Colony Music

VANISHING

After "60 years serving Broadway, New York, and the World," the venerable Colony Music in Times Square is closing down. That's the word from JVNY reader Charles Hutchinson, who works at Academy Records. A call to Colony confirmed the bad news. They'll be around for a little while longer, but not too long.



Charles writes in: "Colony Records is closing next month. I'm heartsick when any unique business that promotes music, books, and culture in general gets forced out of this city. As someone who has spent some of his most joyful hours browsing in such shops, I dread the day when rents and the Internet flush them all out. No website that I can conceive of could possibly fill the role played by the late lamented Gotham Book Mart or (should it be forced to close) Downtown Music Gallery in this city's cultural life. Record Stores, despite all the vinyl-is-back hubbub, are proving to be as vulnerable as the next mom-&-pop in the Bloombergian Era."



I used to buy sheet music at Colony, and I could always go there to find a Broadway kind of soundtrack (Judy at Carnegie Hall was my last purchase), but what I love best about it are its dusty vitrines filled with faded memorabilia.

Girlie magazines, bottles of Elvis perfume, ticket stubs from forgotten Sinatra concerts, all of it is crammed behind glass, to be looked at but never touched.



While die-hard vinylists might see Colony as a tourist trap, overpriced and understocked, I always found it to be a respite from the Times Square stupidity, from the crowds of tourists hungry for the next Disney fix.

I could step inside and step back in time, to a quieter, more unusual place--where I might run into something odd, like a Sal Mineo Fan Club button.

One time, heading to Colony, I looked up at the Brill Building in which it stands to see Woody Allen at a window, looking down at me. It was a bit of a thrill, I must admit.



And I always loved the neon Colony girl. With her perky mid-century breasts and flippy skirt, she holds a record aloft (red and ringed, it looks like the burner on an electric stove--it is hot). With jubilation she proclaims, "I found it!"



Sometime in the mid 2000's Colony took down their wonderful old neon sign. As Lost City explained in 2007, "Colony took it down at the behest of an old landlord, who said it was violating some building code or other, one that had long been ignored. Colony did so. Then the building was sold and the new landlord didn't give a hoot if the sign was up or down. So Colony went to a lot of bother for nothing. Now Record Girl sits neglected in the basement."

A new version of the girl came back, but now she'll be vanishing for good.


old sign

I don't know why Colony is closing, but I can imagine. Times Square is not for antiques anymore. Everything that's not a global brand must go. Even a place loaded with our cultural history. As Colony's owner once told the Times, "James Brown took one look around and said, 'This smells like a music store.'" It still does.

Sixty years (and more) is a long time, but in the new New York, age matters nothing. Everything solid must be plowed under and replaced with something hollow. Imagine what will come next to this prime corner space. I can see the signs already: "Flagship Opportunity!"


really old sign

Colonized by Bears

After much anticipation, after two years of temporary schlockfests in the old Colony Music space, including Halloween stores and Christmas shops, it looks like landlord Stonehenge Properties finally found someone to commit to the reported $5 million rent.

Reader Ken Jacowitz did some snooping around and sent in the following shots. Is that a teddy bear peeking from behind Colony's door?


photos by Ken Jacowitz

Why, yes, it is. But not just any bear. Signs say it's the Build-a-Bear Workshop bear, native to Overland, Missouri, and conqueror of suburban shopping malls across the nation, with over 400 stores worldwide, including three already in New York City.



Colony Music had been here for over 60 years, since 1948. They were forced out after Stonehenge bought the Brill Building and quintupled the legendary record and music store's rent.

Add this one to the ever-growing list. Where once was a New York original, a one of a kind, there's now another piece of bland, middle-American ubiquity.

Colony Gutted

Last summer I shared the news that Colony Music was forced out of business after 60 years in Times Square. The new owner of the Brill Building, Stonehenge Properties, had quintupled the rent--to $5 million, according to the Post.



I went by Colony recently and found it papered in the landlord's advertising, "Retail space for lease," and "Prominent billboard signage opportunity." In their rendering, the landlord has the historic Brill Building choked by garish jumbo-trons.



Colony's door was open, still with its treble clef doorknobs. I looked inside. Nothing but the guts.


Click to enlarge

Someday soon, this will be the home of an obnoxious shopping-mall flagship store, a poundingly loud Abercrombie & Hollister Eagle-Postale. Or a corporate theme "experience": Pop Tart World! Mountain Dew Planet! Red Bull Adventure! Or maybe it'll be a steroid-pumped suburban chain restaurant. Denny's has yet to penetrate Manhattan, so maybe we'll get New York City's first ever Denny's! And not just any Denny's, but a super-jumbo Denny's, complete with a New York theme to give it that All-American local flavor.

Even better, how about the world's biggest frozen-yogurt shop--with a Colony Records theme? They'll alter the neon sign, keeping the O's and the NY as homage, and use it to spell out FrO-yO-NY for Fro-Yo New York. Hey, they're doing it to Bleecker Bob's.



Previously:
Announcement of Colony's closure
Quintupling the rent

Colony Gone

In August, we first learned that Colony Music would be vanishing after 60 years in Times Square. Their landlord hiked the rent to $5 million. Now Colony is gone. All the sheet music, the CDs, the memorabilia is gone. A reader sends in the following snapshots.

The windows are empty.

The neon lights are off.

And the inside is gutted.

And what's coming to replace those 60 years of history?

Colony for Christmas

As if getting Halloweenied wasn't humiliation enough, now the former site of Colony Music has been turned into a temporary Christmas store--with the treacly name "Christmas Treasures on Broadway."


From ADFeldman's Instagram, h/t Pippin Parker

I guess the landlord is having trouble finding a big-box national shopping mall chain store willing to pay the $5 million rent that put Colony out after 60 years in business.

See more unnerving photos on their Yelp page:

Colony to CVS

When the great Colony Music was forced to shutter in 2012 by a massive rent hike, after 60 years in Times Square, its space in the Brill Building was gutted and turned into a revolving door of random businesses.


2013

There were Christmas and Halloween stores, a Build-A-Bear Workshop, and some other crap. That's what happens when the new landlord quintuples the rent to $5 million and there's no commercial rent control or any other policies protecting the small businesspeople of this city from unregulated greed.

Now, after 7 years of high-rent blight and unstable pop-up ventures, the space has been taken by the only kind of retailer that can afford such millions--a giant chain store.

Colony is now a CVS.


2019

To add insult to injury, the owners of the landmarked Brill have decided to obscure this gorgeous, historic building with digital screens. (How was the Landmarks Preservation Commission okay with this mess?)

Seven years. What a long, sad trip it's been.


a more beautiful past

Colony Gets Halloweenied

Recently, I wrote about the gutting of the venerable Colony Music in Times Square, after their new landlord hiked the rent to astronomic proportions hoping to attract a big-box chain store to replace the 60-year-old independent business.

Well, now they have a tenant.

One of those ubiquitous, opportunistic Halloween shops has moved in, filling the place with Jason masks and slutty nurse costumes. It's an indignity that many of our vanished have been forced to suffer in the fall. Of course, it's just temporary. Undoubtedly, something far worse will come along.



Thanks to Marion who sent in the photo. She writes, "The landlords will make a quick buck on the depressing 'Spirit' Halloween pop-up from now until October 31. Will the space finally be taken over by a TD Bank? A Rite-Aid (Duane Reade is on the same block up Broadway)? Fucking New York 2013."

Lost Bohemia

For 22 years, Josef Astor lived in Studio 845, a triplex in the Carnegie Hall towers, long the home of a fascinating segment of New York's Bohemia. A fine art and portrait photographer (check out his mannequin photos), he is also a filmmaker, and his documentary Lost Bohemia will be showing November 5 and 8 at the DOCNYC film festival.

Since being evicted from the Carnegie Studios, Mr. Astor remains in limbo, in a temporary sublet with his photo studio in storage. I interviewed him via email about his movie and his life above Carnegie Hall.



Q: Many New Yorkers have been fascinated by the story of the Carnegie Hall towers and the recent ousting of its resident artists. It seemed like a separate world, an old New York preserved in amber. What of this world will we find in your film?

A: I was one of the newer tenants, moving there in 1985, so at the outset I was trying to capture some of the original buzzing artists colony feeling as it was described to me by the older tenants. What we see in the film is a sort of call to arms. As the tenants and their lives there became threatened, more and more of them crept out of the woodwork to support the cause. Some of them hadn't been seen in years. One very reclusive poet gave her insights and support through a barrage of phone messages.

The place still had a vitality, and wasn't just an enclave of musty dusty old timers that the press lead the world to believe. In the film you will meet Dr. Donald Shirley, concert pianist; Editta Sherman, photographer, a.k.a. "The Dutchess of Carnegie Hall"; Robert Modica, acting coach and his student John Turturro; Bill Cunningham, New York Times photographer; Star, a homeless aging dancer who still exercises in the fire stairwells; and many others.


Donald Shirley, photo by Astor

Q: You came to New York City from Ohio, which you've said was an "uninteresting" place. What did you come seeking in the city? In what way did you find it at the Carnegie Hall towers?

A: The mere fact that they do polls in Ohio to find the median American way of thinking told me I had to get out and fast. Growing up, I was told that I looked like I belonged somewhere else. Well, lucky for me, I found that somewhere else. The biggest personal revelation from my time in the Carnegie Studios was finding kindred spirits in the community of artists and realizing all at once: I am them, I am home!


Astor's former studio, photo by Astor

Q: I often worry that the city is becoming just as uninteresting as Ohio, inasmuch as "Ohio" is a stand-in metaphor for Heartland America, and that the eviction of Carnegie's artists, like the evictions at the Breslin, is a sign of the city's war on its once-celebrated bohemian culture. Do I worry too much?

A: Not enough people worry about this. But I think it is less a matter of public apathy than the city's corporate real estate-friendly administration. One older tenant remarked, "If Fiorello Laguardia was the mayor, you would have your Carnegie Studios." The Plaza Hotel is a perfect example of why Landmarking should consider the purpose and heritage of the building and not just its shell. The Plaza Hotel has lost its soul, and so will the Carnegie Studio Towers.

The Carnegie Hall building is owned by the City of New York and leased to the Carnegie Hall Corporation, but there was never a public hearing. Dan Garodnick, our local City Councilman and preservationist, was given a tour of the studios, but nonetheless voted in favor of the plan to destroy them. Off camera, the voice of a reclusive tenant in the film says, "We have a great machine working against us…it's full of lies...and lack of history."


Astor's studio after demolition

Q: Some argue that the evictions of a few rent-regulated tenants will benefit the broader city because Carnegie Hall is using the space for expanded music education. How do you respond to this viewpoint?

A: I suppose “viewpoint” is the operative word here. This idea, like that of eminent domain, is flawed and misguided. The greater good is not necessarily greater than what would manifest from benefiting the lesser ones. To the tenants who know what the studios really are and were meant to be, it is clearly corporate spin. Since their inception in 1895, the city always benefited greatly from the diversity of the arts in the studios, the larger percentage of them being devoted to education.

The 1935 book The House that Music Built states that Carnegie Hall was primarily an education institution, even though it had an entertainment department, and continues on to list all the diverse teaching institutions in the studios. The teaching studios have greatly diminished, not due to any natural evolution, but by an effort of the CHC to purge the artists from the building and repossess their spaces. To convert the studios into a single use of music is in denial of their original purpose.

The Carnegie Hall Corporation has never really made public their plans for the 160,000 square feet of studio space, but we hear that the entire 8th floor, where my studio was, and which had the most magnificent 20-foot vaulted ceilings and skylights, will be a sea of contemporary office space, and the rooftop skylights will be razed and replaced by a terrace for the exclusive use of the Corporation and fundraising.


plans for the roof, Historic District Council

Q: Editta Sherman was the poster child (or poster elder, at 98 years old!) for the Carnegie artists' cause. A staunch holdout, she was the last resident to be relocated. How is she doing these days?

A: I see Editta often and she is an indomitable spirit to be sure, but I can see that part of that spirit has been crushed. She is not happy in the fancy high-rise building she was moved into. Her true bohemian spirit hasn't adjusted to the bourgeois comforts of domestic living. "Where's my studio?!" she says to me.

Q: What do you miss most about your life atop Carnegie Hall?

A: It was something intangible. All the studio tenants talked about it, but it could never be accurately described. A spirit of community and reclusiveness existed simultaneously and was respected by your neighbors. We were insulated and protected there, even though it was located in real-estate-mad Midtown. The broad diversity of lifestyles and art forms of the artists were given a nurturing framework by the inspired architecture. You simply had to be there to feel it. And I knew that this was the one thing I might not be able to capture on film, but I lived it and spent 10 years filming it so that others may at least get an impression of what it felt like to work and live in the towers above Carnegie Hall.


Editta Sherman, photo by Astor

See the movie November 5 and 8--click for tickets.

New York Neon

Thomas Rinaldi runs the blog New York Neon, "a documentary homage to old neon signs in New York." He's also the author of a book by the same name, due out next year. I asked Mr. Rinaldi some questions about the city's neon signs. Here's what he had to say.



Why publish a whole book about neon? What's so special about neon signs that you can't get from LEDs?

I suppose the short answer is that neon signs, particularly those of a certain vintage, are an endangered species. Signs are so important to our visual experience of a built landscape--they often make more of an impact than the buildings they hang from--but that importance does nothing for their longevity. Seeing New York's old neon signs vanishing, I felt it was essential that some enduring record be made of them. Of course the big signs, the Times Square spectaculars, are well documented. But the storefront signs seemed poised to disappear with almost no trace.

I have nothing against LED signs per se--just as neon replaced incandescent bulb signs, now LED signs are coming into their own. Actually LED signs, if nicely done, can be a big improvement over the cheap vinyl awnings and acrylic panel signs that have displaced a lot of old neon signs.



What are your top 3 favorite neon signs still in existence in New York City?

We're lucky to have a lot of good ones left! The signs at Nathan's Famous in Coney Island are my favorite, easily. The vertical sign there is one of the oldest working neon signs in the world - it's been in place since about 1930, and it has the patina to prove it.

The Radio City Music Hall signs have been nicely restored--not much in the way of patina, but possibly the most elegant neon signs ever made. Installed in 1932, they're about as old as the Nathan's sign. The Dublin House sign on 79th and Broadway is also a favorite, I remember passing by it even as a kid. It's been there since 1933. Amazes me to think that these are veterans of WWII civil defense dim-outs!



How about your top 3 vanished New York neon signs that you wish still shined?

The old Colony Records sign is the first that comes to mind. It actually wasn't that old--went up around 1970 I think--but when Colony replaced it with a new sign around 2004, it occurred to me that I'd better start taking photos of these things if I wanted anything to remember them by. I also miss the great “BAR” sign that hung outside of Collins Bar on 8th Avenue and 46th Street--that had probably been there 80 years when it disappeared in 2007.

The P&G Bar sign, formerly at 73rd and Amsterdam on the Upper West Sign, is the biggest loss though. I'll never pass that corner without shaking my head in bereavement for as long as I live.



You've spoken here before about the replication of neon signs, as at the new Fedora. How do you feel about replicated neon? Is it just as good as the old?

It's a tricky issue. As with architectural restoration (which is my day job), there are good sign restorations and bad ones. When a historic sign warrants special treatment, the restoration should leave it looking as if it had just been cleaned up, not replaced outright. Original materials should be kept to the greatest extent possible. From a purist's standpoint, the colors should remain unchanged, or revert to those originally specified.

Of course, some signs get to a point of being beyond restoration. For these signs, the best case scenario might be to make a facsimile using the same materials as those used for the original, and then to find a good home for the old sign--indoors as a display piece, or preserved at the American Sign Museum in Cincinnati, for example.



Why do you think neon is vanishing from the city, and so often replaced with plastic lighted signs or LEDs? Or worse--televisions!

Well, for the same reason that neon signs replaced old incandescent bulb signs in the 1920s and 30s. Vinyl awnings, plastic signs, and LEDS are cheaper, more efficient, and/or lower maintenance than neon.

In my opinion, neon marks the high point of the signmaker's craft. Neon signs could be crass or sometimes put in the wrong setting, but they were sophisticated technologically and very often aesthetically as well. And NOTHING makes a more distinctive storefront than an old neon sign today. LEDs have the potential to make some really great storefront signs. But it will be a long time before they take on the associations with old neighborhood institutions--the small businesses that give neighborhoods a sense of place--that old neon signs enjoy today.

*Everyday Chatter

East Village WAMU bank robbed. [RS]

The new Minetta opens tonight. McNally told Zagat, "No one familiar with the Tavern from the past will know exactly what's changed." True? [Grub]

Minetta still retains "b&w photos of people remembered only by the joint's wizened, soon-to-be-muttering-outside-angrily ex-patrons." Who's that? [Thrillist]

JVNY reader and Serious Eater "BaHa" just launched a new food blog--check out her "big balls in Bensonhurst." [WL]

Is conspicuous consumption finally dead? [NYT]

Despite worries and changes, Mr. Albanese is still cutting the meats:


Part 2 of the "Vanishing City" town hall commences March 29, 3:00 at Dixon Place--complete with film and panel discussion.

New P&G Cafe shows signs of life. [Eater]

StuyTowners celebrate a victory for the middle class. [NYO]

Enjoy a little history on Madison Square Garden. [BC]

Visit Colony Records, one of the best places to buy music and take in the memorabilia. [NYDP]

Master List: 2001 - 2013

At the end of each year, I usually do a round-up of that year's vanished places. But this year is special. This year means the end to the evil Bloomberg era, so I offer this "Master List" of Vanished New York from 2001 to 2013. It's been 12 merciless years of destruction and loss, from "significant" losses to countless "smaller" ones--neighborhood laundromats, shoe repair shops, drugstores--far more than I have compiled here.

If you look only at this list and add up all the years in business represented, we lost approximately 6,926 years of New York City history in only a dozen years. And we know the real number is much higher than that.

Clearly, we need strong protections for the city's small businesses. Many of the closures were due to the impact of gentrification, either through rising rents, demolition for luxury development, or a decrease in business due to their neighborhood's up-shifting of demographics and values. A few closed for unrelated reasons, like the owner's death or retirement, but I included them all. I'm sure I've missed many--in part because I didn't start the blog until 2007. Please add them in the comments, and include the date and reason for closure if you can. Also, if you see any mistakes, please offer corrections. Thank you.

This list is a living document. I plan to add to it over time. Here's a nice quote about it from Kristin Iverson at Brooklyn Magazine: "For those of us who have lived in New York for a long time, perusing the list was not unlike looking through a high school yearbook, only finding out that practically everyone had died."



2013 (836 years)
Stile's Market: 26 years
Pushed out by landlord, to be demolished for luxury development

5Pointz, formerly Phun Phactory: 20 years
White-washed by owner, to be demolished for luxury condo towers

Famous Roio’s/Ray’s Pizza: 40 years
Building sold

Ray Beauty Supply: 50 years
Property seized by landlord

Vercesi Hardware: 101 years
Building sold to be demolished for luxury condos

D’Auito’s Bakery: 89 years
Unknown

Odessa Restaurant: 48 years
Building sold, gastropub to move in, now for rent

Splash gay bar: 22 years
Lack of business

Paradise Café: 20 years
Rent hike

Big Nick’s Burger and Pizza Joint: 51 years
Rent increase from $42,000 to $60,000 a month

Max Fish: 24 years
Rent increase

Joe’s Dairy: 60 years
Cost of doing business

Bleecker Bob’s Records: 46 years
Rent hike

Blarney Cove: 50+ years
Evicted for new development

Sofia’s Italian restaurant: 35 years
Lost their lease

9th Street Bakery: 87 years
38% rent hike, replaced by juice-cleanse and smoothie shop

Capucine’s Italian restaurant: 33 years
Rent hike

Rawhide gay bar: 34 years
Rent hike, to be turned into a pizza chain from California



2012 (1302 years)
Rocco Ristorante: 90 years
Lost lease to trendy restaurateurs, gutted and upscaled

The Holiday Cocktail Lounge: 47 years
Sold and gutted for a gastropub

Kenny’s Castaway’s: 45 years
Rising cost of business

McCullough’s Kiddie Park, Coney Island: 50 years
Lost their lease

Manganaro's Grosseria: 119 years
Sold and gutted for a more upscale restaurant

A Clean Well-Lighted Place: 36 years
Now an upscale boutique

World of Video: 29 years
Lost its lease

Chelsea Gallery Diner: 30 years
Forced out of Chelsea

Bill's Gay 90s: 88 years
Lost its lease to a trendy restaurateur, gutted and upscaled

Atlas Barber School: 64 years
Lost lease due to hiked rent, now a UPS

Prime Burger: 47 years
Lost lease when building sold

Lascoff Pharmacy: 113 years
Closed and gutted

Colony Records: 60 years
Closed when the new landlord quintupled the rent to $5 million

Movie Star News: 73 years
Rent hiked, turned into a luxury bathroom fixture store

Lafayette French Bakery: 30+ years
Evicted

Partners & Crime Bookshop: 18 years
Closed due to lack of business

University Diner: 60 years
Evicted

El Faro: 85 years
Possibly evicted?

Village Chess Shop: 40 years
Closed due to lack of business

The Stage Deli: 75 years
Rent increase

Lenox Lounge: 63 years
Landlord doubled the rent, given to upscale restaurateur

H&H Bagels: 40 years
Last location evicted



2011 (575 years)
Gansevoort Pumping Station, Premier Veal plant: 105 years
Evicted and demolished for new Whitney Museum and High Line headquarters

Polonia: 22 years
Probable rent hike

Auggie’s Coffee shop: 45 years
Could not afford the rent

The Original Ray's Pizza: 52 years
Legal dispute with landlord

Mars Bar: 26 years
Demolished to build luxury condos, to become a bank

Brownfeld Auto: 120 years
Evicted when landlord decided to sell for luxury High Line development

Chelsea Hotel: 127 years
Sold and closed to guests

Life Café: 30 years
Dispute with landlord over repairs

Elaine’s: 48 years
Death of owner



2010 (886 years)
Skyline Books: 20 years
Probable rent hike, replaced with a body waxing salon

JJ’s Navy Yard bar: 103 years
Evicted, sold, and demolished, replaced by hipster coffee

Telephone Bar and Grill: 22 years
Sold and replaced with a frat bar

Gino: 65 years
Closed when landlord raised rent $8,000 per month, turned into a cupcake bakery chain

Empire Diner: 34 years
Lost their lease

Guss’ Pickles: 100 years
Left the Lower East Side due to rising neighborhood rents

Shore Hotel: 107 years
Coney Island hotel, demolished by Thor Equities to make room for new construction

Fedora: 58 years
Closed by owner in old age, taken over by a trendy restaurateur, gutted and upscaled

Carmine's at the Seaport: 107 years
Closed when landlord raised the rent to $13,000 a month

St. Vincent's Hospital: 161 years
Closed and demolished for a billion-dollar luxury condo project

New York Doll Hospital: 109 years
Death of owner, no successor



2009 (613 years)
Arnold Hatters: 50 years
Unable to make rent after original location taken by eminent domain to build New York Times tower, replaced by 7-Eleven

Joe Jr.'s diner: 35 years
Lost their lease, now upscale coffee

P&G Bar: 67 years
Lost lease, gutted and replaced by upscale cafe

Amato Opera House: 61 years
Closed by the owner in old age, building sold

Love Saves the Day: 43 years
Closed in part due to high rent

Tavern on the Green: 75 years
Bankruptcy

Café Des Artistes: 92 years
Bankruptcy

Manny’s Music: 74 years
Bought out by Sam Ash, also later shuttered

Provincetown Playhouse: 91 years
Demolished by NYU

Biography Bookshop: 25 years
Rent hike, owners relocated as BookBook



2008 (821 years)
Jefferson Market: 79 years
Money trouble, now sales office for billion-dollar luxury condo project at St. Vincent's

Fazil’s Times Square Studio: 73 years
Closed for building demolition

Astroland amusement park: 46 years
Sold to Thor Equities for redevelopment

Donnell Library: 53 years
Closed and demolished for a luxury hotel

The Minetta Tavern: 71 years
Landlord raised the rent, gave lease to upscale restaurateur

Bobby's Happy House: 61 years
Building sold for a big-box chain store

Chez Brigitte: 50 years
Rent doubled, replaced by frozen yogurt chain

Cafe Figaro: 39 years
Lost their lease, became fast-food burrito chain and bank

Yankee Stadium: 85 years
Demolished and replaced with an upscale ballpark

Shea Stadium: 44 years
Demolished and replaced with upscale, corporate-named Citi-Field

Florent: 24 years
Closed due to rent hike, from $6,000 to $50,000 per month

Vesuvio Bakery: 88 years
Sold

M&G Diner: 40 years
Sold and shuttered

Cheyenne Diner: 68 years
Lost its lease, moved away



2007 (783 years)
Limelight: 24 years
Shuttered by police, reopened, eventually closed and converted to luxury shopping mall

The Roxy: 29 years
Shut down for conversion to luxury condos

Dojo’s Restaurant, 33 years
Rent hike

Gertel's Bakery: 93 years old
Sold, demolished for condo development

The Playpen Theater: 100 years
Sold and demolished for luxury hotel tower and Shake Shack chain

Chumley's: 79 years old
Collapsed

Jade Mountain: 76 years old
Death of owner

Moondance Diner: 74 years
Closed for condo development, moved to Wyoming

Kurowycky Meats: 52 years old
Closed due to lack of business

Copeland's: 49 years old
Victim of gentrification

Donuts Coffee Shop: 32 years old
Evicted

Sucelt Coffee: 31 years old
Rent hike

Teresa's Polish restaurant: 22 years old
Rent hike

Rose’s Turn: 56 years
Family sold building for $3.5 million

Coliseum Books: 33 years
Rent too high



2006 (373 years)
Cedar Tavern: 140 years
Demolished for condos, replaced with a body waxing salon

Gotham Book Mart: 86 years
Evicted

McHale's Bar: 62 years
Demolished for luxury condo tower

The Second Avenue Deli: 52 years
Rent increase, replaced with a bank

CBGBs: 33 years
Rent dispute, replaced by John Varvatos upscale boutique


photo via Satan's Laundromat

2005 (278 years)
Variety Photoplays Theater: 108 years
Demolished by the Toll Brothers for a 21-story condo tower

Fulton Fish Market: 170 years
Moved to the Bronx due to “the creeping conversion of Manhattan into a monstrous mall” --NY Times



2004 (319 years)
A. Zito & Sons Bakery: 80 years
Rising cost of business

The Bottom Line: 30 years
NYU raised the rent

The original Kim’s Video: 17 years
?

Jon Vie Bakery: 42 years
“a victim of soaring rents in a neighborhood populated as much by bankers as by bohemians.” --NY Times

Domino Sugar Factory: 150 years
Declining business, to be converted to luxury condos


photo via: Intersection's Flickr

2002 (127 years)
Ratner’s: 97 years
Cost of doing business

Madison Avenue Bookshop: 30 years
Lack of business

2001 (13 years)
Wetlands: 13 years
Building sold for luxury condos