This would not be newsworthy, except for the fact that this McDonald's was once a Child's restaurant, a chain of long ago, beloved by urban historians, and this renovation has so far included the destruction of the antique terra-cotta decoration around the top of the 1930 building.
The motif includes intertwined seahorses, Child's signature style, with some creatures that look like bears.
A large portion has been scraped off so far.
In Coney Island, the Child's was landmarked. This one won't be worthy of preservation once all the seahorses are destroyed. Is this an intentional scalp job?
This McDonald's is on 28th Street, not 27th/
ReplyDeleteA building in the wrong hands.
ReplyDeleteI watched the same thing happen to the Chickering Piano building on West 57th, where Vornado did the dishonors. The building was easily razed thereafter. Unfortunately, the scrapers won't really see what they're scraping. Useless bric-a-brac - like our confounded imaginations that need to be in the care of advertisers, telling us what products we really need to be imagining.
Thanks Mark, fixed it
ReplyDeleteArrg! I can only hope someone is taking those seahorses to use somewhere else. They were covered up all those years, what shame not to incorporate them into the new design.
ReplyDeleteLooks like they incorporated the motif for a good many years, but then I guess they decided the design was not globally generic enough. Shame, it looks like those reliefs were made to last for centuries.
ReplyDeleteIt seems hard to believe that the Landmarks Commission would protect this building just to preserve the seahorses. From the Abbott photo you can see that the building is already more or less destroyed, all the top floors have been lopped off.
ReplyDelete@Goggla - It would have been nice to see the seahorses preserved in some way, but it's pretty clear they're just smashing them up to take them away.
It is not unprecedented for McDonald's to incorporate historic architecture into their restaurants. In Porto, Portugal, the lovely Imperial Cafe has been repurposed as a McDonald's. It's obviously not the same as a luxury restaurant, but it's better than bulldozing it.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.localporto.com/wp-content/uploads/mcdonalds-imperial-porto-580x380.jpg