Rikers Island Bridge

Bowery Bay is a bay off the East River in New York City. It is located near the Steinway neighborhood of Queens and is bordered on the west by the Bowery Bay Water Pollution Control Plant and on the south and east by LaGuardia Airport.Before the construction of LaGuardia Airport in the late 1920s, the shoreline of Bowery Bay and Flushing Bay, originally called Bowery Bay Beach and later North Beach, was a popular seaside resort. North Beach was the site of a popular amusement park from 1895 to 1915 and was known as "the Coney Island of Queens".The Marine Air Terminal at LaGuardia Airport was originally constructed along the south end of Bowery Bay to accommodate flying boats. From 1940 until 1945, 'Clippers' operated by Pan American Airways provided trans-Atlantic flights from Bowery Bay to Europe. The eastern edge of Bowery Bay is currently bordered by LaGuardia Airport's general aviation terminal. The western edge of Bowery Bay is the site of the Bowery Bay Water Pollution Control Plant, a wastewater treatment plant operated by the New York City Department of Environmental Protection. The plant opened in 1939 and is capable of treating 150 million US gallons (570,000 m3) of sewage per day from northwestern Queens. Luyster Creek, a subterranean river, empties into Bowery Bay near the water plant.The Rikers Island Bridge spans the northern portion of Bowery Bay.

USAir Flight 5050 was a passenger flight that crashed on takeoff from LaGuardia Airport in Queens, New York. As the plane took off from LaGuardia's runway 31, the plane drifted to the left. After hearing a loud bang, the pilots attempted to abort the takeoff, but were unable to stop the plane short of the end of the runway. The plane continued past the end of the runway and plunged into Bowery Bay. Two passengers were killed.

The Marine Air Terminal (also known as Terminal A) is an airport terminal located at LaGuardia Airport in Queens, New York City. Its main building, designed in the Art Deco style by William Delano of the firm Delano & Aldrich, opened in 1940. The terminal was built to handle Pan Am's fleet of flying boats, the Boeing 314 Clippers, which landed on the nearby Bowery Bay. Technological advances after World War II made the Clippers obsolete, and the Marine Air Terminal was renovated in 1946 to serve conventional planes. As of 2022, the terminal is used by Spirit Airlines flights to various destinations around the US. The Marine Air Terminal was LaGuardia Airport's original terminal for overseas flights. It was highly popular in the 1940s, when LaGuardia was the only major airport in the U.S. which offered regular flights to Europe. Traffic dropped drastically after the larger Idlewild Airport opened in 1948, and Clippers stopped serving the terminal in 1952. The terminal then served as the airport's general aviation terminal for more than three decades, except for a short period in the 1950s, when it was used by Northeast Airlines. The Pan Am Shuttle service started operating from Marine Air Terminal in 1986. Delta Air Lines took over the service in 1991, operating Delta Shuttle flights from the terminal until 2017, after which it was used by various carriers. The terminal has been renovated multiple times throughout its history. The main terminal building consists of a two-story circular core with a projecting entrance pavilion and a pair of two-story wings. The brick facade is painted buff, with black details, and contains a frieze that depicts flying fish. The three-story rectangular entrance pavilion contains a canopy and a set of doors leading to the terminal's main rotunda. The rotunda contains marble floors and walls, as well as the Flight mural by James Brooks. Both the interior and the exterior of the main building were declared New York City Landmarks in 1980, and it was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1982. In addition, there was a hangar for seaplanes next to the main building, which has been converted into a garage for snow-removal vehicles.

Northeast Airlines Flight 823 was a scheduled flight from New York City's LaGuardia Airport to Miami International Airport, Florida, which crashed shortly after takeoff on February 1, 1957. The aircraft operating the service was a Douglas DC-6 four-engined propeller airliner, registration N34954, which entered service in 1955.

The Steinway Mansion (also the Benjamin Pike, Jr. House) is a home on a one-acre hilltop in the Astoria section of Queens, New York City. It was built in 1858, originally on 440 acres (1.8 km2) on the Long Island Sound, by Benjamin Pike Jr., born in 1809, a noted manufacturer of scientific instruments located in lower Manhattan. After his death in 1864, his widow sold the mansion to William Steinway of Steinway & Sons in 1870. Jack Halberian purchased the Mansion in 1926 and upon his death in 1976, his son Michael Halberian began an extensive restoration. The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the building as a landmark in 1966, and it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983. The mansion was placed on sale after Michael Halberian's death in 2010. After years on the market and numerous price reductions the property was purchased by Sal Lucchese and Phil Loria in 2014 under the company The L Group. Parts of the surrounding land were then developed into commercial warehouses, leaving the mansion untouched on its remaining property. At this point being almost 150 years old, the mansion was deteriorating quickly, with parts of the home beginning to fall apart. The mansion's owners began a massive restoration to return the mansion to its original glory. After that the grand balcony that had collapsed nearly a century earlier was perfectly reconstructed using old images of the home. All interior molding was then repaired and repainted, along with the decaying floorboards and walls. Other general renovations have taken place over time that would return the mansion to its 19th-century style. To pay homage to the Pike family and the Steinways, the mansion was decorated with a grand Steinway piano and numerous original 19th-century scientific instruments manufactured by the Pike company.

The Riker–Lent–Smith Homestead and Cemetery are a historic house and cemetery in East Elmhurst, New York. The neighborhood, within the New York City borough of Queens, is called Steinway in the National Register of Historic Places designation document.The earliest part of the house was built by Abraham Riker in 1656. He was an early settler of New Amsterdam, and a member of the Riker family, for whom Rikers Island nearby is named; the house was owned by the Riker and Lent families for much of its history. In 1729, the house was expanded and additions were built by then-owner Abraham Lent, a descendant of Abraham Riker. The small graveyard contains not only the graves of family members, but also that of Irish revolutionary and physician William James MacNeven who died in 1841 and who had stayed with the Riker family. Around 1800 the house was again expanded to its current size. It remains an intact house in the Dutch Colonial style. Current owner Marion Duckworth Smith and her late husband Michael Smith began restoration work in 1980, and the house was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1984.The house is the oldest known existing residential structure in the borough of Queens, New York.

The Anna M. Kross Center (AMKC), also known as the C-95 is a jail on Riker's Island used to hold male inmates for the New York City Department of Corrections.

The Modern Art Foundry is an historic foundry in Astoria, Queens, New York, founded in 1932 by John Spring. His descendants continue to operate the business in what used to be the carriage house of the Steinway Mansion.Modern Art Foundry specializes in working with artists who create limited edition works, usually intended for museums and galleries. The foundry utilizes the lost-wax casting method for producing its large-scale work. It also does maintenance and conservation of existing works.

Rikers Island is a 413.17-acre (167.20-hectare) island in the East River between Queens and the Bronx that contains New York City's main jail complex. Named after Abraham Rycken, who took possession of the island in 1664, the island was originally under 100 acres (40 ha) in size, but has since grown to more than 400 acres (160 ha). The first stages of expansion were accomplished largely by convict labor hauling in ashes for landfill. The island is politically part of the Bronx, although bridge access is from Queens. It is part of Queens Community Board 1 and uses an East Elmhurst, Queens, ZIP Code of 11370 for mail.The island is home to one of the world's largest correctional institutions and mental institutions, and has been described as New York's most well-known jail. The complex, operated by the New York City Department of Correction, has a budget of $860 million a year, a staff of 9,000 officers and 1,500 civilians managing 100,000 admissions per year and an average daily population of 10,000 inmates. The majority (85%) of detainees are pretrial defendants, either held on bail or remanded in custody. The rest of the population have been convicted and are serving short sentences. According to a 2021 analysis by New York City Comptroller, it costs the city approximately $556,539 to detain one person for one year at Rikers Island.Rikers Island has a reputation for violence, both abuse and neglect of inmates, attracting increased press and judicial scrutiny that has resulted in numerous rulings against the New York City government, and numerous assaults by inmates on uniformed and civilian staff, resulting in often serious injuries. In May 2013, Rikers Island ranked as one of the ten worst correctional facilities in the United States, based on reporting in Mother Jones magazine. Violence on Rikers Island has been increasing in recent years. In 2015, there were 9,424 assaults, the highest number in five years.In a 2017 report titled "Smaller, Safer, Fairer: A roadmap to closing Rikers Island", former Mayor Bill de Blasio announced his intention to close the jail complex at Rikers Island within ten years, if the city's crime rates stay low and the population at Rikers were reduced from 10,000 to 5,000. In February 2018, a state oversight commission suggested that New York state might move to close the facility before that deadline. In October 2019, the New York City Council voted to close down the facility by 2026.

Berrien's Island was an island in the East River in New York City, off the northern shore of Astoria in Queens. It takes its name from Cornelius Jansen Berrien, who purchased it from Timothy Wood in 1727. During the 20th century, Berrien's Island became connected to the larger Long Island, on which most of Queens is situated. The site is now occupied by a Consolidated Edison plant.

Southwest Airlines Flight 345 was a scheduled flight from Nashville International Airport, Tennessee, to New York City's LaGuardia Airport. On July 22, 2013, the Boeing 737 operating the route suffered a front landing gear collapse while landing at LaGuardia Airport, injuring 9 people on board. The aircraft, which was worth an estimated $15.5 million at the time, was written off and scrapped as a result of the accident.

United Air Lines Flight 521 was a scheduled passenger flight operated by a Douglas DC-4 from LaGuardia Airport in New York City to Cleveland, Ohio. On May 29, 1947, while attempting to take off on runway 18, the aircraft failed to get airborne, overran the end of the runway, ripped through an airport fence onto traffic on the Grand Central Parkway, and slammed into an embankment, ultimately plunging into a pond and exploding. Ten people escaped the flaming wreckage; only five of them survived.It was the worst commercial aviation disaster in United States history at the time. Its record stood for less than 24 hours before an Eastern Airlines DC-4 crashed near Baltimore, Maryland, killing all 53 aboard.