Former Barkin, Levin & Company coat factory
12-12 33rd Avenue | Ravenswood | built 1958
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The city photographed every building for its tax records around 1940 and again in the 1980s. NYC Municipal Archives.
Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.
- 1956
Coat maker Barkin, Levin & Company buys a Long Island City site to stay near New York's needle workers
Barkin, Levin & Company, a manufacturer of women's coats, had outgrown its Garment District quarters. Rather than move to the suburbs, it acquired a two-acre parcel in Long Island City in June 1956. Marketing vice president Morton S. Levin said the firm wanted skilled labor and believed staying close to New York was the answer; the site also sat near the Triborough and Queensboro bridges.
- 1958
Ulrich Franzen's one-acre factory, where Lassie coats are cut, sewn and stored, is completed
Architect Ulrich Franzen filed for a permit in early 1957, and the 50,000-square-foot plant was finished in September 1958 by the contractor Schumacher & Forelle of Great Neck. The factory, a one-acre concrete block building on the south part of the site, put storage, cutting, sewing and warehousing under one roof. Franzen set the office pavilion apart to the north, separating management from production in what amounted to a small industrial park.
- 1958
More than 2,000 guests, Borough President John T. Clancy among them, open the Barkin Levin plant
The coat company held its official opening on November 8, 1958. Women's Wear Daily counted more than 2,000 buyers, manufacturers, union officials and suppliers at the ribbon cutting, with Queens Borough President John T. Clancy in attendance. A two-page advertising spread in the trade paper announced the building as the place where Lassie coats are made and dedicated it to the firm's friends in the industry.
“The official opening took place on November 8, 1958…”
- 1960
Barkin Levin shuts its new coat factory and leases it to the Structural Display Company
Barely two years after opening, Barkin Levin closed the Long Island City plant; in June 1960 it announced a lease to the Structural Display Company. Founded in 1945, that Queens firm built exhibition displays and commercial fixtures. It went on to buy the building in 1989.
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