Burden Will Decrease Carroll Gardens Height, But Only If We Write Her

There is apparently hope that Carroll Gardens won't become the skyscraper center of Brooklyn.

The neighborhood activist group CORD has sent out that alarm that City Planning Commissioner Amanda Burden "has said if the neighborhood calls for reduced height in significant numbers she will defer." But she'll only defer if we write to her and say so! I guess the years of public outcry against outsized development in South Brooklyn hasn't been convincing enough. She needs one more reminder.

Says the CORD letter:

Your letters and emails to Marty Markowitz had a big impact on his recommendation to City Planning.

The public review process has now moved to City Planning Commission, which held a public hearing last week at which some of us spoke. This is a tough forum because City Planning's own draft Gowanus Plan calls for 12 stories. But this is the most important place to make our case because we have a chance to influence their plan beyond the Toll Bros site...

Please submit the great letters you emailed Marty to the City Planning Commission. Unfortunately they do not accept email. Please mail to:

Chair Amanda M. Burden
City Planning Commission
22 Reade St, Room 2W
New York, NY 10007

The letters are due within 10 days of hearing, which is this Saturday, January 17 (sorry for the short notice!).*

So get those pencils moving! I wonder what Amanda means by "significant numbers"? Like, opening night at the Met numbers? Or average-size coming-out party numbers? Or would a largish dinner party on the Upper East Side do?

Moondance: Wyoming; Cheyenne: Alabama

The rest of the country once again benefits from our cruel discard for classic diners.

First, the Moondance Diner of Soho was shipped off to a new life in Wyoming. Now midtown's Cheyenne Diner, which was to have been moved to Red Hook, will go to Birmingham, Alabama. (Irony, no? Shouldn't the Cheyenne go to Wyoming?)

Boy Diner Saver Michael Perlman notifies us that he has found a new savior for the Cheyenne, which was recently abandoned by sometimes-say-die Boy Brooklyn Developer Mike O'Connell, who had planned by plant the Cheyenne in Red Hook, but then said it would be too expensive to move the hulking metal eatery.

Perlman has brokered a deal between Joel Owens of Birmingham, AL and property owner George Papas for "an undisclosed amount." Owens is the head of NAIC, an investment group, and seems excited. "This is a dream come true, especially in a state that has no historic freestanding diners," he said. (Is that right? Are there no old diners in Alabama?)

Maybe we should start being proactive in our diner saving. Let's get West Virginia on the phone and see if they'll receive the next classic diner our stupid City decides to discard.

From 0 to 60

The folks at 37 Carroll Street—once the address of the Famous Hanging Facade—have certainly become busy little beavers over the past two months. For the last year, progress on the owner's grand scheme to convert a single building-less brick facade into a full structure with an adjoining neighbor brownstone had been halting at best. Workers came, worker went, little got done. The old cornice was taken off, and the facade was fitted with metal bindings. (See far below.) I figured the thing would be completed sometime around 2020.

But, lookee now! The metal girdle is gone. The old facade looks clean. It has rooms and floors behind it. And the new, neighboring building looks almost done as well, complete with sneaky bulkheads set back on the roof. Somebody's been drinking some Red Bull!

I rather like the job they've done. It's not super special (why do the red bricks of today seem so dull-looking?), but they've paid attention to details. Look how they've tried to match the front designs brick for brick, not in color, but in arrangement. Nice.

Which makes me thing. Has something changed in the building world out there? Have people finally ceased going to the cheapest, shoddiest option? I've noticed a few projects in my neighborhood recently (small projects, I grant you) that, while they're not beauty incarnate, are not crapitecture either. This, for instance. And this, and this. They show thought and an attention to detail and aesthetic affect. Who knows? Maybe we've turned a corner.

Cornerstones of New York

I say, this is a cool little Flikr site. It was recently brought to my attention by its creator, who posted a comment on a recent item.

It's just cornerstones. Pictures of cornerstones. Some old, some not so old. Every other building has one, it seems. Isn't that an appealingly sentimental notion? No matter how crass or worthless the building, it has a cornerstone, signifying the pride of whoever erected it. Imagine setting a cornerstone that reads "Erected 2005"? I mean, who cares? We all remember 2005. We know what it was. Nothing special. But in 50 years, people will gawk: "Wow. 2005."

Many of the cornerstones remind us of politicians long out of power. LBJ. Ford. Pataki. (Uh. Was he really our governor?) Sad. All temporary. Their names on building don't make them any more impressive. Churches, of course, always lay a cornerstone. Why? What do mortal years matters, when the afterlife awaits? Those cornerstones seem like an admission of doubt. Most don't date before 1900. We're such a young city when it comes down to it.

I've post a few nice ones here. I like the bold examples. It's all about font, folks.

Gutted Patois

Here's Patois, 11-year-old mainstay of Smith Street's Restaurant Row Era, empty and gutted. It closed last Sunday. Supposedly, it will reopen across the street in the near future. Will they repaint the phone number above the entrance, with a little illustration of an old-time phone?

Snow Gate

The pedestrian bridge at Summit Street over the BQE during last weekend's snowstorm.

Meet the Cafieros

It's been a while since I've revisited my obsession with Cafiero's, the extinct Italian family restaurant that once dominated social activity on President Street in Brooklyn the way The Colony once ruled Cafe Society on the Upper East Side. This is mainly because I had nothing new to report about the place, which was so local, so secretive, so insidery that there were (to the best of my beliefs) no advertisements, no newspaper write-ups, no menus, no matchbooks, no paper trail whatsoever. The eatery, which closed in the 1970s, only lives on in the memories of some very old people.

But one of the joys of writing Lost City is it brings people to me I otherwise would never meet. A week or so ago, I was contacted by an actual Cafiero! I kid you not. Not the progeny of owners Sharkey and Katie Cafiero—they had no children. But Anna, the granddaughter of Katie's brother.

After I overcame the shock of this visitation, I began asking questions. Anna confirmed most of what I had reported before—That Cafiero's was the hangout of judges, celebrities and mobsters alike, that Sharkey kept things very low-profile so as not to attract too much attention; the privacy of his customers was his prime concern. The place was a family affair. Katie and Sharkey's sister, Mamie, were waitresses. Brother Frank was the cook.

But I also learned some new information. The restaurant was founded by Sharkey's parents, who subsequently lived in the rooms above the dining room. Mamie lived on the top floor. The Cafieros were from Naples and served Neapolitan dishes. People who ate there have mentioned to me such dishes as the Charcoal Broiled Veal Spedini, Vinegar Peppers over grilled pork chop, potato croquettes, the sides of rigatoni, the heros. I asked Anna is the family had retained any of the recipes and I could hear her laugh come over the next e-mail. There were no recipes. The menu changed daily, depended on what could be had at the market that day.

Anna sent over the photo above, which was taken at Chez Royale in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, probably years after Cafiero's closed. Sharkey and Katie are on the left and Katie's sister-in-law Anna is on the right. Looks like the man pictured below, no?



Anna's grandmother Anna, incidentally, also owned and operated a restaurant in the area. It was called Anna' Luncheonette, and was on the southeast corner of Columbia and Summit Streets. A vacant lot is there now. The luncheonette consisted of a large room with booths on the right side and a counter on the left. There was a telephone booth at the back wall along with a jukebox with 45 records. It had a tin ceiling.

I have learned recently that I may have a chance to go inside the old Cafiero building. Watch this space.

Good News for Lithuanians—For Now

When the Archdiocese of New York started swinging the wrecking ball at various churches a couple years back, one of the most vociferous and prolonged protests came from the tiny congregation of Soho's Our Lady of Vilnius Church, a historic house of worship that once served a thriving Lithuanian community.

That community has some small reason to smile today. An appellate court has temporarily blocked the Archdiocese's effort to demolish the building at 568-570 Broome Street, near the entrance to the Holland Tunnel.

The church's journey to this momentary victory has been a long and tortured one. Per City Room:

The archdiocese announced on Jan. 19, 2007, that the church would close, saying that average weekly Mass attendance was fewer than 100 people and that no weddings and baptisms had been celebrated there in years. It padlocked the church on Feb. 26, 2007. But 15 or so protesters continued to gather every Sunday for a prayer vigil, at which they held signs, ate Lithuanian rye bread, propped up white crosses in the front of the church and prayed for its reopening.

In April 2007, the Lithuanian president, Valdas Adamkus, visited the Vatican and asked Pope Benedict XVI to intercede to save the parish.

In May 2007, a state judge, Shirley Werner Kornreich, rejected a lawsuit by parishioners who argued that the archdiocese had no right to close the church. Then the parishioners filed another lawsuit, arguing that under state law, the archdiocese could not demolish the church without meeting with the church’s trustees.

Similar lawsuits, raising related legal issues, were brought by parishioners at St. Brigid’s Roman Catholic Church, at 119 Avenue B in the East Village, facing Tompkins Square Park. That church, built by Irish immigrants who fled the potato famine in the 1840s, closed in 2001 because of structural problems, and the final Mass, in the basement of the Catholic school next door, was in 2004.

In May 2008, an anonymous donor came forward with $20 million to save St. Brigid’s. In August, the archdiocese withdrew its application for a demolition permit. The litigation is now expected to be settled.

On Nov. 18, 2008, Justice Louis B. York ruled against the parishioners at Our Lady of Vilnius, citing, in part, the earlier decision by Justice Kornreich. Under state law, courts in general defer to church hierarchy in making decisions about real property.

On Dec. 23, 2008, the archdiocese’s demolition company, A. Russo Wrecking, sent letters to landowners stating that demolition was to take place “in the near future.” But now, the Appellate Division of State Supreme Court has issued a stay, indicating it would hear the appeal of Justice York’s decision.

Do I think the plaintiffs will prevail? No, I do not, sad to say. Governments do not like to mess with religious authorities. It's bad politics, even if it turns ecclesiastical leader into virtual dictators, above every law, petition and protest. The Archdiocese of New York has always been a big bully, and they will not back down in this instance, any more than they would in any other.

Matchbooks of the Lost City: Soho Kitchen and Bar

Here's an amusing blast from the past, in these days of widespread oenophilia. A matchbook from the Soho Kitchen and Bar. If you loved wine and liked variety, this was the place to go in the 1980s. It had 100 wines by the glass at a time when most restaurants had two: a red and a white.

Read this from 1983 in the New York Times:

It began as a novelty several years ago. Restaurant bars around town started serving eight or so finer wines by the glass, using a nitrogen-sealing machine that kept them from deteriorating if the bottle was not finished the same day. Then a few ambitious bars installed two or three of the machines to increase their capacities. Now a new restaurant-wine bar in SoHo holds the title of the Macy's of oenophiles by offering 110 wines (including sparklers) by the glass.

The SoHo Kitchen and Bar at 103 Greene Street, near its sister restaurant, called Greene Street, has ambitious plans to encourage customers to sample wines. One is to offer "flight" tastings. That could include eight wines from a particular region, such as Alsace; a range of wines in a certain category - dessert wines from California, for instance - or comparisons of European and American wines made from the same grapes.

A flight of eight one-ounce glasses costs $10 and up, depending on the wine. The SoHo Kitchen and Bar is an airy, loftlike place done in industrial chic with a huge bar spanning the center of the room. Reasonably priced sandwiches and light entrees are served to the background of mellow rock music. It is worth a visit for those interested in comparing wines or trying unusual selections that are not widely available, such as Australian or South African wines. The wine bar is only in partial operation this weekend, but the management says it will be in full swing by New Year's Eve.

I love that "flight" is in quotes.

Doomed-Looking Vesuvio Bakery Moves from Shoes the T-Shirts

WTF is happening with Soho's irreplaceable Vesuvio Bakery? Closed for months with idle promises taped to the door of an imminent reopening, it was caught hawking designer shoes in its window last fall. Now, reports Eater, "two guys putting up t-shirts for sale in the window" have been seen. Further states the tipster, I "walked over for a better look and turns out they're... Vesuvio t-shirts! Asked the guys if Vesuvio found a buyer to help them stay open and they said oh-so-confidently, "I think so? We're just here to put up t-shirts.'"

The 90-year-old bakery was listed with Craigslist last week, so things don't look good for the local landmark.