Long Island City

Long Island City is the western tip of Queens — a 1.5-square-mile peninsula of glass towers, restored industrial waterfront, and the densest transit access of any neighborhood outside Midtown. The 7 train stops at Vernon Blvd-Jackson Av one minute from Grand Central; the E/R/F stop at Queens Plaza, the N/W at Queensboro Plaza, the G at 21 St, the LIRR at Hunters Point Av, and the NYC Ferry at LIC Landing. Six subway lines, one commuter rail, and the East River Route ferry — all inside the same neighborhood.

Geographically LIC runs from Newtown Creek on the south up to the Astoria border on the north (roughly 36th Avenue), bounded by the East River on the west and the Sunnyside Yards on the east. The neighborhood resolves into four sub-areas: Hunters Point (the new-build waterfront), Court Square (the office-tower core), Queens Plaza (the bridge approach), and Dutch Kills (the warehouse-to-residential transition north of Queens Blvd).

The defining LIC of the last fifteen years is the East River edge. Gantry Plaza State Park, opened in 1998 with the four restored 1925 freight gantries, set the design template. Hunters Point South Park followed — Phase 1 in 2013 (5.5 acres, $66M) and Phase 2 in 2018 ($99M, adding 1.5 acres of wetlands and a cantilevered overlook 30 feet above the river). Together they form 23 continuous acres of restored waterfront.

The waterfront's residential answer is the Hunters Point South masterplan — Handel Architects' affordable + mixed-income towers along Center Boulevard, and the private rental and condo stack along 47-50 Aves. The Pepsi-Cola sign has illuminated the river since 1936 — designated an NYC Individual Landmark in 2016, after the bottling plant came down in 1999. The Queens Public Library at Hunters Point, Steven Holl's 22,000-sf concrete-and-glass cube, opened September 2019 facing the park.

Court Square is the LIC tower district. One Court Square — designed by Raúl de Armas of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, completed 1990 for Citigroup — was the tallest building in Queens, in Long Island, and in New York State outside Manhattan for 30 years. Skyline Tower at 3 Court Square took the crown in 2019: 67 stories, 778 feet, 802 condo units, Hill West Architects, completed 2021. The third Court Square cluster is 5Pointz, the two towers (41 and 48 stories, 1,115 units) that opened on the former graffiti-warehouse site at 22-44 Jackson Avenue.

Further north, the LIC Clock Tower (the 1927 Bank of the Manhattan Company Building at 29-27 Queens Plaza North) was the borough's tallest until One Court Square — designated an NYC Individual Landmark in 2015. Its 14-foot four-faced illuminated clock still crowns the neo-Gothic top.

Long Island City was the first NYC neighborhood to convert wholesale from industrial to artist studio in the 1970s and 80s. MoMA PS1 — housed in an 1893 Romanesque Revival schoolhouse at 22-25 Jackson Avenue — opened as P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in 1976 and merged with MoMA in 2000. SculptureCenter moved into a former trolley repair shop at 44-19 Purves Street in 2002, redesigned by Maya Lin and expanded by Andrew Berman in 2014. Culture Lab LIC (formerly the Plaxall Gallery), The Chocolate Factory Theater (relocated 2021 to Dutch Kills), and Materials for the Arts (the NYC DCLA creative-reuse warehouse at 33-00 Northern Blvd) round out the working-arts infrastructure. The neighborhood reads as the borough's contemporary-art chapter.