32 JANUARY 2019 I LIC COURIER I www.qns.com
THE MATCH KING
“Every picture tells a story”
sang Rod Stewart in 1971.
With Long Island City it
seems every building has a story of
someone’s dream – perhaps delivering
a unique commodity, revolutionizing a
new industrial process or simply mak-ing
an old hat into an item new and
wonderful. When someone said “a city
is not gauged by its length and width,
but by the boldness of its vision and the
height of its dreams,” my guess is that
they were thinking of Long Island City.
Recently, a gentleman contacted us
to assist him in finding the backstory of
one of his properties. His thinking was
that he may be able to promote its future
by gleaming something unique from its
past. “It was once a match factory” he
told us. From that little nugget tumbled
out the fascinating story of a clever man
and the humble matchbook.
The property was, once at the fringes
of Burden’s Marsh, rebranded as Queens
Plaza when the Queensboro Bridge was
built through its center. A worthless patch
of bog was suddenly the most sought-after
land in Queens. Almost immediately
the Queensboro Elevated connected
the area to the rest of the city and com-mercial
loft buildings arose just south of
Bridge Plaza. Starting in the 1920s and
continuing for the next decade, the Lion
Match Company built and expanded
its factory at 22-15 43rd Ave. It is, in a
sense, a monument to one man’s dream.
Meet Leo Greenbaum. His 1950
New York Times obituary explored the
path of a 13-year-old German immigrant
who, over the course of the next six de-cades
was to be a bootblack, dishwasher,
waiter, restaurant owner and when he
died aged 74, a resident of Central Park
West, a member of the Elks, Masons,
Harmony, and Metropolis Country Club.
His son Monroe was a graduate of the
Ivy League’s Dartmouth College.
In 1917 Leo started manufacturing
paper matches with one second-hand
machine on the Lower East Side. He
later moved his factory to Brooklyn, and
in 1924, to Long Island City where the
business ultimately expanded into three
large buildings. Leo was a mover and a
shaker within the matchbook industry
with 21 patents. Not afraid to gamble
on new lines and new ideas, he was
called the “Match King” by admirers and
competitors alike.
Among matchbook collectors (called
“phillumenists”) the Lion Match name
is legendary. “The Matchcover Vault”, a
resource for matchbook book collectors,
sums up Lion Match’s place in history:
“There’s nothing like holding an old Lion
full-book ‘Feature’ in the palm of your
hand. You notice right away that it’s
not like any other cover. It’s heavier; it’s
thicker; and you know when you open it
up that it’s going to be a veritable feast
for the eyes (sigh!).”
When his son Monroe took over in
the 1950s the world began to change:
on the horizon were both the Surgeon
General’s Report on Smoking as well
as disposable lighters. By the 1960s
Monroe sold Lion and moved into the
advertising part of the business. Ulti-mately
Lion Match moved to Chicago,
and in 1988, rebranding itself as Lion
Circle, got into promotional products. Its
manufacturing equipment was purchased
by a firm in Honduras.
And the Lion Match Building? Now
managed and majority-owned by the
Werwaiss Family, who has been in Long
Island City for more than 100 years, the
building has recently been renovated
and converted into a multi-tenant loft
building. With Long Island City in the
midst of another ascending cycle, the
Lion Match Building’s future seems as
limitless as when it was owned by the
Match King himself, Mr. Greenbaum.
Note: if you have a property and
are curious of its past, reach out to
Astoria History @ Court Square. Drop
us a line at astorialic@gmail.com.
Legends G.A.H.S. Has Moved!
New Home! New Look!
Astoria History @ Court Square
Our new office is:
Greater Astoria Historical Society
LIC Arts Building # Suite 219
44-02 23rd Street
Long Island City, NY 11101
718-278-0700 / info@astorialic.org
Serving the communities of
Old Long Island City:
Blissville
Sunnyside
Sunnyside Gardens
Hunters Point
Dutch Kills
Ravenswood
Astoria Broadway
Norwood
Old Astoria Village
Ditmars
Steinway
Bowery Bay
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