Brewster Building (Queens)
The Brewster Building is a 400,000-square-foot (37,000 m2) building at 27-01 Queens Plaza North in Long Island City, Queens, New York City. Once an assembly plant for Rolls Royce cars and Brewster cars and Brewster Buffalo airplanes, it is now the corporate headquarters for JetBlue.
The building designed by Stephenson & Wheeler opened in 1911 to handle the assembly of the chassis for the Brewster cars that were being built since 1905 at 47th Street and Broadway in Times Square in nearby Manhattan. The building was one of the first major developments at the foot of the Queensboro Bridge, opened in 1909, which reduced car transport from Queens to Times Square to a matter of minutes. In 1915 it began building the Brewster Knight. In 1925, the company was bought by Rolls-Royce of America, which had been operating out of a plant in Springfield, Massachusetts. In 1931, the Rolls Royce Springfield operation ended. From 1931 to 1934, Rolls-Royce Phantom II chassis were shipped directly to the Long Island City plant when Rolls Royce terminated its United States assembly program.
From 1934 to 1936, under J. S. Inskip, Brewster automobiles using Ford chassis were built at the plant. The Brewster operation ceased in 1936. The Brewster Aeronautical Corporation manufactured the Brewster F2A Buffalo during World War II at the plant.
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