Long-lost mural from Queens Howard Johnsons recovered after 50 years in Massachusetts basement

A long-lost mural that once adorned an iconic Queens restaurant has finally been brought home — fifty years after it seemingly vanished into thin air.The sprawling, 39-foot Andre Durenceau masterpiece, long thought to have been destroyed when the Howard Johnson’s in Queens was torn down, had been quietly living for decades in a Massachusetts basement.“Many preservationists thought the mural was demolished, but I was searching for it for many, many years,” Michael Perlman, founder of the Rego-Forest Preservation Council, told The Post.Perlman, 42, was operating on little more than hope that the mural had somehow survived when he was called last month to make a 500-mile trip to rescue the long-lost art piece from the cellar of a former restaurant executive.The unnamed Art Deco artwork — which depicts several dancing women and horses jumping through ribbon-like hoops — had been the centerpiece of the HoJo’s rotunda in Rego Park for some 40 years.French-born artist Durenceau had been commissioned to replicate his imagery and style from his other pieces, specifically from the paintings he crafted for the futuristic 1939 Worlds’ Fair, which took place just 2 miles from the mid-Queens restaurant.Despite the mural being a well-loved staple of the community, there seemed to be little interest in saving it when the Gregorian-style building was ordered to be leveled in 1974 — clearing the way for former executive Hugh Kelly to claim the artwork.“Realizing the uniqueness of the mural, I asked the construction VP if there were any plans to save the mural.

His response was ‘No, but feel free to remove it if you want it,'” Kelly, 90, said, according to Perlman.The former executive and his then-teenage sons carefully tore down the Durenceau original from the plaster wall, rolled it into three separate sections on carpet rollers and carried it to the family’s home in Weston, Massachusetts, where it remained relatively untouched for five decades.Throughout...