Elk Hotel Pepsi Sign

VANISHED

For years, people have admired the Pepsi-Cola HOTEL sign that hung on chains outside the Elk Hotel on 9th Avenue and 42nd Street. The faded paint, the old typeface, reminded us of a lost Times Square, of fleabags and flophouses, of Travis Bickle rolling by in his Checker cab looking for underage hookers to save.



The sign is now gone.

Nothing remains of it except its chains, a rusted triangle of braces hung between two windows and the words HOTEL CLOSED.



Those windows once belonged to a man called Pops, an 86-year-old disabled war veteran who relied for years on the kindness of his neighbors to bring in food from the outside.

But Pops was evicted, along with Coo-Coo and the rest of the hotel's tenants, as we learned from Mark Schulte, the last of the Elk's holdouts. He has since moved out, too, and the 88-year-old hotel stands empty, a husk of haunted rooms.

Across the avenue, a cluster of old buildings, recently containing the Big Apple Meat Market, have been draped in a black shroud, prepped for demolition and the glossy hotel tower to come. We expect the same fate for the Elk--and maybe half a block of its neighbors, too, which we heard have all been sold to the same buyer in the past year.



The sign lasted awhile after the closure, the last survivor of the Elk Hotel. We wondered if some intrepid collector of urban ephemera climbed up there to save it, or if Pops took it with him when he went. But we heard from a reader that the landlord's nephew, an antiques enthusiast, claimed it for himself.

Maybe it's hanging on the wall of a luxury loft, to be discussed during cocktail parties. Maybe it will be scrubbed up and sold to a trendy restaurateur who's planning to open a high-end brasserie called Flophouse.

More likely, it'll be hawked on Ebay. So keep watch. You never know.



Previously:
Inside the Elk (a must read)
The Elk Hotel

Granny-Made

VANISHING


A guest post by Emma DeCorsey

The beloved Upper West Side store Granny-Made is closing on July 31, exactly 27 years after its opening. Its owner Michael Rosenberg is one of the city's true mensches. I worked there for the first five years I lived in New York.




Opened on August 1st, 1986, it began as a closet-sized boutique specializing in handmade knits for women and men during the sweater boom of the late 1980s. Like Florent with Gansevoort St., it was partially responsible for turning Amsterdam Ave. from sketchy to idyllic shopping street.

Michael named it after his beloved Granny Bert Levy, who knitted sweaters for WWI soldiers and later for her children and many grandchildren. Around 9/11 the store morphed into a baby and childrens' clothing and gift store in order to remain open and to reflect the rapidly changing neighborhood, while still carrying womens' sweaters and a vast array of rare & wonderful gift items. It always had a certain magic about it.



In 2010, my fourth year working there, our landlord at 381 Amsterdam refused to extend our lease as he planned to clear the entire half of the block for a big-box store--bank, Duane Reade, no matter. The neighborhood was outraged, but of course big money won out. We moved up the street to 467 Amsterdam, where the price to pay for staying true to our neighborhood roots was double our previous rent. George Beane, the owner of 467 deserves special mention for renting to us because of his belief in small mom-and-pop stores, and charging us a little under market value. Another mensch.

We were hopeful that the bigger space and the bigger-ticket items like playroom furniture might generate sales we couldn't have had before, but in the end it wasn't enough. I can't count the number of times I'd show something to a customer and they'd say, "I saw that cheaper on Amazon."


John Hamm in the bathroom, by the Goo Gone

Working there was like being part of a crazy little family, and Michael took great care to make his employees feel at home and taken care of as best he could. My coworkers were Ruth Hornbein, veteran sweater designer; Adele Salzberg, master buyer, decorator and creator of the iconic window displays; Hanna Mooney, an Austrian grandmother of two; and Gracie May Rosenberg, Michael's Havanese who was born in 2002 and became the store's official mascot, asleep in her chair and awaiting love all day long.

We all loved talking about movies and TV and we would sneak in the New York Times crossword when Michael was away. Adele and I kept a framed picture of Jon Hamm in the bathroom. I will forever be unsure of just how I, a Brooklyn-dwelling downtown theater actor and singer with no interest in children, came to find my day job there, but Michael and the girls were the reason I stayed. I left at New Years' 2012 and have yet to find a boss as good as Michael.

Granny-Made is a true piece of old New York, and each day I worked there was a million times funnier and more quality and more real than that piece of shit show Girls. Lena Dunham wishes she had the experience I did!

*Everyday Chatter

Check out this collection of old signs hiding under new signs. [NYN]

Nostalgia is good for you. Don't let them tell you otherwise. [NYT]

The hyper-gentrification of Long Island City, photos by Nathan Kensinger. [Curbed]

Remembering the Astro Tower. [ATZ]  

Mars Bar--two years later. [GL]

A reader lets us know that Pepe Verde, opened in the Village in 1998, closed recently. The space is being marketed with the empty restaurant next door.


A Red Lobster is opening next to the venerable Apollo Theater in Harlem. [HB]

The Met's Punk show "captured about as much of the genuine spirit of Punk as, say, Disney World's "It's a Small World After All" ride captures the authenticity of the planet's cultural diversity." [FP]

Q&A with Nick Zedd. [EVG]

Some folks in Chelsea are trying to get a park built on 20th Street and they're asking for your help. [20thSP]

Meanwhile, developers by the High Line are trying to take a park away from the poor residents of Fulton Houses. [CN]

Besieged West 28th Street and the High Line get another whoop-de-doo luxury giant. [Curbed]

Butcher Shop Sign

The corner of 5th Avenue and Bergen Street in Brooklyn used to house a cheap little furniture store, but Bobo Bergen is expanding and the space is now home to "high-end Scottish whisky bar" the Duke of Montrose, according to Here's Park Slope.



Construction on "the Duke" revealed an old butcher shop sign long hidden beneath the furniture shop's sign. It appears to be hand-painted on metal.

A week after I took this first photo, I received the following shot from reader Joel Schechter with a note saying the sign is being stripped off. Joel saw "a pile of the panels from the old sign removed, stacked on the ground. One of the panels was bent like a pretzel."

Does anyone know anything about this butcher shop specializing in "Quarters for Holiday Poultry"?

Sofia's

VANISHING

Sofia's Italian restaurant has been in Times Square's Edison Hotel for over 35 years. Now we hear they've lost their lease.



Reader Paul Jeromack passed along this message from his friend Ron's Facebook page:

"Last call to experience the world's greatest, authentic, living 1920s - '30s 'hot-dance Jazz band': Vince Giordano and His Night Hawks at Sofia's. It's the end of an era; leading hopefully to a new one. If I ever encouraged you to go or invited you to join me NOW IS THE TIME! Sad to report that Sofia's is closing in August (they have lost their lease). Mr. Giordano doesn't know for sure if the last performance there will be on Tuesday, August 13th or Tuesday, August 27th."



I've never been to Sofia's, and Lost City Brooks gave the place a terrible review, but it makes me nervous and I'll tell you why.

In 2010, the Edison Hotel denied the Rum House a new lease after 37 years, it changed hands, and was made hipper. And now Sofia's. So what's going on? Is the Edison cleaning house? This makes me worry about the wondrous Cafe Edison, that pink and frothy "Polish Tea Room," one of the last of maybe two oases (Jimmy's Corner being the other) of sanity and goodness and real New York left in the Disneyfied hellhole that Times Square has become.

P.S.
It was at the bar in what became Sofia's that Luca Brasi was made to sleep with the fishes in The Godfather.

P.P.S.
Mr. Giordano and his Night Hawks are looking for a new venue. If you know of one, please call him at 718-376-3489.

6 Years

So I completely forgot my own blog anniversary yesterday. Six years!

A big thank you to everyone for reading, commenting, and supporting "Vanishing New York." It would not be worth doing without you.


Without You I'm Nothing - Sandra Bernhard from LoLo on Vimeo.

Mitch Broder's Vintage NY

Journalist Mitch Broder has been writing the blog "Mitch Broder's Vintage New York" since 2011, covering the "classic old haunts" of Manhattan, from Katz's to Eisenberg's to Bill's Gay 90s. Recently, Mitch published a book on the topic. Filled with full-color photos and detailed descriptions of each classic place, Discovering Vintage New York is a must-have guide to what remains--before it vanishes.

Mitch will be talking about his book this Thursday, July 18, 7:00 at the Strand--go see him. We had the chance to chat a bit over email, and I asked Mitch some questions.



How did you go about choosing the vintage spots for this book?

To start with, they had to be at least 50 years old (though I let one slip through at 45). But atmosphere was as important to me as age. My idea was to create a collection not just of old places, but of old places that take you back in time. I chose places that look the part, so that you could go to any one of them and encounter another way of life in New York. As you know, there are plenty of places with legendary names but without much more connection to their past. I try not to judge them (though I do), but I did not include them. I sought authenticity. I saw this book as a kind of time machine.

Did you have any worries that putting them in the book might jinx them, causing them to vanish? (I sometimes have this irrational concern myself.)

You have correctly deduced that I am the kind of guy who would worry about something like that. But here I was more specifically worried that I would finish a place's story and then see the place's name pop up in your blog beneath the word VANISHED.

It happened in one case--the Primeburger Coffee Shop, which I eulogize in my introduction as a cautionary tale. The Primeburger was a Museum of 1965, from its conical space-age light fixtures to its box seats with swiveling tray tables. It was one of the last places that had stayed nearly unchanged for decades. But I didn't cause it to vanish. A sixfold rent increase caused it to vanish.


photo by Wellington Lee for Discovering Vintage New York

What is the value of vintage places in the city? Why should people care about preserving them?

Maybe it's the same value as that of vintage people in the city. Our society tends to devalue age, but can you imagine a world filled with only people under 25? (Yikes!) A great city is a city of contrasts. An insufferable city is a city where everything opened last week. What could be more fascinating than a metropolis sprinkled with places that allow you to experience life throughout much of its history?

People should care about preserving them for the same reason that they care about preserving historical landmarks and museums. These places are landmarks--and they are living museums. New York has been New York for only about 350 years, so a 70-year-old store has lasted for a fifth of its life. To me, that makes it part of the city's history. Keep losing places like that, and your city becomes a mall--which, as you know better than anyone, is what seems to be happening.

You say in your introduction that your original title was "True New York," then you changed your mind because old does not necessarily equal true. But there is a sense, especially lately, that the true--or real--New York City is being replaced with something false or fake. What are your thoughts on that?

For some of us, the "true" New York is found in places like the ones in this book. For others, apparently, it's found in places like Toys "R" Us Times Square. This may confound me, but rather than subjectively dictate what is or isn't "true," I switched to "vintage," which is more precise (and more expressive).

I don't see quite all new places in the city as false or fake--on my blog I include quirky new spots that I think evoke old New York spirit--but I do see an awful lot of new places as pretentious, predictable, unoriginal, uninviting, and devoid of character. The good news is that many of the old places are still appreciated by people of all ages. So there still seems to be room for a little of everything. For now.


photo by Wellington Lee for Discovering Vintage New York

Were there places you wanted to include but weren't able to--and will there be a sequel?

Along with the 50 featured places, I covered 50 more with short descriptions. A few of those short descriptions were dropped for space in the final book design. But just about every place that I think should be in this book is in there. And no one turned me down, for which I was very grateful.

I'm considering sequels of several sorts. What comes next will be partly determined by the response to what has come first. In a way, I'm in the same boat as many of the places I've written about. These days, books are bygone, too.


photo by Wellington Lee for Discovering Vintage New York