photo: Karen Gehres
Reader Karen Gehres sends in a photo of a notice put up in her building at Manhattan Plaza. "Enjoy it while you can and say goodbye," reads the sign. "Yet another excellent and reasonably priced neighborhood restaurant bites the dust."
I called the diner and was told they will go through the weekend. Their last day will be Sunday, November 1.
Yet again, it's not biting the dust because business is bad, or because it's not a viable business, as the folks in City Hall might want us to believe. Anytime I've gone by the Market Diner, the place was packed. People love it.
It's dying because of development. It's dying because of the Hudson Yards Effect. It's dying because Joseph Moinian’s Moinian Group bought the property and evicted the diner so they can put up a luxury tower. It's dying because small businesses in this city are completely unprotected and utterly vulnerable to the whims of landlords.
Karen adds that the Garden Center next door will also be destroyed. She says they're already "moving everything off the premises today."
The Market Diner has been on this site since 1962. It's a beautiful, unique piece of mid-century Googie architecture in a city filling up with banal, carbon-copy glass buildings. Another great loss--when we're losing too many diners as it is.
If you're sick and tired of the vanishing, write to the mayor and council speaker. It's easy, just visit #SaveNYC and click a few buttons. You'll feel better about yourself if you do.
5 comments:
Oh, no.
For those of us who enjoy living in quirky, smart, culturally-rich, non-homogenized urban environments, where else can we go? It's a rhetorical question, because the castration of NYC is being replicated in every American city that was ever unique or interesting. I'm on the road a good deal, and numbing, glassy sameness is everywhere in evidence.
Wish I could better articulate my fears, but it seems to me that our built environments reflect who we are (or are becoming), and what we value (or are willing to put up with). It all seems like a disturbing preview of things to come.
Anyway, thanks for the post. I'll stop by the Market this week to say my good-byes.
From two days ago
http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20151025/HOSPITALITY_TOURISM/151029907/dark-times-for-diners
How sad !!!
Here are some images of the Market Diner in the 90's...as well as other long gone classic NYC diners...
http://galessandrini.blogspot.fr/2012/12/new-york-city-diners-updated-post.html
Boy another place full of memories is going. I and some old friend use to enjoy a burger,and the rice pudding after wrapping up a night out. We use to hang out at the bar on occasion with some neighborhood fellows that liked the place! I can say that if this was 30 years ago things would be different and the Market Diner might still be there. BTW our other Market Diner stops were 33 and 9th and West and Leight.. Kd
There was also a Market Diner on the corner of 52nd and 12th Avenue. I lived right next door and ate there almost daily. It was classic. That one bit the dust in the 90's when they put in a "gentlemen's club"
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