Childs Restaurant Building Still Standing on Queens Boulevard

When we drove past this distinctive one-story building at 60th Street and Queens Boulevard last weekend, we remarked to Mrs. B that the place looked like it belonged in Coney Island. Turns out there’s a darn good reason it looks like that: Before the one-story structure was sub-divided into a grocery, sports bar and pizzeria, it was a Childs Restaurant, one of the early restaurant chains in the city. The most famous of the distinctive terra cotta structures is in Coney Island, where it is slated to be refurbished as part of a plan to put it at the center of a new cultural complex. Meanwhile, let’s just take a moment and appreciate how surprising it is that this one’s still standing, given the high-density development that popped up around it in later decades. For more photos of the Queens Boulvard location, check out this Flickr page. GMAP