Two Examples of Attitude, Sam's Style

Sam's restaurant and pizzeria on Court Street in Cobble Hill has been around long enough that it's comfortable telling its customers where to get off. Here are a few of the joint's cozy signs designed to preempt various patron questions and demands. The top sign on the front door's a bit of a conundrum, you have to admit. I get what they're after, basically: The bathrooms are for customers only. But why is the "L" capitalized? And what's with "First"? Pay $2 first, and then you can use the toilet? Also, $2 seems like a random amount. Well, it's this sort of quirk that makes old places like Sam's worth one's while.

Had a pie at Sam's recently, and have to put a word in for one of the more undersung pizzas in Brooklyn. Cheesier than most, but with a good crust and tangy sauce. An honest pie. The 81-year-old man known as "Sam" still makes every single one, a la the tradition of Di Fara's Dom DeMarco. He's done so for 57 years.

What Lies Underneath

New York City gets continually built on and over and around. When you tear down an old building, there's no telling what you'll find inside, behind or under it. Old painted advertisements? An ancient, forgotten graveyard? The foundation of another building long thought lost to history? There's no telling.

This blog has previously and exhaustively detailed the past history of the becoming-extinct-as-we-speak Hamberger Christmas display factory on Warren and Hicks Street—how its previous lives include being the gymnasium for St. Peters Church on Hicks Street, which was built by prolific church architect Patrick Charles Keely; and a hall called the Brooklyn Lyceum, where dances were held.

The building is now being knocked into dust. And the destruction is revealing that the Warren Street facade (far below) of the structure was not always its only handsome aspect. The plain brick wall that faced Hicks Street has been destroyed to disclose a handsome row of arched windows quite in keeping with what once was a religious building.

It's a shame that we have to smash something in order to fully illustrate what we're losing. More pictures follow.

UPDATE: 9:30 AM Aug. 19. They're halfway through the wall of windows. It will be gone by day's end.

Long Line Lingers On

Due to the repair and/or removal of a current awning, this former sign of the Long Line Chinese restaurant is currently on display on Atlantic Avenue. What sort of name is that, anyway? A bit a wishful thinking perhaps on the part of the owners, in hopes that the eatery would always boast long lines. Not such an appealing thought for customers, though.

Where Are the B61s?

Ever wonder why a B61 bus never comes on schedule? Why there's a drought of buses for 20 minutes, and then three arrive in quick succession? I'll tell you why: They're all at Ikea!

Here's a picture taken at 8:15 AM, Monday, Aug. 18. You can't tell from the shot, but there's another, fourth bus just to the left. All four vehicles are B61s, and all are parked, their drivers chatting with one another on the sidewalk. I stood waiting for a nearby B77 for 10 minutes and not one bus moved.

This is 8:15 AM, remember! Rush hour! Hundreds of Red Hook and Cobble Hill residents are waiting at bus stops along Van Brunt, Columbia and Atlantic to get to work in downtown Brooklyn. And there guys are having a coffee klatch. I've been told by those in the know that the drivers sometimes bunch up not by accident, but on purpose, so they can socialize at the end of the line. This would seem to prove the rumor.

UPDATE: Don't like my complaint? Try this equally good one on Neighborhood Threat.

A Sign From the Past

Lost City has not yet been able to find out what happened to the old neon sign at McHale's, but look was an observant reader turned up for us: the sign to nearby, erstwhile theatrical eatery Barrymore's. Said item is for sale on Old Good Things Webstore. This, even as the old Barrymore's building on W. 45th Street is being torn down as we speak.

Barrymore's went down for the count more than two years ago. It didn't have the rich history McHale's did, but still. The sign is going for $2,500. If I had it, I'd buy it and put the thing in my imagined Museum of Classic New York Neon.

Some Stuff About Public Enemies

Former Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff, who is still on the City payroll, thinks his business is not our business.

The machine behind the corrupt Willets Point eminent domain movement shows its utter contempt for the people. And tell-it-like-it-is Council Member Hiram Monserrate shows his utter contempt for the people behind the movement.

Bloomberg appoints a new Building Commissioner, which is sort of like the fox appointed a new hen-house guard. The paper lion this time is named Robert D. LiMandri.

Crapitect Karl Fischer builds a lot of crapitecture, and most it in the same areas, Greenpoint and Williamburg, making them crapi-neighborhoods.

But Gerald Caliendo, an architect based in Queens, is more crapilicious. He build 1,604 pieces of junk in under 7 years.

Marion's Continental: Misery, Inc.

Frequent commenter Carol Gardens, responding to a recent item I posted about the closure of the Bowery mainstay Marion's Continental, had this to say:

By the way, everyone seems to buy the whole origin story that Marion ran a restaurant at this location, but I've always thought of that as some kind of ingenious nostalgia performance piece. I have never found a scrap of evidence that such a restaurant existed nor is it mentioned in any book of the time. Nice story, though.

Carol's right. I always took the story of socialite Marion Nagy running a bistro/club at that address from 1950 to 1973 on faith, even though I had never heard of her or the place. Some photos on the walls inside the new Marion's seemed to back up the claim, but I had never read any old stories about Nagy's exploits. So I decided to do some small research, and I came up with....nothing.

The Department of Building records for the address, 354 Bowery, seem to indicate we might be in the grip of a yarn here. A 1954 Certificate of Occupancy list the first floor as being occupied by "storage and store," which doesn't sound like a restaurant to me. And a search through the New York Times archive found nothing on the place. It did, however, turn up some grisly details as 354 Bowery long, pre-Marion's life as a seedy lodging house.

Typhus fever seized 354 residents Herman Statzer and Herman Fischer in 1893. Both were sent to Bellvue. Fischer died. In 1899, lodger Charles W. Cook took his life by swallowing carbolic acid. He blamed his death on his brother Herbert of Long Island City, not saying what Herbert had done.

This is all perhaps surprising, because in an 1879 article, City housing officials, inspecting Bowery flophouses, rated 354 as "the grandest of all the Bowery lodging-houses." It has 17 rooms "for single gents," a reading room to which lodgers could "furnish their own literature," and a "young, full-blooded Irishman, with a broad brogue and a blarney tongue, for a clerk." And all for 25 cents a night. Yowzah!

Broadway on Broadway

Walking through Times Square this week, it struck me how unfortunate it was that an area made famous by and primarily known for theatre now boasts precious few billboards advertising Broadway shows. Plenty of television and film ads. Also Coke, Planter's Peanuts, Fuji Film and various other producers. I guess space rentals must be so costly that theatre producers are priced out of the market.

The only stronghold of Broadway advertising I saw was the building at the northeast corner of 47th and Seventh Avenue. Jersey Boys, Grease!, Hairspray, Wicked. Whoever owns this structure seems to have made it a priority that stage shows have their say.

That's One Yellow Door

Don't know why, but somebody decided to go all yellow on the door-painting on an otherwise bleak strip of Carroll Street between Columbia and Van Brunt. Surely stands out. And makes it easy to guide people to your address. "Just look for the yellow door."

Inadvertant New York Landmarks: 9 E. 57th Street

Some New York buildings, parks, statues and sundry structures become civic landmarks by sheer virtue of their architectural beauty. Others achieve landmark status through connections to local and national history. Still other become somewhat beloved by dint of their sticking around long enough without getting torn down.

I have a love-hate relationship with this last category, into which I feel such items as the I.M Pei Silver Towers at NYU and the threatened O'Toole building on Seventh Avenue fall. I don't want to confuse admiration with familiarity. I may get some warm feeling from seeing a certain building day after day, but one has to be careful of diluted the meaning of "landmark" by calling every creature comfort a classic.

I've looked at the big, bulbous orange-red number "9" outside 9 W. 57th Street at least once a month for years now, and I've never been quite at one with how I feel about it. Sometimes, rarely, it's struck me as fun and whimsical; usually around Christmastime. But mostly I feel cross and irritated whenever it catches my eye. It's goofy and somewhat embarrassing. The font of the "9" is terribly dated, speaking of the time the office building was erected, 1974, when "fat" lettering was in. (Think all those "Keep on Truckin'" t-shirts.) It strikes me a rather pathetic attempt at hip street art, the sort of thing a smaller and less cosmopolitan city than New York might come up with, and be inordinately proud of.

Now mind, I'm not trashing the building here, which was built by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. I know it's swooping glass wall has it's fans out there. I don't personally love it, but I acknowledge its appeal. We could all do a lot worse. I just mean the dumb old "9." I'm sure it, too, has its advocates, people who smile every time they pass it. But I wonder if they truly like the garish thing, or if they're just used to it.

The "9" was designed by Ivan Chermayeff of the firm Chermayeff & Geismar, who seem to have a thing for big, red objects (see here and here and here). According to their website, it is sits on City property (so Bloomberg could kick it to the curb if he wished), is made out of half-inch steel plate and weighs three tons. They also say "It has become something of a New York landmark."

Something of a New York landmark. There's the rub.