?
They should have been making a photographic record of the building.
They have the castoffs of the New York Historical Society's Tiffany collection that was left to the society by the late Dr. Egon Neustadt (a dentist oral surgeon who used to live in Flushing on Parsons B'lvd).
Are they going to remediate this highly toxic site before subjecting grade school children to risks of cancer, etc.?
FYI:
The process of creating the familiar iridescent finishes seen on a lot of Tiffany glass, involved exposing it to metallic oxides.
Dark blues employed the use of Cobalt...reds...maybe Radium...
then there's the likelihood of Mercury
and other heavy metals that were in use.
Bronze candlesticks, lamp bases, etc. were also cast here...with gold and silver electroplating done too. Lead was used for soldering.
Then you've got PCB and Creosote runoff from the LIRR tracks above.
It's all in the soil below.
Also, what will the UFT have to say about exposing its rank and file teachers to such health risks?
This is a really big can of worms.
Maybe they should save a small chunk of the brick frieze cornice and incorporate it in the school's lobby area with some photos relating to its history.
I doubt it...for this is Queens where dullards dwell and creative inspiration is extremely scarce.
Where are all the borough's historical societies?
Speak up...we can't hear you!
LOL!
Queens Hysterical Society's darling, Jason Antos, is probably working on one of his unscholarly pamphlets about Tiffany Studios right now.
I'll be damned if I'd pay $20 for one of those poorly produced little paperbacks.
Some of Louis C. Tiffany's early glass production (small opalescent tiles, etc.) was done at the Heidt glass works in Brooklyn...1880s.
Both he and John La Farge created an Art Nouveau revolution in glass.
But WTF cares in an borough littered with 3rd worlders.
How about Quezal glass?
If I can ever unearth my old Kodachome slides of Tiffany Studios that I took during the late 1980s, I'll scan them and send them along.
The building still had "TIFFANY STVDIOS" (with the Roman "V" for "U") in faded paint around the top of the building.
Meanwhile keep up the great work, "Crappy".
I think that Quezal glass was started by someone who once worked for Tiffany...but I'm not fully sure of that.
Then there was Stuben Glass (Aurene ware) and Loetz (an Austrian company) that also produced iridescent glass.
Handel, Duffner Kimberly, etc. also did leaded glass shades.
But LCT pieces (Tiffany) were the best!
OMG...
you could have bought a Tiffany wisteria lamp in 1963 for only about $600.
By 1969 the price had jumped to $16,000.
By now, who knows...over $100,000 maybe?
Louis C. Tiffany was the son of Charles Tiffany who started the now famous jewelry store.
Tiffany's old store building is till located on the east side of 5th Ave. around 37th Street.
They moved up to their current location on 57th Street in the 1930s in (I believe) NYC's first air conditioned store.
What history has been lost to Queens...
not that the likes of a Helen Marshal cares!
Shady pols don't care much either when history is lost.
i.e.
Councilman Halloran doesn't believe in landmarking.
He's on record in the city council for saying that he would oppose a particular designation if it came to a vote.
If you want your district robbed of worthy landmark sites then screw yourself and vote for "doofy" Dan Halloran...the developers' friend!
the queens developers with the dem. politicians enabled the destruction of zoning laws long before Halloran was elected.
maybe you can blame it on G.Bush ? but never look in the mirror. you no info voters voted for them.
G. Bush, etc.? WTF?
I think we've strayed way off topic here.
Check your compass readings, pal.
The Neustadt Collection of Tiffany Glass, a non-profit arts organization incorporated in 1969 and in partnership with the Queens Museum of Art in 1995, is conducting extensive research on Louis C. Tiffany's presence in Corona. This story, and the story of a number of local Queens residence who worked for Tiffany, will be presented in the Neustadt Collection's new gallery at the expanded Queens Museum in fall 2013. Prior to the demolition of the building, the Neustadt Collection was granted special access with their photographer and documented the interiors and exteriors of the building. Very few traces of the Tiffany Studios remain. The public school being erected on the site will include an illustrated commemorative plaque documenting the site's history. If anyone has photographs of the building and is willing to share them, please contact the Neustadt Collection.
As a native of Corona, I take great exception to the post that describes Corona as a "low-class Latino ghetto". IT IS NOT! What is it is an underrecognized and often ignored historical community of which the Tiffinay Studios was a part of. It is the area of New York were jazz icons lived including Dizzy Gillespie, Louis Armstong, Cecil Taylor, Clark Terry, Cannonball and Nat Adderley. Corona is where Shea Statum was and where Corona-Flushing Meadow Park, Citi Field are. It is where the world of tennis holds its US Open each year and where the 1939 and '64 Worlds Fairs were. Corona is where Madonna once lived and where Estee Lauder and children's author Crockett Johnson grew up. Corona is where W.E.B DuBois LPC has no intention of recognizing the rich cultural and artecheual history of that community because it was home to working and middle-class Italian Americans and German Americanss and African Americans and yes, Latinos. That does not make Corona a ghetto, it makes Corona a repository of American and New York history.
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