VOLUME 12:
LONG ISLAND RAILROAD SERVICE TO LONG ISLAND CITY'S LOUIS SHERRY

By Nicholas Kalis

Twelfth in a series of glimpses into industries or warehouses that made for interesting freight operations on the Long Island. Information presented has included, where available, a brief history of the firm, how it was served by the LIRR, and what commodities were received or shipped from this facility.

Maps of Freight Stations and Private Sidings, 1966, places Louis Sherry as Spot 17a . Louis Sherry shared this siding, which diverged from the Stink Track, with Web Offset. According to Robert Emery’s drawings, the siding entered into the six-story Louis Sherry building, on whose tower an ice cream ad appears. An earlier Hyde map shows Waldorf-Astoria Service Corporation occupied this building. A later Hyde identifies this building’s address - although hard to read from the photograph I possess - as 30-24 Northern Boulevard . Today this building is TAG Apple Factory and is somewhat mysteriously known as "Applebaum" from a sign on this building’s rear.

What commodities were shipped in and out of Louis Sherry in the 1960s remains a mystery for now. While ice cream may seem a reasonable guess, I hesitate to guess that this facility was different from its neighbors who rarely shipped out any freight by rail.

Louis Sherry, the man, had many ties to the New York area. This ice-cream magnate and confectioner built Manhattan’s Sherry-Netherland hotel as an apartment hotel in 1927. The Louis Sherry Mansion on Long Island was later converted into the Strathmore-Vanderbilt Country Club. Louis Sherry went on to be buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in Bronx, New York. The name Louis Sherry lives on as Louis Sherry Brands of Chicago, Illinois 60647, which sells, somewhat improbably, sugar-free packaged foods.

For readers who would like to model this structure in HO scale, I would suggest Fox Chemicals ($60.00) by Jeff Springer’s Custom Model Railroads of Baltimore, Maryland. I have built a foam core mock-up of this building.

Credits

Thanks to Carl Fabrizi and Bill Myers of New York. A special thanks to Bob Miller of the Queens Borough Public Library.