Earlier in the month news came out that Jared Kushner is the proud new owner of two buildings on East Second Street, adding to his East Village collection. One of these buildings, 170 E. Second St., is a classic tenement dating to 1899. And renovations are underway in at least some of the units...
EVG reader Yenta Laureate shared some photos from inside the building showing the floor mosaics, marble hallways and other ornate details from a bygone era ...
The ground-floor apartment in the back of the building looks particularly interesting... As Yenta's photos show, there's still an interior door with a window transom for light ...
... there's also outdoor space, though via the fire escape...
... and the apartment provides a bit of history... of, perhaps, bad renovations through the years...
Meanwhile, the sign remains outside No. 170 ... noting that Allen Ginsberg lived in apartment 16 from August 1958-March 1961 ...
In any event, it will be interesting (or maybe depressing) to revisit this building once the renovations are complete... and look at the new listings to see how much of the old 170 remains...
11 comments:
I can't imagine he'll destroy all that beautiful, old tiling, etc. But then again, who knows!
What Kushner did with the Puck Penthouses, absurd price aside, gives me faith that he will do a good job here. That said, I lived in a tenement and would never do so again. I like light and air.
It's a hallmark of 1984-ish groupthink to assert that anyone with a different point of view is a "troll."
Why no mention of Ginsberg's NAMBLA membership on his plaque? It really is disgusting how people are actually proud of his longtime residence in this neighborhood.
That entryway is beautiful. I really hope those architectural elements are preserved.
The defining element of tenements is that they're substandard.
Landlords are a plague on humanity.
This place will be stripped down to its bones and tarted up with all sorts of gleaming shit, and it will have the personality, warmth and charm of an ice cube.
Kushner has destroyed this beautiful building with his renovations. Tenants are still living in the building while his workers destroy everything that once was the beautiful East Village.
That's not a tenement, it's an apartment building. There's a difference.
A tenement in 1850 or even 1899 may have been 'unlivable' by today's standards but all tenements were eventually 'renovated' to make them more livable, often multiple times, thanks to things like the New Law of 1901. Then too we got things like electricity and gas and safe water and sewer systems and air conditioning over the years. So to call it 'unlivable' today just because it was originally classed as a tenement, is melodramatic bordering on hysterical. It's got fittings that would be considered 'classic' today.
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