I wrote a piece for the Times this week about the closing of Moe's Meat Market, a butcher shop on Elizabeth Street turned into an artist's studio and gallery in 1977. Back then, Bohemians and working-class Italians mixed on a street once affordable, now taken over by luxury.
Moe’s Meat Market, in Little Italy, hasn’t been a meat market for 40 years. But the floor is still tiled in black and white, the walls covered in porcelain-enameled tin sheets. When the artist Robert Kobayashi, known as Kobi, bought Moe’s and the rest of its building in 1977, he moved in with his wife, the photographer Kate Keller, and installed his studio in the storefront, leaving the walls intact. As a sculptor who worked with tin, maybe he felt an affinity for the sheet metal. Maybe he just appreciated the history.
Read the rest at The Times
the basement wine press
2 comments:
Good article.
Ugh, this is so sad. I loved this gallery and would make a point to walk down this block just to see what was new. My favorite addition was the little cat door on the outside of the front door, complete with tiny mailbox. There was also an incredible miniature of the building in the window, which included the little cat door on the miniature front door.
I have some photos here:
https://www.flickr.com/search/?user_id=24771397%40N00&sort=date-taken-desc&text=237%20elizabeth&view_all=1
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