The Elk Hotel

VANISHED

This weekend, we got the following note from an anonymous commenter: "Yesterday, a sign was posted on the front door of the Elk Hotel simply saying 'Hotel Closed.'"

I followed up with a phone call and spoke to a gentleman who confirmed it, saying, "We're closed. No more hotel no more." Closed for good? "For good."



We've been watching this one for awhile, waiting for the venerable old hot-sheets flop to fall, especially once the luxury glass towers started rising all around it at 42nd and 9th. Still, it always stings to get the news. And I regret never going inside--they rented rooms by the hour, after all--just for a look, to soak in the atmosphere. (I never went into the Shore Hotel, either.)

A New York Observer writer rented a room in 1999. He called the Elk "one of the few surviving remnants of 42nd Street’s seamy and seedy side, a barely living connection to the gray days when Times Square was the reigning kingdom of sex and sin."


Trip Advisor

Nothing much had changed by 2004 when the New York Times went in and asked a pair of sightseers how they liked the accommodations. ''Other than the mice, the hookers and the transvestites,'' said one, ''it's fine.''

And the same goes right up until now. Last summer, a commenter to my original post about the Elk wrote in situ: "I'm currently In the elk hotel As I write this . I've been coming here for the last 25 years, and this hotel hasnt changed much.there's a constant stream of prostitution and drugs flowing throughout the building."


my flickr

14 to 42 dates the Elk Hotel back to 1925. A grandchild of the long-ago owners, writing anonymously at my original post, provides a running historical narrative there, stating that George M. Cohan slept at the hotel and "Yes there is a STRONG FORCE up above in Heaven now keeping the ELK from the wrecking ball!"

But after 87 years, that heavenly force must have finally given up. The Elk has gone to the vanished New York--and that fantastic Pepsi-Cola sign, always reminding us that something seedy yet remains, will likely be going with it.


my flickr

*Everyday Chatter

RIP Atlas Meats--the last big meatpacking plant in the Meatpacking District is gone:


Resurrect CBGB? No, says Luna Lounge creator Rob Sacher, just let it go and learn to live with the dead. [MF]

Take a video tour of 1994 Coney Island. [ATZ]

Sexy neon signs for Valentines in NYC. [NYN]

"Pink Dorms" coming to the East Village. [EVG]

"Will there be a Pirate Shop occupying the hallowed, beer-baptized grounds of the former Holiday Cocktail Lounge? A Pirate Bar? A bar with pirate booty snacks?" [NYO]

Marty trips to vanishing Bleecker Bob's and Rockit Scientist record shops. [TWM]

See the nastiest subway rats of all time. [Gothamist]

Elaine's goes for $8 million. [NYO]

The Paddington Lady

On West 11th Street, in the townhouse that replaced the townhouse that the Weathermen blew up in 1970, there's a Paddington bear. For years he has stood in the window, his costumes changed by the elderly woman inside, according to the holiday or the weather. It was an odd sight, but one I came to look forward to on my many walks down that block.

Now that woman is gone--and Paddington wears a black funeral suit.



Norma Langworthy died on January 28 at the age of 92. An affluent philanthropist and patron of the arts, she also produced many on and off-Broadway plays and is well remembered by the Roundabout Theater.

She is survived by children and grandchildren, but I wonder if any of them will keep the Paddington bear tradition alive. I doubt it. Without Norma, we will likely see this strange sentinel of 11th Street vanish.


Easter 2010

Also:
Weathemen Easter
Mystery Window

1560 WQEW

Recently, I was thinking of my old favorite radio station, 1560 WQEW, the home of American popular standards.



I'd wake up on Saturdays with Jonathan Schwartz (or was it Stan Martin?) on the alarm clock radio playing nothing but Frank Sinatra and not want to get out of bed. For Frank’s 80th birthday, they played a non-stop, weekend-long tribute. “Sinatra all the way and then some, from ‘A Baby Just Like You’ to ‘Zing Went the Strings of My Heart.’ Brought to you by Harvey's Bristol Cream.”



In the evenings, you might hear big bands or some gloomy thing by Peggy Lee to serenade you while you ironed your shirts or had a drink or just looked out the window at the snow coming down, which it always seemed to be doing in my memory of listening to WQEW.

Sometimes I'd tune in on my little 1959 Granco with the tubes you have to wait for to warm up, and that would enhance the mood.



The station didn't last long. It was sold to the Walt Disney Company for children's programming in 1998. I was heartbroken and enraged--it was happening at the same time that Disney was taking over Times Square and the world I loved felt like it was ending.

According to Rock Radio Scrapbook, "The last song played before Radio Disney format was 'Stardust' by Nat King Cole."



Somewhere I've got a bunch of cassettes from when I obsessively taped the last days of the broadcast so I could keep listening to it after it had vanished. I listened to those tapes for awhile, then I stopped. Jonathan Schwartz is over at WNYC now, but I don't listen to music on the radio anymore. My alarm clock is set to the news.

Go back in time as you spend 41 minutes with the vanished New York station here--who will recall Mason Williams' "Classical Gas"? And stay tuned for the depression medication-study advertisement (Do you constantly worry, feel guilty or hopeless? You might qualify!):

*Everyday Chatter

At the Post, John Podhoretz attacks the anti-chain zoning plan for the UWS--because small stores apparently are not endangered by the corporate chain machine. [NYP]

When did the East Village officially become the East Village? [EVG]

The request to co-name 13th Street "Cornell Edwards Way" was passed unanimously. [HNY]

"Park Slope is dead." [NYer]

The last working phone booths in NYC? [LC]

Chino-Latino Lives

A year ago, when we lost La Nueva Rampa on 14th Street, we lost one of the last (if not the last) Chino-Latino joints in Chelsea, where many Cuban-Chinese restaurants once flourished.


eating in translation's flickr

We figured something dull would open in its place--another bagel shop, another cell-phone store, another Subway or 7-11. But real life is flourishing in the Nueva Rampa space. Welcome El Paraiso to the neighborhood, serving Spanish/Chinese food.



It seems miraculous and I wonder if it's the same business, reopened under a new name. A peek inside reveals that nothing appears to have been renovated. It still has the big cafeteria look with a lunch counter flanked by curvy old swivel stools.

Sometimes, change in New York City isn't really change at all.



Previously:
La Nueva Rampa

*Everyday Chatter

Bloggers talking about lost New York bars and restaurants. [AMNY]

New York bookshop owners, steel yourselves--Amazon is going brick and mortar. And they're starting in Seattle, where the Starbucks scourge began. [AW]

The "emasculation" of Wall Street--masters of the universe no more. [NYM]

March 9: Check out Networked New York--a conference that "examines relations among writers and artists who commune and clash in New York City." [P&W]

Real estate agents are trying to rename Kips Bay "NoEVil" for North East Village--! [FP]

Tomorrow: A talk on the "Homo High Line" and the role that gay men play in gentrification. [LGBT] [NYT]

Great horned owls take up New York nests. [NYT]

Fantastic photographs of NYC's streets--and this story about a sidewalk clock. [JM]

Foodie culture expands its takeover of Brooklyn. [BP] via [Grub]

Remembering the Charlotte Russe, a lost food of New York. [CNY]