The Skyscraper Museum is devoted to the study of high-rise building, past, present, and future. The Museum explores tall buildings as objects of design, products of technology, sites of construction, investments in real estate, and places of work and residence. This site will look better in a browser that supports web standards, but it is accessible to any browser or Internet device.
DEGNON TERMINAL
Degnon Terminal Panorama, Long Island City, New York. Photograph from the La Guardia and Wagner Archives.
In the mid-19th century, Long Island City, Queens with its Hunters Point waterfront grew as a major industrial area specializing in paints, varnishes, printing, box and pipe fabrication. The industries were accessible from Manhattan only by water transit until the Queensboro Bridge opened in 1909. At that time Degnon Realty and Terminal Improvement Company built one of the first industrial parks in the region on a 125-acre site adjacent to the Long Island Railroad and Sunnyside Yards. The company dredged Dutch Kills and built streets to create a series of multi-storied superblock factory buildings that they sold to companies including American Chicle, Packard Motors, Loose-Wiles Sunshine Biscuit Co., White Motor Company, and American Ever Ready.
