Last Trace of Longchamps Disappears

Good Longchamps news is quickly followed by bad Longchamps news here at Lost City. (Only here is there such a thing as "Longchamps news.")

Just hours after I posted about my new treasured possession—a genuine Longchamps credit card—reader David Freedland writes in to say that the last visible remnant of the one-time prominent chain of classy restaurants has disappeared from Manhattan.

Back in May 2007, I wrote about a remaining Longchamps sign lingering over a building at Madison and 49th—a former location. It hung there for many years after the restaurant it advertised vanished. Now David informs us that the sign has finally been taken down.

Since first spotting that relic, I have learned that the sign's lettering is a "form of eccentric typography known as the Emphatic Inserted Italic—italic letters placed among or alongside roman letters for emphasis or effect."

And the sign was apparently even more historic than I assumed. It was erected in the 1930s sometime and was for a time the only neon sign on Madison Avenue.

The first Longchamps opened in New York in 1919. It took its name from the racetrack in Paris' Bois de Boulogne. Specialties included oxtail soup, crabmeat a la Dewey, Nesselrode pie and baked apple. (Would love to know if they published a cookbook.)

I repost here a snippet I previously communicated about designer Winold Reiss, who created many of the stylish Longchamps locations:

The exterior of Reiss's 1941 design proposal for a new bar and roof garden at the 49th Street and Madison Avenue Longchamps displays the chain's trademark vermillion coloring and lettering, including the falling "S," while the undulating lines that enliven its canopy and bronze wall panels recall the early borders of the M.A.C. The entire effect is not dissimilar to that of the Barricini candy box already illustrated: the name or sign identifying the product or establishment has been completely integrated into its design; the façade has become a sign rather than simply providing a place for one.

Look here for some of the murals that once adorned various Longchamps.

Longchamps filed for bankrupcy in 1975. It took 33 years to take down that sign.

(Photo courtesy of reader Meccows.)

Who's Luquer?

Not just a guy with a street named after him in South Brooklyn, that's who.

He was a big deal. A rich and pious dude with a lot of moolah who owned much of the 12th Ward. So tells a big gold plaque just inside the door of Cobble Hill's Christ Church. Nicholas Luquer (1810-1864) donated the land on which the Richard Upjohn church was erected.

Sarah Luquer, the daughter of Nicholas and his wife Sarah, lived at 618 Henry Street, a house built on what was the Luquer farm. She lived there all her life and died in 1898. Funeral services were held at Christ Church. There were apparently many Nicholases after the original. The family had a mill at the corner of Hicks and Huntington. The original Nick's grandson Nick was described as "a thin, French-looking man [who] raised oysters of extraordinary size and delicacy." (The original family name was L'Escuyer; they arrived from Paris in 1658.) The mill was used for grinding grain used in the Pierrepont family (into which the Luquers married) distillery nearby.

Wonder if there are Luquers still around somewhere? Are they still rich? Still hard to pronounce?

The Mad Santa Painter Strikes

A holiday window painter is being hired with reckless abandon by businesses along Columbia and Unions Streets in Brooklyn.

Over the past couple weeks, large elaborate Christmas-themed murals have appeared on four separate store windows. The work is obviously that of the same artist, who favors a chubby-cheeked Santa with a droopy moustache and an inadvertent tendency to expose his ample midsection. Above is the painting adorning Dub Pies on Columbia Street. Below is the House of Pizza and Calzone.


This is the Columbia Street Supermarket at the corner of President and Columbia. It is the most elaborate of the artworks. I caught the painter in the act of creation here. A young man of about 30 in a wool cap. Probably making some extra holiday money, and why not?


And here is the painting on the Coffee Den, at Union and Hicks. The artist mixes it up a bit here, going for Rudolph instead of St. Nick. I particularly like the Brooklyn-centric skyline in the back and the fact that Rudolph is bringing home a clay bottle of moonshine.

Longchamps Puts It on Account

This is an enormously cool thing. One of the coolest I have ever possessed.

It is a Longchamps credit card. For 1957, to be exact.

A few weeks back, a reader residing in Florida wrote to me, saying that she had been rummaging through her father's things and had found the card. She offered to send it to me and I readily accepted.

I was not even aware that Longchamps gave out credit cards. The card makes me think of the era of "Executive Suite" and "The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit," more genteel times when a person could sign for lunch or dinner and worry about the messy matter of paying later. "Please show card and sign check with your Name and Account No.," it reads. "All liquor charges subject to local laws."

The back of the card lists all the Longchamps locations, most on the East Side or near intersections of import (Grand Central, City Hall, Times Square, the Empire State Building). The one near 59th and Madison was open all night Fridays and Saturdays. Locations in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.

Our cardholder lived on Webb Avenue in the Fordham section of The Bronx, walking distance from the Metro North Hudson River line. An easy commute into the big city.

All Aboard!

A little more from the New York Botanical Garden's annual Holiday Train Show.

Meat Pies and Mitres

The pastor at Cobble Hill's Christ Church has a thing for Myers of Keswick's English meat pies. And therefore I have a thing for the Richard Upjohn-designed church's annual Medieval Holiday Fair.

Every year the reverend drives into Manhattan and buys a couple hundred assorted meat pies from Myers of Keswick on Hudson Street, and then sells them at a slight profit. In doing so, he provides his church with perhaps the finest holiday eats layout of any church fair in Brooklyn (though the Danish Seaman's Church in Brooklyn Heights might be a close runner-up). There is also homemade chili, homemade empanadas, Brooklyn Brewery beers, and a lot of fine baked goods. No three-bean salad or jello molds for this congregation.




This year I went for a Beef and Onion Pie and Pork Pie with mustard. Two of these dense delicacies are about all I can handle at one sitting.



There are also craft tables selling various folksy items—nothing as exciting as the food offering. The second-best thing about the fair is that they show animated holiday classics like "A Charlie Brown Christmas," "Frosty the Snowman," and "Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer" on a slide screen. Kids gather underneath for a schedule that runs about six hours long. There are also regular readings of "A Visit From St. Nicholas." Santa himself makes an appearance in typical English-style garb, red mitre and all.

The Inexplicably Sophisticated Duane Reade in Soho

No Duane Reade has any right to look as dignified as this Soho branch does.

I understand that local landmark district strictures probably kept the drug store chain's signage discreet and understated, and that the nature of the cast-iron architecture itself lends a certain gravitas to the business.

But whose idea was it to emblazon an entire wall with an Anthony Trollope quote? And the snappy white font against the bare-brick wall is unbearably smart. Does this branch has a super-urbane manager or something?

A Visit to the Holiday Train Show

I went to the New York Botanical Garden's annual Holiday Train Show for the first time this year—something I've long wanted to do. I always expected that the model trains would simply pass through a kind of fairytale village, albeit on a very large scale. I had no idea that the buildings in question were near exact replicas of New York City and New York State landmarks. Everything from Grand Central and the Empire State to Brooklyn brownstones and the Old Stone House, all jumbling up in some condensed, highly forested version of the metropolis. The Brooklyn, George Washington, Manhattan and Hell Gate bridges tower above.



As this Dec. 5 New York Times article indicates, all the structures are made from organic materials—things that might be found in a botanical garden. Among them: elm bark, alder cones, cloves, gourds, date vines, acorns, palm leaves, grasses, black locust shelf fungi, willow, canella berries, pine bark, walnut shells, okra pods, bamboo, cedar bark, oak, hickory, black walnut, eastern red cedar, sugar-pine-cone scales. They are created by landscape designer Paul Busse, and include famous mansions further upstate.



A number of buildings were new this year, such as the old Merchant's House of Greenwich Village, seen above, and the Rose Center for Earth and Space, below.



No landmark was too big or too small for commemoration. Above is St. Patrick's Cathedral. And here is the Little Red Lighthouse.



The show also has, somewhat eerily, several buildings that don't exist anymore, including the below theatre, once on 46th Street, and a Fifth Avenue mansion (further below) that was torn down in the 20s. There also are a few bygone Coney Island artifacts.

Costa Del Sol to Be Supplanted by Palazzo de Nouveau

The fake Spanish ambiance of the old Costa del Sol restaurant, at the corner of Ninth Avenue and 50th, is to be replaced by the fake Italian ambiance of Terraza Toscana.

Pictures of the new eatery were posted on the plywood wall surrounding the plot, where workers were busy, busy, busy. Costa del Sol was never anything to gaze at, but this new joint looks like the owners took design tips from the late Mama Leone's. It's Noveau Italiano at its cheesiest. Earth-toned walls, chandeliers a-plenty, white tablecloths and salmon-colored chairs. I'd like to know who it was, decades ago, that decided this particular design scheme telegraphed classy, Old-World charm. Because, you know, it doesn't. It's more like my great aunt's too-clean, too-lacquered living room, writ large.

The Only Shiny Yellow Metal Building in New York

Just my guess. But I think it's a safe bet. On Grand Street in Chinatown.