The Brewster Building is a building at 27-01 Queens Plaza North in

Long Island City Long Island City (LIC) is a residential and commercial neighborhood on the extreme western tip of Queens, a borough in New York City. It is bordered by Astoria to the north; the East River to the west; New Calvary Cemetery in Sunnyside to the ...

Queens Queens is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Queens County, in the U.S. state of New York. Located on Long Island, it is the largest New York City borough by area. It is bordered by the borough of Brooklyn at the western tip of Long ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. Once an assembly plant for

Rolls-Royce Rolls-Royce (always hyphenated) may refer to: * Rolls-Royce Limited, a British manufacturer of cars and later aero engines, founded in 1906, now defunct Automobiles * Rolls-Royce Motor Cars, the current car manufacturing company incorporated in ...

cars and Brewster cars and

Brewster Buffalo The Brewster F2A Buffalo is an American fighter aircraft which saw service early in World War II. Designed and built by the Brewster Aeronautical Corporation, it was one of the first U.S. monoplanes with an arrestor hook and other modifications ...

airplanes, it is now the corporate headquarters for

JetBlue JetBlue Airways Corporation (stylized as jetBlue) is a major American low cost airline, and the seventh largest airline in North America by passengers carried. The airline is headquartered in the Long Island City neighborhood of the New York C ...

Usage by Brewster

The building, designed by Stephenson & Wheeler, opened in 1911 to handle the assembly of the chassis for the Brewster cars that were being built since 1905 at 47th Street and

Broadway Broadway may refer to: Theatre * Broadway Theatre (disambiguation) * Broadway theatre, theatrical productions in professional theatres near Broadway, Manhattan, New York City, U.S. ** Broadway (Manhattan), the street **Broadway Theatre (53rd Stree ...

Times Square Times Square is a major commercial intersection, tourist destination, entertainment hub, and neighborhood in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. It is formed by the junction of Broadway, Seventh Avenue, and 42nd Street. Together with adjacent ...

in nearby

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

. The building was one of the first major developments at the foot of the

Queensboro Bridge The Queensboro Bridge, officially named the Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge, is a cantilever bridge over the East River in New York City. Completed in 1909, it connects the neighborhood of Long Island City in the borough of Queens with the Upper East ...

, opened in 1909, which reduced car transport from Queens to Times Square to a matter of minutes. In 1915 it began building the Brewster Knight. In 1925, the company was bought by

Rolls-Royce of America Rolls-Royce was a British luxury car and later an aero-engine manufacturing business established in 1904 in Manchester by the partnership of Charles Rolls and Henry Royce. Building on Royce's good reputation established with his cranes, they ...

, which had been operating out of a plant in

Springfield, Massachusetts Springfield is a city in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, United States, and the seat of Hampden County. Springfield sits on the eastern bank of the Connecticut River near its confluence with three rivers: the western Westfield River, the ...

. In 1931, the Rolls-Royce Springfield operation ended. From 1931 to 1934,

Rolls-Royce Phantom II The Rolls-Royce Phantom II was the third and last of Rolls-Royce's 40/50 hp models, replacing the New Phantom in 1929. It used an improved version of the Phantom I engine in an all-new chassis. A "Continental" version, with a short wheel ...

chassis were shipped directly to the Long Island City plant when Rolls-Royce terminated its United States assembly program. From 1934 to 1936, under J. S. Inskip, Brewster automobiles using

Ford Ford commonly refers to: * Ford Motor Company, an automobile manufacturer founded by Henry Ford * Ford (crossing), a shallow crossing on a river Ford may also refer to: Ford Motor Company * Henry Ford, founder of the Ford Motor Company * Ford F ...

chassis were built at the plant. The Brewster operation ceased in 1936. The

Brewster Aeronautical Corporation The Brewster Aeronautical Corporation was an American defense contractor that operated from the 1930s until the end of World War II. History Originally a carriage builder, Brewster & Co.'s involvement in aviation began in the aftermath of W ...

manufactured the

Brewster F2A Buffalo The Brewster F2A Buffalo is an American fighter aircraft which saw service early in World War II. Designed and built by the Brewster Aeronautical Corporation, it was one of the first U.S. monoplanes with an arrestor hook and other modifications ...

and a version of the

Vought F4U Corsair The Vought F4U Corsair is an American fighter aircraft which saw service primarily in World War II and the Korean War. Designed and initially manufactured by Chance Vought, the Corsair was soon in great demand; additional production contracts ...

known as the F3A-1 during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

at the plant. The multi-story layout of the building limited airplane production efficiency. The aircraft were flown from

Roosevelt Field Roosevelt Field is a former airport, located east-southeast of Mineola, Long Island, New York. Originally called the Hempstead Plains Aerodrome, or sometimes Hempstead Plains field or the Garden City Aerodrome, it was a training field (Hazel ...

in Mineola. Stoff, Joshua "Long Island Aircraft Manufacturers",Arcadia Publishing 2010.

Disrepair and reuse

The building fell into disrepair following the war and its clock tower was dismantled in 1950. A series of garment manufacturers occupied the building until 1996. In 1996, Brause Realty extensively remodeled the building and an adjoining 12-story tower and it became an operational center for

Metropolitan Life Insurance MetLife, Inc. is the holding corporation for the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company (MLIC), better known as MetLife, and its affiliates. MetLife is among the largest global providers of insurance, annuities, and employee benefit programs, wi ...

with 1,500 employees. In 2010, JetBlue announced it would combine employees at its existing large

Kew Gardens, Queens Kew Gardens is a neighborhood in the central area of the New York City borough of Queens. Kew Gardens is bounded to the north by the Union Turnpike and the Jackie Robinson Parkway (formerly the Interboro Parkway), to the east by the Van Wyck Exp ...

and small 70-person

Darien, Connecticut Darien ( ) is a coastal town in Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States. With a population of 21,499 and a land area of just under 13 square miles, it is the smallest town on Connecticut's Gold Coast. It has the youngest population of any n ...

campuses into the building, bringing 1,000 employees to it. JetBlue is the only major airline headquartered in New York City. The new headquarters is from the previous one. JetBlue, looking for a new corporate headquarters, had also considered moving to

Orlando, Florida Orlando () is a city in the U.S. state of Florida and is the county seat of Orange County, Florida, Orange County. In Central Florida, it is the center of the Greater Orlando, Orlando metropolitan area, which had a population of 2,509,831, acco ...

. As part of taking on the moniker of being the hometown airline of New York City, JetBlue announced it would be joint branding the "

I Love New York I Love New York (stylized ) is a slogan, a logo, and a song that are the basis of an advertising campaign developed by the marketing firm of Wells, Rich, Greene under the directorship of Mary Wells Lawrence used since 1977 to promote tourism i ...

" logo. JetBlue stated in 2012 that it plans to construct a lighted sign stating "JetBlue" on top of the 8th floor, adjacent to the outdoor terrace.Taking JetBlue To The Sky(line) In Our New Home
."

JetBlue Airways JetBlue Airways Corporation (stylized as jetBlue) is a major American low cost airline, and the seventh largest airline in North America by passengers carried. The airline is headquartered in the Long Island City neighborhood of the New York ...

. February 7, 2012. Retrieved on August 23, 2012.

References

External links

* {{Portal bar, New York City, Architecture Industrial buildings completed in 1911 Buildings and structures in Queens, New York JetBlue Long Island City Commercial buildings in Queens, New York Airline company headquarters in the United States