Rooftop Views from 43-10 23rd street, LIC. “7 line factory”

Published on: May 24th, 2016 | Last updated: July 30, 2018 | Written by: Joseph Anastasio

---

Located in the center of the 7 line route through L.I.C., this old factory rooftop offers surprising views of the neighborhood.

I had my eye on this building for awhile. As the then-tallest building along this portion of the 7 line, I knew the rooftop views would be spectacular. The building, however, is normally either locked up tight or well used by the non-public businesses located inside. Finally one day opportunity came knocking, so I went at it. As I often say, Sunday mornings are the best time to pull of certain kinds of adventures. The photos are always worth the price of not sleeping in.

Building History
I’m still a bit confounded by the original purpose of this factory. This massive structure was built in the late 1920s, directly next to the #7 train route through Queens. The front faces 23rd street and the subway, while the rear contains a narrow alley that leads to a large space for loading trucks.

One tenant of the building was Berje. According to their website: Berjé is a global distributor of Essential Oils and Aromatic Chemicals. The company was founded in SoHo, and later expanded to this location in LIC. Eventually they outgrew the LIC space and moved to Carteret, NJ.

Another resident of this building was the Hashizume food products corp, which was an early producer of Tofu based foods here in the US. The company was originally located in the basement, starting in the early 1970s.

Also in the 1970s, it was home to a photography company that made those silly realistic backgrounds that were so popular in fashion photoshoots back then. Here’s an article from a photography magazine about them:

Today, the factory space is still divided with several tenants on each floor. Artist spaces, woodworking shops, and antique furniture companies are amongst those that call this building home.

The rooftops of some neighboring buildings have also been used in TV and movie shoots. The Netflix ‘Jessica Jones’ series relies heavily on one neighboring rooftop throughout season 2.

Rooftop view
The roof proved as awesome as I expected. The views of passing 7 trains are unmatched. As tall residential towers begin to surround this elevated line, this stretch of track will soon look like it’s in Chicago. The scenes in these photos will look extremely different within the next 5 years.

View of the Freedom Tower

View of the LIC waterfront high rises.

NYC Taxi Garage just south of Queens Plaza

The Factory apartment building under construction.

“Lift”. Construction on Queens Plaza South at the old Eagle Electric factory.

7 train going into Queens Plaza, curving past the old Eagle Electric factory (and new high rise)

Queensboro Bridge

More 7 trains.

7 Train at Court Square.

Empire State and UN buildings

Queensboro Bridge Offramps

Interior stairs

Night view, facing Queens Plaza

Facing the Citibank building

Queensboro Bridge Offramps

Comments

NOTE: It sometimes takes a short while for comments to be approved - unfortunately there's a lot of spam comments that come in. I absolutely love when y'all share personal stories of friends relatives etc who worked in these places. It really helps capture what these places were like before they closed up shop.

If you're feeling salty, argumentative comments completely devoid of facts (supply links to support your argument) will not be published. Got a case to state? come with the details.

10 responses to “Rooftop Views from 43-10 23rd street, LIC. “7 line factory””

1. Midnight says:

   May 24, 2016 at 1:53 AM

   Nice shots, really enjoyed the ones with the 7.
   Btw around how long ago was this? Can’t be recently as the cranes in the second photo were taken down long ago.

2. alt0id says:

   May 25, 2016 at 12:31 PM

   Awesome shots, I’ve had my eye on that one for awhile.

   I was not too far from there a few nights ago:

   http://imgur.com/a/SLNsb

3. Control says:

   May 26, 2016 at 8:12 AM

   Midnight – last year. I often sit on content awhile for a slew of case-by-case reasons.

4. Control says:

   May 26, 2016 at 8:15 AM

   alt0id – nice. I did that one recently during the day. Tried at night once but it was locked up pretty good.

5. PegLegGuy says:

   June 14, 2016 at 12:54 AM

   .
   .
   I like!

   I pushed a hack out of that garage in the 70’s.

   .
   .

6. Spap89 says:

   June 27, 2016 at 2:52 PM

   I’ve been interested in exploring the tunnels and anything I can. but finding people is hard im about to try it alone is their anywhere that you can meet people and go together, any sites like with a community.?

7. Jm says:

   May 26, 2017 at 7:14 PM

   Did you get in through the cracked window in the back?

8. Bad Guy Joe says:

   June 12, 2017 at 12:31 PM

   Nope – a door was left open one weekend. Never hurts to jiggle the handle 🙂

9. Burton Miller says:

   August 31, 2017 at 1:37 PM

   This building was built for the I. Miller shoe company.

10. Bad Guy Joe says:

    September 5, 2017 at 3:50 PM

    Burton, Thank you for this – we’ll probably update this (and the book chapter) with some further info on Miller someday.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.