Sad to read this auction notice. There are not many machine shops left operating within the limits of NY City. College Point is in Queens, one of the 5 boroughs of NY City. This shop appeared to have been a moderately heavy machine shop that was shifting more towards production work on lighter jobs. The old Lodge and Shipley lathe and the Cincinnati Planer Mill are likely holdovers from the days when they did heavier or more general work. Once upon a time, various industrial areas within the limits of NY City existed and were packed with machine shops and manufacturing plants. In the past couple of decades, a lot of industry left NY City, and the industrial space became artists' space, loft housing, and similar. Initially, these areas were the lower-rent districts, so artists and people looking for cheap rental space moved in.
There was always some residential properties sandwiched into these neighborhoods, a lot of this pre-dating zoning laws. In the past few years, the shift in these neighborhoods from low-rent areas where it was sometimes hazardous to be on the streets at night accelerated. The result is these former industrial areas have now become "hip" or "trendy", and property values and rents have skyrocketed. Even if a machine shop or similar is doing reasonably well as a business, when their lease is up for renewal, they often find the landlord is raising the rent to some unaffordable figure. The landlords know they can find new tenants, of which there seems to be no shortage.
College Point, Queens, where this shop was located had quite a few industrial firms for many years. There were a few heavier machine shops, and one firm, Anton Machine, manufactured and sold a line of ground parallels and similar tooling. A combination of rising taxes, higher insurance, skyrocketing rents, and a dwindling labor pool to draw from as well as a dwindling customer base all combined to drive most of the shops out. The shops who did own their own buildings found the same factors working against them, and found they could make handsome profits in just selling or leasing the shop property. Finding a real manual machinist who can read drawings, figure their own setups and tooling, and do a job without ruining work or worse in the 5 boros of NY City is almost an impossibility these days. I walk through the old industrial neigborhoods, sometimes coming back after a lapse of 40 years, and am astounded at what I see. Buildings that housed supply firms, tool and die shops, machine shops and similar are all now "coffee houses", art galleries, antique stores, trendy clothing stores, and the upper stories are all housing or loft space. Were it not for the street signs and the familiar architectural details on some of the buildings, I would not know I was in the same neighborhoods. The building where I came through my time as a kid, working in a jobbing machine shop, is now converted to a combined usage of a commercial roofing contractor and some other businesses. Only the remains of 4 concrete anchors in the brickwork where the cast name plate for the machine shop one was are a clue that the shop was once there.
I suspect this shop in College Point, Queens, is facing the same combinations of factors. It is not even a matter of seeing work go offshore. NYC once had a thriving publishing industry, with books printed and bound within NYC Limits, as well as any number of newspapers. Shops were devoted to repairs and making parts for the printing industries. NYC once had a great number of steam laundries, handling linens and bedclothes and various garments from smaller hospitals, hotels, nursing homes, and even some residential business. Each steam laundry often had its own steam powerplant aside from the laundering machinery. Another group of machine shops handled steam laundry work. There were meat packing plants that even canned hams within NYC, huge production bakeries, breweries, food packing plants, and many more industries. These all kept the machine shops busy. All of these "feeder industries" are gone. I'd hardly call the new breweries within NYC real breweries. They produce beer, but are tiny enterprises with nowhere near the machinery or physical plants of the old generation of breweries. The steam laundries are all gone as well, victims of disposable garments and in-house laundries in places that formerly sent the laundry out. The publishing industry, other than offices, is gone as well. The garment industry is long gone. The last of the big original breweries closed in 1974. In short, whatever industries existed to feed the machine shops like this one their work are pretty much history in NYC and its boros.
I suspect this shop is one of the last of its breed. Sad to see.
