A Good Sign: Joe's Tavern

Found this battered old vertical neon sign outside a building way over on 10th Avenue and 25th. Joe's is long gone, and it doesn't look like the ground floor business space has been inhabited for years. I've seen this style of sign, with the horizontal "BAR" tacked on the end, countless times. But the forlorn appearance of this specimen makes it particularly poignant.

Harvey's Chelsea House Remembered by Readers

I posted last week about the bygone Olde New York restaurant Harvey's Chelsea House. Since then, a couple readers have shared their memories of the place. This has been gratifying, as I had assumed that nobody remembered the place. (I've never seen it written about since it closed twenty years ago.)

Maximum Bob wrote:

This used to be my main hangout. I used to work out at a gym a block away and would hit the bar afterwards for a burger and a beer. It was an elegant, grownup place. The night before I got married, my best friends and I came here for dinner and drinks.This was the 80's. I will never forget Harvey's and that time in general. If I could go back in time I would jettison this age of mediocrity in a nanosecond.

And Lionel said: 

It was a great place with one of the finest bars I spent time bellying up to. It had two old fashioned cash registers that were functioning and used. Some very talented artist did an oil painting that depicted the bar and was beautifully accurate. I was heartbroken when it was no more. I would occasionally see the actress Sandy Dennis in the back having a sandwich. Interestingly, many of the bartenders, and or owners, always referred to the bars that they worked at as ‘the store,’ kind of a holdover from old New York. It was a truly beautiful barroom.

Sandy Dennis was a regular?! I love the memory of the place even more now.

Lost City Asks "Who Goes to El Quijote"?

Twenty-four years in New York and I finally made it into El Quijote. What took me so long? I don't know. Something about the joint always seemed a bit cheesy to me. Maybe I associated it too much with the too-bohemian-by-half residents of the Chelsea Hotel. Also, the prices didn't help. If the dining experience was going to be a miss, I would be out $50 in the experiment. Now, of course, I wish I hadn't been so standoffish. El Quijote has a lovely, frozen-in-time interior and not bad food at all. Here's my Eater write-up:

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Mattei Pizzeria Gets All Fancy

The Maffei Pizzeria holds down a second-tier spot in terms of New York pizza fame. It's not one of the immortals (Lombardi's, Grimaldi's, Di Fara, Totonno's, etc.), but, among slice joints it's respected as a talented workaday practitioner, and is particularly well known for its Grandma slice.

Since 1975, it's been hidden in place sight inside an ugly metal enclosure on the southeast corner of Sixth Avenue and 22nd Street. Recently, though, its fame has perhaps gone to its head. I recently noticed that it had shed its rough exterior for this chi-chi bit of anonymous signage. Who's Maffei kidding? It's not an "Italian Eatery." It's a pizzeria.

Coogan Building Remnants Found in City's Salvage Warehouse

City preservationists remember the Coogan Building.

The structure, which once stood at the corner of 26th Street and Sixth Avenue, was an early victim in City Hall's long campaign to rid the Landmarks Preservation Commission of its teeth. The Coogan was built in 1876 for use by the Racquet Court Club, predecessor to the modern Racquet and Tennis Club on Park Avenue. Architecture historians called it a predecessor of the modern skyscraper. It had been granted landmark status in 1989, the Commission calling it ''an excellent and early example of arcaded, tripartite facade design, of the type later expounded by Louis Sullivan.'' But then, later that year, Mayor David N. Dinkins and the New York City Board of Estimate rescinded that designation. It was torn down a decade later and replaced by a 39-story luxury apartment building.

Why do I bring up the Coogan. Because a couple days ago, I posted an item lamenting the fact that the City was auctioning off—to one single high bidder—all the contents of Williamsburg's Architectural Salvage Warehouse, which, from 1980 to 2000, "accepted the remains of demolished structures."

A reader managed to get inside the warehouse and take a group of photos. Among the shots was the above picture—showing pieces of the Coogan Building. "March 2000—Item #90."

Here's how the Coogan looked in life. It's the impressive building in back.

A Good Sign: El Quijote

A survivor in The Chelsea Hotel. Look the hand-painted illustration of the paella.

Nice awning, too. How long until the bone-headed owned of the landmark hotel kick the restaurant out in favor of a Ponderosa?

The Traffic Building

There's a handsome little building on 23rd Street near Seventh Avenue hiding in plain sight. It's attractive enough, but the main reason it caught my interest was its odd name: the Traffic Building. Could this have been the headquarters of an early version of the MTA?

Improbably enough, the building was named after the Traffic Cafeteria, which called this home when the structure was built in 1927. It took up the bottom two floors.

The Times says this of the architect's work: "The terra cotta pilasters on the side of the second floor are made of interwoven Celtic-type ornament. The bricks in the spandrel panels at various locations are rendered in herringbone and checkerboard patterns. Twin spiral colonettes run up the facade of the building, topped by medieval-style capitals and eagles. A frieze across the third floor carries large wreaths of floral ornament flanking a terra cotta plaque with the building's name. For a vernacular New York building, it is a masterpiece."

A Cornice to Bedazzle the Straphangers

The Hollywood Diner, at the northeast corner of Sixth and 17th in Chelsea, has what must be one of the most highly sculpted cornices in town. That's a doozy, cousin, and no mistake!

Surely, some grandiose business once dwelled here. And indeed did. The Knickerbocker Jewelry Company. It was built in 1903 by Simeon B. Eisendrath. Why'd Simeon execute such a big-deal cornice? To attract the attention of subway riders. The Sixth Avenue elevated train ran right by here, you see.

No elevated train today. So the top floor is for rent.

Have You Been to the Bazar Francais?

Most old businesses are lucky to have a single reminder of their existence survive their closure. Charles R. Ruegger must have been born on a bed of clover. His Bazar Francais, opened on Sixth Avenue near 22nd Street in 1929, has scattered remnants all over the place. There's the faded, hand-painted wall sign, seen above. And his name is still on the oxidized cornice, seen below. Furthermore, you can see the name of the business, an importer of French kitchen and table ware, on the second floor of the building, seen far below.

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Cabo Rojo Closes After 51 Years

JVNY brings the sad news that Cabo Rojo, a 51-year-old Puerto Rican eatery in Chelsea, has closed. It lost its lease. I never went, sorry to say. Tenth Avenue in Chelsea and I have only a passing acquaintance.

A Good Sign(s): Groceries/Hardware

I've always loved this combination of signage in Chelsea—the old vertical sign advertising Groceries (I'm sure it bore another word in the past at some point) paired with the painted second-floor space proclaiming Hardware. Nice angles, nice lines. And a perfect mini-picture of mercantile New York, circa 1910.

 

Siegel-Cooper's Massive Bronze Columns

Are the huge, imposing pillars outside the former Siegel-Cooper department store on Sixth Avenue (now Bed, Bath & Beyond) the biggest bronze columns in the City? I don't know, but if there are bigger ones, I'd like to see them. No matter how many times I pass this entrance (probably one thousand and counting at this point), the triple-arched doorway always takes my breath away. It's pretentious and overdone, yes, as was the way in the Gilded Age, when the building was erected. But it's also beautiful.

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Lone Holdout

Sixth Avenue between 22nd Street and 21st is an utterly ruined block. It's chains north to south: Game Stop, Chipotle, McDonald's, etc. Except Maffei's. I don't know how this otherwise utterly charmless pizzeria has done it, but it's hung on during the Bloomberg blight. Been there for 20 years, and, for some reason, I never fear it's going out of business. People praise it's Grandma Slice. I myself have had only passable pizza there. And the facade is so ugly I shade my eyes every time I pass it. But I'm glad it's there. Every block has to have at least one indy joint, or soon we're all doomed.

Rich People, Running Their Games

Wal-Mart once again trying to bring their crappy shit merchandise and soul-and-small-business-killing policies to NYC. [Crains]

Annie Liebowitz finds a way to ruin not one, not two, but three landmarked Greenwich Village townhouses. [Bloomberg]

Rich developers don't have to worry about putting in affordable housing units because our rich mayor never checks up on them [The Daily News] Not that those "affordable" housing units would have ever really been truly affordable. [Queens Crap]

Elite High Line Park, enjoyed by well-off people in a well-off neighborhood, and managed by people with huge salaries, costs tons to run, much of which bill will be footed by business owners and taxpayers. [NY Post]

Dapper Dan, Take Two

I've already posted on Dapper Dan's Imperial Clothes, the recently uncovered old sign on 14th Street. But I'm posting again, because yesterday I finally saw it in person. And because it's just so freaking great.

You can see the holes where the sign's neon once was. Can you picture this sign in neon? Oh, my God. How great would that be?

Some Stuff That's Interesting

Remembering Zucca's Italian Garden [Ephemeral New York]

Some nice shots of the undersung Peter McManus Cafe in Chelsea [Greenwich Village Daily Photo]

Car crashes into the Sbarro in Times Square. I know how that car feels. [Midtown Lunch]

Mayor Bloomberg is not that influential anymore. [Time via Queens Crap]

Where's PS 39's Mansard roof get to? [This Is Park Slope]

Russ & Daughters has a new bench. [Grub Street]

Fire damaged Totonno's pizzeria won a James Beard Award. Well deserved. [Eater]

Young Sees the Light Once More

I never stepped foot in the Limelight while the Chelsea nightclub was in operation. I don't know. Drugs and dismemberment just aren't my scene. But the other day I was passing by the former church and noticed it was playing host to a sample sale that was open to the public. So I sauntered in to take a look at the interior.

Not much to see at this point, of course. But in the entranceway was a plaque from the building's holier days. "This porch," it read, "erected by his wife in loving memory commemorates the life and the service of Thomas Sears Young, a trustee of this church from 1897 to 1909. 'One day in Thy courts is better than a thousand.'"

Think old man Young, who was a director of the Equitable Life Insurance Company, was spinning in his grave all those years when club master Peter Gatien was having his way? Think Michael Alig ever gave this plaque a glance and wondered "How am I living my life?"?

A Good Sign: Joseph Gutman Associates

In Chelsea. A good place to find sewing machine parts and supplies. And maybe the Maltese Falcon.

Chelsea Flea Market Circa 1965

Chelsea's famous flea market, the Antiques Garage, was recently save from extinction when an evil developer's plan to erect a hot at the location was squashed by the spiraling economy. A reader alerting me to this wonderful video that captures the flea market in its infancy, just a while after the 1964 World's Fair. Note the line about "everyone from in-town bachelors to suburban matrons." Very "Mad Men."

Tin Pan Alley Threatened

A reader has alerted Lost City to a threat to five of the assortment of buildings along W. 28th Street which were once collectively known as Tin Pan Alley, the early-20th-century wellspring of much of America's musical heritage.

The five buildings at 47-49-51-53-55 West 28th Street has been put up for sale as a group. The Loopnet listing recommends that they be demolished, "yielding over 111,000 sf of Prime Chelsea property." The listing also provides a proposed architectural rendering of what might be built there instead (seen below). The usual thoughtless, anodyne, everyday pile of bricks. The cost to commit this crime: $44,000,000.

The listing has been up since September. One can only hope that, with the current economy, the seller doesn't have a chance in hell of making that price. Lost City has previously decried the fact that these buildings—once home to music publishers that fostered the talents of songwriters Gershwin, Berlin, Donaldson, Carmichael, Warren, Waller, Kahn, Cohan, Mercer, Youmans and dozens more—have been left to rot, with nothing marking their significance to American culture save a small plaque. They don't enjoy landmark status. No pocket museum or tourism bureau marks their presence. It's a positive shanda!

55 W. 28th Street was also, incidentally, the address of famed American socialist Emma Goldman's magazine Mother Earth. If only Goldman were around today. She's organize a hell of a protest against this sale.