The Business of Sunnyside

Skillman Avenue runs from Hunters Point in western Queens along Sunnyside Yards and then through Sunnyside Gardens, ending at Roosevelt Avenue – beginning and ending with the IRT Flushing Line, from the Hunters Point Avenue station to a point just past the 52^nd St/Lincoln Street station. The avenue’s length has varied over the years – it attained its present route in the late 1910s, when it was built out as far as Roosevelt, but the portion adjoining Sunnyside Yards (which opened in 1910) as far as Harold Avenue (39^th Street) was known as Meadow Street until about 1920, when Meadow Street was changed to Skillman. Meanwhile, the portion of Roosevelt Avenue under the IRT el was called Skillman Avenue  as far east as the intersection with Woodside and Betts Avenue (now 58^th Street) until about the same time.

Skillman is an English name though its progenitors were Dutch. There were Skillmans in England as early as the 13^th century; the name derives, like Truman, from the term “believable” or “trustworthy” individual. The first Skillman in America was Thomas Skillman, a soldier/musician under Colonel Nichols in the Duke of York’s expedition to seize New Amsterdam from the Dutch in 1664. After the Brits took over, Skillman settled in Newtown, married Sarah Pettit in 1669 and raised a family of seven sons and four daughters. All the Skillmans in North America today are believed to be descended from Thomas Skillman.

Today’s Skillman Avenue is a mixture of two definitely distinct parts, from the factories, lofts, plants and railyards of its western end to the small town, residential and somewhat funky atmosphere of its eastern end, a distillation of western Queens.

Today I’ll mention some of the disparate businesses that operated along or in the vicinity of this overlooked Queens route…

Still called the Paragon Building but today a warehouse at Hunters Point Avenue and 21st Street just west of Skillman Avenue’s western end,  this compact brick building still emblazoned with Paragon Oil’s distinctive logotype housed the company’s offices.

Paragon Oil was founded by brothers Henry, Irving, Robert, Benjamin, and Arnold Schwartz. The family designed and built the first oil heaters designed for residential buildings. Paragon Oil won the U.S. government contract as the only oil company to supply Europe with fuel oil during the post-war reconstruction. Later, during the early days of the Cold War, Paragon supplied the U.S. government with oil for their submarines. The company was sold to Texaco in the late 1950s.

The International Design Center of New York, Skillman and Thomson Avenues,  opened October 10th, 1985 in what was originally the Loose-Wiles Biscuit Company Building, constructed in 1908 – known as the “thousand window bakery.” The original products were crackers marketed under the Sunshine Biscuits trademark distributed in tins depicting carton characters that are highly prized as collectibles today. Sunshine is now a division of Keebler and produces the popular Cheez-IT brand. Formerly, a huge Loose-Wiles Sunshine Biscuits neon sign occupied the roofline on the south and east sides, easily visble from trains emerging from East River tunnels into Sunnyside Yards.

Packard Autos, Swingline Staples, Eveready Batteries and American Chicle, producers of Chiclets gum, were also located here on the edge of Sunnyside, manufacturing everyday products and employing thousands of New Yorkers. These manufacturers have mostly vanished from the area.

Today, the IDC NY building is home to furniture showrooms and offices of interior designers and decorators.

Occupying the old American Chicle building between Thomson, 47^th Avenues and 30^th Place and 31^st Streets, this building was constructed beginning in 1914 and has many flourishes of the era including colorful terra cotta near the roofline. This building during World War II was also home to Ford Instruments, a subsidiary of Sperry Corporation, a contractor for the U.S. Navy, making ranging and control mechanisms for naval guns — and later the automatic computing gun sight.