Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Peter's: A disappearing face of New York disappears

Last July I did a post titled The grocery stores of St. James Place. I've always liked Peter's grocery at 25 Madison St. on the corner of St. James Place down on the outskirts of Chinatown and the LES. And for good reasons. You don't see many old-school storefronts like this anymore.



A great sign.



And I love the corner angle.




Unfortunately, when I went by the other day, Peter's was gone. I'm not sure how long ago it disappeared.






Peter's is featured in "Storefront: The Disappearing Face of New York," by James and Karla Murray. Peter's was owned by Peter Migliorini, who took over the business from his father (also named Peter).

Knickbocker Village has a post on Peter's.

So what will become of this unique space?

10 comments:

Jeremiah Moss said...

what? no! i always meant to do a post on that place. great guy who worked there--he told me once, for 50 years!

EV Grieve said...

Yeah, I wish I knew who long ago it closed. Not a neighborhood I'm in too often. I had a bad feeling the last few times that I was in there — not much stock. Produce looked a little iffy.

esquared™ said...

I was there about week ago (I would often take buses that I rarely take or have never taken before to see where they'd take me, and last week I took the M22 to the far east of the LES) and was in awe of how much of a contrast this neighborhood was compared to the other gentrified LES a few blocks west and north. I just hope that the real-estate moguls aren't reading your blog; it'd give them an idea of a new neighborhood to gentrify.

Anonymous said...

What a surprise. Next it will be
yet another franchise. I'm so sick of the people who run this city.

EV Grieve said...

Hi Esquared. The store was still open then? And I agree with you — it is a relatively unspolied area. Still.

esquared™ said...

Sorry, didn't notice if the store was open (I was on the other side of the street); and I was more paying attention to the apts. above the store and thinking how cool it'd be to live in one of those apts.

Unknown said...

I walk by every morning, live on the LES and walk to work in the Financial District, and while I cannot give you an exact date I noticed it was closed up shortly after the school year ended. It was always packed with students from Murry Bergtraum in the morning, so I was really surpised to see it closed down. I guess the grocery on the corner of Madison and James will be seeing a lot more business next school year.

EV Grieve said...

Thanks, Chris. I'd see a lot of tourists in here too — people making the walk from Chinatown down to the Financial District. Mostly buying water or sodas. If anything, they were drawn in by the old-style sign.

Unknown said...

I believe Peter's closed back in the end of June. He was a fixture for those of us who worked at Verizon. Our nickname for the place was Dirty Pete's! He had the best egg sandwiches. I stopped in one day to see the place after it was closed, all the fixtures were gone-very sad. The fellow cleaning up told me Pete and his bothers and sisters decided to sell the building. Definitely the end of an era.

vikkiacox147 said...

wow..i too was a verizon employee who frequented peter's. sadly, once our building was sold and we were moved across to the west side, peter's lost a steady income from a dedicated source that probably helped him through the lean years. i remember many a morning (weekday or weekend) making sure i had time to get a morning coffee from peter's before trudging in for my daily grind...memories...