This Sunnyside building at 47-11 Queens Boulevard formerly served as a branch of the Manufacturers Trust Company, which by 1925 was the 29th largest bank in the United States. In 1954, the institutionwhich exists today only through a merger with the Chemical Banking Corporation in 1991opened its headquarters at 510 Fifth Avenue. The building, designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, was later dubbed by the Times "the very model of Modernism" in architecture, as the design shattered all molds for bank construction by inviting transparency (literally) into the structure with its glass facade and showy steel vault.
Nowadays, the Manufacturers Trust Company bank branch building at 47-11 Queens Boulevard, which has since been stripped of its ornate cornice detailing unlike its neighbor, serves as a Chase bank. After a 2011 preservation battle for the landmarked interiors of the headquarters at 43rd Street and Fifth Avenue, an agreement was reached in the building's degeneration into a retail outlet for the popular Canadian brand Joe Fresh, which it remains as today. The bank persists in the Union Carbide building at 270 Park Avenue. Nice call, Guest #2.
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