2009
I don't know about WalMart, but it looks like the whole corner is coming down--the deli building and the building next to it. (Thanks to Shade for the tip.)
Everything's closed and shuttered up, marked with big X's.
Back when I worked nearby, I went to this deli all the time for lunch. Someone on Yelp recently wrote:
"After 25 years in business this place closes the door today, 9/2/17. I'm feeling nostalgic because I've been going here off and on since I moved to the neighborhood in 1995."
I always liked this corner. I liked seeing that it was still standing and in business. It was a holdout, low-rise and scruffy, the brown bricks flaked with old paint. It held a candy store/smoke shop and a liquor store. Basic stuff.
The bright yellow DISCOUNT LIQUORS neon sign is something to behold. Enjoy it while it lasts.
So what's coming? In 2015, New York Yimby reported that a permit application was submitted for a 12-story office tower here. The architect was listed as Gene Kaufman.
The site 42 floors listed the new building in June as 10 floors and included this sliver of a rendering for the address:
I love this stretch of 14th Street also - pass through it every night on my walk home. Like passing through a little wrinkle in time straight back to the 70's, when I would walk around the streets with my Dad in pure wonderment of the "Greatest City in the World". It was fun, dirty, dangerous, and full of life and characters that you just don't see as much of anymore.
ReplyDelete14th Street is/was the last bastion of downtown gritty storefronts; that went on for avenue after avenue.
ReplyDeleteSaw that the candy store was closed walking by it yesterday. That building with the proportionately huge vertical Liquor sign has been a great photo op. The deli was an affordable smorgasbord buffet and tons of seating upstairs. Always went there for a quick tea or coffee. Like the affordable Associated grocery across the street, the economics just doomed these places. The rent, the rent , the rent.
ReplyDeleteI used to go there all the time for 25 years or so, back when Jerry Ohlinger's Movie Material Store was a few doors to the east of the corner. This section of 14th was so old-school NY, gritty but not too gritty. The view facing south is a good one that a new, taller building will obscure. It's a shame.
ReplyDeleteFor thousands of junior high and high school students attending neighborhood schools, the Twin Donuts that preceded the deli was where we stayed dry, warm or entertained (they were early adopters of video game revenue enhancement) while we waited for the M14A, M14C or (at the time, separate) M14D.
ReplyDeleteFor the 10-30 minutes we might have spent there 5 days per week, it was an important part of our lives.
Hopefully the new guys will at least have an awning for the kids.
Horrible architect
ReplyDeletehttp://wirednewyork.com/forum/showthread.php?t=13617
I ate at that deli several times a week for the 2 years that I worked over on Gansevoort St. back in 2006-2008.
ReplyDeleteThey made great, basic sandwiches and had a great buffet. I would sit upstairs and watch the everyday commotion of 14th street unfold.
One by one by one, each domino falls until there are none left.
It's strange (maddening, even) that walked by that Korean deli only last month, marveling that it was still there. It used to be a place close to my work at the giant 111 8th Avenue (Port Authority Inland Terminal No. One). It was the place where I made my first practical mobile phone call, to check my voice mail at the office - just for fun. It was kind of a rough place, a kind of grizzled atmosphere which is being scrubbed from the landscape. Yet I survived numerous lunches and coffees there. Somehow, I knew it. A number of us did, apparently.
ReplyDeleteNew York is becoming a cartoon character...or a parody of it's former glory.
ReplyDeleteDoes any remember the White Tower that was on the SE corner of 14th & 8th? Great greasy burgers, bigger than White Castle! That's when NY was NY!
ReplyDeleteTo K Ethridge: A friend told me that there used to be a White Castle just south of this deli, where the big wavy glass condo is now. I moved here in the 80s, and only remember the small parking lot there.
ReplyDelete