This was 56th Avenue in Elmhurst in December of 1968. To the right is the playground of P.S. 13, and you can see the new gym addition that was completed three years earlier (while I was a student there). In the distance are the distinctive spiral parking ramps of what was then Macy's Queens.

--Submitted by Jeffrey Morris, South Salem, NY

Here's a view down 57th Avenue in January 1968. To the right, Lefrak City is still advertising rentals on a long building sign. If you look carefully all the way at the end of 57th Avenue, over the houses of Corona you can see the yellow facade of the top of the old New York State World's Fair pavilion, and, to its left just over the top of the six-story apartment building, you can faintly make out one of the observation towers of the pavilion.

--Submitted by Jeffrey Morris, South Salem, NY

What's significant in this December 1968 view is what's not there: the Queens Center Mall. It would be built during the next year on Queens Boulevard, which runs left-to-right in the center of the photo, and would stretch from the white office building on the left to 57th Avenue on the right. On the horizon are the omnipresent Elmhurst Gas Tanks. Directly below the right tank is the Elmwood Theater; the dark building to the left of it is St. John's Hospital, where I recall Cary Grant being treated for injuries he sustained in a car accident right around this time. The soon-to-be site of Queens Center is still occupied by the Fairyland Amusement Park, just below the Elmwood theater, and the ahead-of-its-time big box warehouse supermarket to the left that I think was called Billy Blake's at one point. The vast commuter parking lot was still there in the mid-70s, but on recent visits back I've seen that it has been completely filled with more office buildings and a huge addition to the mall.

--Submitted by Jeffrey Morris, South Salem, NY

A pile driver was busy in December,'68 preparing foundation for the Lefrak City office building at the corner of Junction Boulevard and the Long Island Expressway. That's the Social Security Administration building Lefrak built a couple of years earlier, to the left. The LIE is up on the embankment; the buildings past it are in Rego Park. The rightmost building with the big box on top is the Lefrak HQ building on Queens Boulevard.

--Submitted by Jeffrey Morris, South Salem, NY

The Lefrak office tower on Junction Boulevard under construction in early 1970, taken from the Rego Park side of the Long Island Expressway.

--Submitted by Jeffrey Morris, South Salem, NY

Where the Queens Center Mall stands now, here is the arcade building of Fairyland Amusement Park on Queens Boulevard in early 1970, shortly before its demolition. Rising in the background is the office tower at Lefrak City.

--Submitted by Jeffrey Morris, South Salem, NY

A 1971 vista from Queens Boulevard in Elmhurst that would never be seen again: the apartment buildings lining 57th Avenue in Elmhurst (left), rows of 2-family houses, Rego Park Gardens, and Lefrak City (center) and the Lefrak office tower (right). In the foreground, a construction fence is going up around the empty lot that would soon become the massive Queens Center Mall. Note that there is no traffic on Queens Boulevard!

--Submitted by Jeffrey Morris, South Salem, NY

The Elmwood Theater on Queens Boulevard in Elmhurst in early 1970. The feature was Woody Allen's "Take the Money and Run."

--Submitted by Jeffrey Morris, South Salem, NY

The London Coffee Shoppe (left), a mainstay on Junction Boulevard at 57th Avenue since the early 60s, reaches the end of the line in 1971...
...with only a minor change to the sign, it is turned into Johnnie's Coffee Shoppe (right), but that incarnation would not last very long. It would soon have its windows paneled over and become a bar.

--Submitted by Jeffrey Morris, South Salem, NY

Newtown High School in early 1970. I think it still looks much the same, although I doubt you'll find any Chevy Corvairs parked on the street today.

--Submitted by Jeffrey Morris, South Salem, NY