Tearing Down Old Buildings on Bowery

187 (on left) and 185 Bowery

When I learned that there’s a cluster of old buildings on Bowery slated to be torn down, I decide to walk over and take a look at them.

I probably should have written: “When I learned about the latest cluster of old buildings to be torn down on Bowery, I decided to walk over and take a look.”

That’s because buildings dating back to the early to mid-nineteenth century have been being torn down on Bowery for the last four or five years

The contiguous set of buildings I looked at today are located at 185, 187, 189 and 191 Bowery. They were purchased by Brack Capital. Brack hasn’t said what they’re going to do with the buildings, but they do develop condominiums and hotels, so it seems likely that they’ll be torn down for a new condo or hotel development.

Three of the four buildings frankly speaking aren’t very distinguished-looking…No. 185 is by far the most appealing, with a dormer window, oval windows in front and wrought iron details decorating the windows.

Of course, you wonder whether architectural details or other treasures might be hidden beneath successive layers of change and renovation in the other three buildings.

It would be easier to welcome new construction if the new buildings being built in Manhattan in recent years weren’t, almost without exception, condominiums, hotels, or shops intended for a tiny fraction of extremely wealthy residents of New York or equally wealthy visitors.

At various times, going back over 150 years, there was a druggist at 191 Bowery; the American Marine Engineers’ Beneficial Association, Ocean headquarters No. 69, at 189 Bowery; the Germania Bank at 185 Bowery (as the bank prospered, it moved to progressively larger buildings on Bowery — the Bank’s former location at 190 Bowery got landmark status in 2005).

Searching these Bowery addresses in the New York Times archive, you encounter a vanished world of Courriers’ Union meetings, cigar stands, keno gambling dens, “Knights of Labor,” etc.

One tenant at 185 is still living in the building. Earlier this month, the New York Observer covered her story.

Beijing Inventing Itself

The iconic landmarks and essential character of a city may be constructed within extremely brief, intensive leaps of development, taking place in an amazingly short period of time…

Writing in Vanity Fair, Kurt Andersen compares early 21st century Beijing with turn-of-the-20th-century New York:

…What early-21st-century Beijing…deeply resembles is New York at the turn of the 20th century. That’s the moment at which modern New York was inventing itself by showstopping leaps and bounds—swallowing adjacent cities and towns and farms, booming in population, and erecting what would become its defining landmarks…

The American Lawn

The total area that American lawns take up is equivalent to the area of the entire state of New York…and they require an amazing amount of water.

From the New Yorker:

The essential trouble with the American lawn is its estrangement from place: it is not a response to the landscape so much as an idea imposed upon it—all green, all the time, everywhere. Recently, a NASA-funded study…determined that, including golf courses, lawns in the United States cover nearly fifty thousand square miles—an area roughly the size of New York State….In order to keep all the lawns in the country well irrigated, the author of the study calculated, it would take an astonishing two hundred gallons of water per person, per day…nearly a third of all residential water use in the United States currently goes toward landscaping.

A Bicycle Freeway in Los Angeles

Via Curbed LA: Strange but true…There was actually an elevated, bicycle “freeway” in Southern California. Built in 1900, named the Horace Dubbins Cycleway, the wooden path connected Pasadena and downtown Los Angeles.

• “California’s great Cycle-Way” (article published at the time the cycleway was functioning)
• Article from the “Metropolis” web site

A New York Diner in Wyoming

I was browsing the web site of the American Diner Museum and I saw links to several items about the Moondance Diner. In 2007, the diner was moved from its longtime home at the corner of 6th Avenue and Grand Street, New York to the little town of La Barge Wyoming.

I never visited the diner when it was on 6th Avenue, but I walked by many times.

It looks like they’re still working on renovating it, but you can follow the progress via the owners’ blog.

The Casper Star Tribune put together a video about the relocation and about the new owners. In the video, one of the owners’ mentioned hearing about other East Coast diners being moved out West, as the diners get displaced from their original locations by new development.

Relocation is an interesting subcategory of historic preservation. It’s great in that it preserves historic structures (that would be lost otherwise), but then again (obviously) it removes the structure from its original context and constituency.

Main Street Flushing, Queens, New York

The New York Sun reports on how the latest wave of immigration — from Asia — is transforming how New York is perceived around the world. And how the enclave of Flushing in the borough of Queens typifies that transformation.

Since the 1970s, New York has become, in a highly visible way, a more Asian city. We have come to the point where, for billions of people around the world, “New York” conjures images not of the Manhattan skyline but of Main Street in Flushing, Queens…the once-placid streets pulse with a commercial vitality that was, 30 years ago, literally unimaginable. The dramatic change shows us once again that trying to predict even the short-term future of New York City is a mug’s game.

Google Mapping a Classic Movie Car Chase Scene

Via the  blog Peterme comes this link to a creative use of Google mapping and GPS. It maps the famous car chase set piece scene from the 1968 film Bullitt, starring Steve McQueen.  The sequence from the movie is laid out on the left side of the screen, and the Google map with the changing positions of the cars is on the right.

I’ve never been especially bothered by the illogic of car chase scenes (where the cars turn a corner and mysteriously end up in an entirely different part of the city than they were just a moment before)…but this map lays it out for you with this chase scene filmed on the streets of San Francisco and surrounding area.

The Tragedy of the Commons: Central Park Version

There’s a very good article in New York Magazine about the fight for scarce space in New York’s Central Park, where bicyclists, dogs and their owners, joggers and walkers all struggle to find room to maneuver…in an environment where there are no rules, few courtesies, too many people and too little space, no one willing to yield, and a culture of aggression and entitlement.

“People need to behave more like members of a shared society and less narcissistically.”

NYC Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe

It’s what economists call the “Tragedy of the Commons,” New York-version, and it describes what very probably is the most maddening thing about living in the city, despite all the great free public amenities available here…like Central Park.

“New York Cool” on View at the Grey Art Gallery

I droppeed by the Grey Art Gallery at NYU this weekend and visited the show “New York Cool,” which is up through July 19.

“Although the late 1950s and early ’60s have often been viewed as a mere parenthesis between Abstract Expressionism, on the one hand, and Pop Art and Minimalism, on the other, many key innovations surfaced during this in-between era.”

The exhibition makes a convincing case for these years as a very alive moment, although an interim one, where a multiciplicity of styles and ideas were breaking through.

It was a good chance for me to look at work by some artists that I’d never really looked at closely enough, especially Robert Goodnough, James Lee Byars and Alex Katz.

There’s a double portrait by Alex Katz of his wife that seems suggestive of later work using double or serial images (like Warhol’s repetition ofsingle images, although the Katz work is painted by hand, not lithographed).

The Goodnough painting on view reminds me of Diebenkorn’s paintings, where the canvas retains earlier attempts, almost like frameworks, on the canvas. Or almost like a manuscript where words have been crossed out, new text written in by hand…

There isn’t a lot of work on display, but each piece has a lot to say so that the exhibit feels very full. It’s quite good that way.

There’s a lot of exciting things going on in the work on display here — an expansive moment on view.

One Tenant’s Experience of Life (and Loss) at 47 E. 3rd Street

From The Gothamist comes this inside view of the E. 3rd Street tenement building that the owners plan to turn into a single-family residence. 

Barry Paddock is a  New York Daily News intern who has lived in the building since 1993. He writes about his experience living in the building and describes the eviction process.

The Catering Trucks of Los Angeles

Continuing with my obsession about catering trucks that serve different, interesting or off-the-wall foods…

Eating LA reports on the Green Truck, a catering truck serving up organic food…Menu items include Niman Ranch hamburgers and hot dogs, a mesclun salad, “Wildflower Hummus,” and many other tasty and organic items.

Classifying the World

Today’s New York Times Science section reports on Paul Otlet and the conceptual groundwork he laid for a universal system to link and retrieve information globally:

“In 1934, Otlet sketched out plans for a global network of computers (or “electric telescopes,” as he called them) that would allow people to search and browse through millions of interlinked documents, images, audio and video files. He described how people would use the devices to send messages to one another, share files and even congregate in online social networks. He called the whole thing a “réseau,” which might be translated as “network” — or arguably, “web.”

Working with index cards, well before the invention of computers, he quickly ran up against a huge problem: the volume of paper produced by his system was greater than any staff of human beings could handle.

Otlet’s contribution wasn’t that he invented a workable solution. He didn’t.  But, he had the vision to imagine a system for linking and describing knowledge (and encouraging users to communicate with each other, too).

In a way, he predicted the invention of the database, the search engine, social networking and the semantic web (arranging content on the Web so subject relationships are indicated).

It seems amazing that he foresaw so much…and he should be creditied for his vision — But certainly late 19th and early 20th century librarians were aware of the limitations that they were running up against trying to organize an ever-growing body of information in an increasingly-globalized world.

The decades prior to the invention of the computer must have been a strange time to work in what later came to be called the field of “information.” The technology available at the time to collect, describe and distribute information was falling further behind the capacity to produce information.

 Ppeople trying to organize information back then (who couldn’t have forseen the invention of the database and of networked computing) could only wonder if the future would mean continuing to fall behind, as more and more information was printed and as the audience for information became more dispersed all around the world.

“City of Shadows”

From BldgBlog comes this item about an amazing set of time exposure images taken in St. Petersburg, Russia by photographer Alexey Titarenko.

The most interesting images (from a set entitled “City of Shadows”) depict crowds of people moving through the city. The time exposures have transformed the moving groups of people into dark, massive clouds (the image of a swarm comes to mind, too).

Individual identity has dissolved and only incidental details (hands moving up stair railings, for example) are visible.

Great Works of Photography Re-Staged Using Lego Figures

Via the Open Culture blog comes this item about classic 20th Century photographs re-staged using Lego pieces.

I’m not sure whether it’s absolutely essential to have already seen the original photographs that these re-creations are based on…and for that matter I’m not entirely sure what it is that is so engaging about them…

But for me personally, there’s something great about the combination of stolidity and smiling good humor that the Lego figures have. Then there’s the endearing dissonance between the Lego re-stagings and the original photographic images that we’ve retained in our mind’s eye.

The re-creation of Cartier Bresson’s photograph entitled “Madrid” is one of my personal favorites (here’s the original image). The original photograph oscillates between the entirely mundane waking world and the dream world. The re-creation certainly captures those elements, too.

The re-stagings are like good mimicry — they lovingly reproduce elements of the original and in doing so instill an uncanny feeling in those of us looking at them, which is really kind of a thrilling feeling.

They’re by an artist named Balakov who posted a set of the images on Flickr.

The Blob Invades New York

Via the excellent blog Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York, comes this story about the bizarre lengths developers will go to construct high-rise buildings around and above lower-scale buildings that don’t want to be moved. The holdouts come to be absorbed by the new construction:

“The Blob could be a metaphor for the way many of us feel everyday as the new New York encroaches and devours…”

In the early or mid 1980s, a similar thing was done in midtown. A high-rise tower was built around an existing brownstone where the tenant didn’t want to move. The brownstone is still there, although I think the tenant died a few years ago. In that instance, I think there was something comendable about the effort — it preserved the person’s home and also left a trace of the many brownstones that used to line those blocks of midtown.

In this latest instance, though, there’s something grotesque and disturbing about it. Far from seeming respectful of the tenants who choose to stay, the effort seems to psychologically (if not physically) bulldoze them.

For additional context, Vanishing New York provides this  New York Times story on the project.

A Half Century of Traffic Jams and Road Rage

Via Streetsblog comes a link to this fascinating Time Magazine article about traffic jams and road rage — published in 1947!

From the vantage point of more than a half century later, the article so clearly reveals the inherently flawed prospect of building a nation where the individually-owned automobile would be the primary mode of transportation.

Rent-Stabilized Evictions to Create Tenement/Mansion

I’ve been thinking lately about what a malleable building type the tenement building is. Over their ~150 year history, tenement buildings have accommodated a whole range of different tenants, lifestyles and internal renovations.

Individual units have been lived in by several immigrant families at one time; then by single working class families; then by single individuals who creatively redecorated the spaces, maximizing the tiny square footage. Ground floor spaces have transitioned from dry goods stores to artists’ studios to art galleries to trendy restaurants…

The owners of a tenement building at 47 East 3rd Street in the East Village (Alistair and Catherine Economakis) currently live in their building. But they want to expand beyond the separate apartments that they currently live in and, in the process, spruce it up a bit. They plan to renovate the interior to include guest bedrooms, a gym, a laundry room and a nanny suite, among other additions. This would necessitate breaking-up the small individual units in the building.

Of course, the only obstacle to these plans was the tenants currently living in the buildings’ rent controlled units. Well, the New York State Court of Appeals ruled on June 3 that the Economakises could evict those tenants, provided that they themselves planned to live in the building, after the renovations were completed.

Can tenement buildings (and the low and middle income people who live in their rent stabilized units) survive this latest change?

The immediate issue is the insecure future faced by the tenants of this specific building. But, the larger issue is: will tenants of all rent-stabilized buildings be less secure as a result of the final outcome of this situation.

Could we see tenement buildings elsewhere in the East Village and elsewhere in New York converted from multi-apartment buildings into single family mansions? The New York State Court of Apppeals has done nothing to prevent that possibility.

Here’s reporting from the New York Post and the New York Observer.

For the current tenants’ perspective, take a look at their website.

Walking the Lower East Side

Jenna Weissman Josselit writes in the Forward about walking the historical, and the contemporary, Lower East Side.

Sometimes when I walk through the neighborhood — either on an errrand or just a stroll — I see walking tours being led.  And sometimes I ask myself:

“Have they so successfully crossed into the past on their tour that they haven’t reserved some time to see the neighborhood as it is today?”

This essay negotiates that ground very nicely:

Armed with maps and guidebooks and all manner of suggestions, you would think that making your way through the streets of the Lower East Side would be easy and effortlessly rewarding…the greatest challenge we faced was that the Lower East Side, these days, is a living, breathing neighborhood with an integrity all its own…it became increasingly clear to me and, I suspect, to my companions that the realities of history were no match for the realities of the present…

 

Food-Oriented Tourism (in Iowa!?).

Mark Bittman, in his New York Times food blog, comments on culinary tourism in Iowa.

To me, this kind of travel represents a great way to be introduced to a part of the U.S. that you might not otherwise think of visiting. And Iowa, of course, with its agricultural wealth, makes perfect sense for food-oriented travel.

Bittman links to the Iowa Arts Council’s site that has all kinds of great information on foods grown or prepared in Iowa; the people who grow and produce the food (a delicious-sounding pastry called “Dutch Letters” is one of several described); and even trip itineraries.

Brooklyn Bridge Park and Highrise Development

On the face of it, adding new park space to the existing Fulton Ferry State Park seems like a wonderful thing. It would add attractive greenspace to the city and improve the city’s waterfront space, too.

However, it’s worthwhile for New Yorkers to understand the behind-the-scenes wrangling that takes place as park development and private development issues are hashed out. 

The Brooklyn Bridge Park plan has been through several iterations, stretching back 20 years. The latest plan iteration seems to link paying for park development with allowing for the construction of expensive condominiums that would be constructed within the boundaries of the park. Potentially, this could set a precedent for future park development elsewhere in New York, as well.

A group called the Brooklyn Bridge Park Defense Fund has a web site with in-depth information on this controversy. It’s worth taking a few minutes to read and consider.