The landmarked three-story building at 137 Second Ave. between St. Mark's Place and Ninth Street just changed hands for $18.95 million, the Post first reported.
The unknown buyer was listed as 137 Second Avenue Holdings, LLC. No word on what the new tenant has planned for the space, which hit the market back in March.
According to the listing, possible uses included "a future townhouse or residential redevelopment."
The neo-Italian Renaissance brick building is the former German Dispensary, which opened in 1884. (In 1905 it became the Stuyvesant Polyclinic.)
Here's more about the building from a 2008 New York Times feature:
Like the branch library next door, the Second Avenue building of the German Dispensary was the gift of Anna and Oswald Ottendorfer, who ran the German newspaper New-Yorker Staats-Zeitung. That journal had great influence in Little Germany, on the Lower East Side around First and Second Avenues below 14th Street. The 1886 edition of Appleton's Dictionary of New York described an area in which "lager-beer shops are numerous, and nearly all the signs are of German names."
The building was designated a New York City Landmark in 1976. Learn more about No. 137's history and architecture at Off the Grid here.
In 2019, the space became the headquarters of the female-focused co-working club The Wing. Per reports at the time, "the HQ is intended to riff off the building's original details, such as existing terracotta tile floors, decorative pillars, moldings and skylights."
According to Curbed, who first reported on this availability in March, "The Wing's furniture is still in the building and can be included in the sale."
Apparently, the new owner didn't want that furniture. On July 20, EVG contributor Derek Berg spotted workers trashing some pretty nice-looking office fixtures... not to mention some books...
What is wrong with people? In this case, I'm referring to the NEW OWNERS of this building, who have gotten off on totally the wrong foot by throwing out as GARBAGE perfectly good furniture that many people could have made use of.
ReplyDeleteI'm now guessing the new owner(s) must be idiots, b/c most people would have actually spent at least a few minutes THINKING about how best to deal with that furniture - and would have considered how to offer it within the community. This is not rocket science.
Beautiful building. That's what German immigrants with money did 150 years ago Bringing class and culture to the EV. Must have been a fun hang with the beer halls and live theaters.
ReplyDeleteThrowing out that furniture instead of giving it away or selling it should be a crime. Disgusting waste, especially considering the environmental crisis we are currently faced with.
ReplyDeleteAgree with everyone above, furniture should not be just thrown away in the trash, so many of us and others could use these items. Very sad.
ReplyDelete"The unknown buyer was listed as 137 Second Avenue Holdings, LLC."
ReplyDeleteSays it all.
Yeah, those pictures are hard to look at. If they'd just left the stuff on the curb it would've been gone within the hour. So wasteful!
ReplyDeleteI hope the new owner treats this handsome building with the care it deserves.
The entitlement here is mind boggling. They're bad because they threw away their furniture? I guess it'd be better off becoming part of a homeless encampment. They can do whatever they want with their furniture.
ReplyDelete@12:29pm: Not that you're very prejudiced or anything, right? You sound horrid. How about that many people who have APARTMENTS in this area might have been happy to use those pieces of furniture?
ReplyDeleteAnd, BTW, that steel shelving is VERY expensive and sturdy. Could have been used well by any number of people or organizations (like a food pantry, etc.).
Go buy your own furniture. These comments are embarrassing and pathetic.
DeleteAnother miserable Ayn Randian rears its head
DeleteYes. In a world of poverty and pollution, it is bad to throw what looks like nearly-new and useful items into the trash when they could easily have been given away. Such carelessness with the planet and its limited resources...that's the entitlement here.
ReplyDelete(And not that it should need saying, but, YES, it would be better for someone who doesn't even have a roof over their head to at least have a chair to sit in. Jeez.)
@ 12:29 PM
ReplyDelete"entitlement" doesn't actually mean what you seem to think it means.
12.29.... New Troll winner!!!!
ReplyDeleteIt isn't necessarily the new owners who trashed the furniture. If the buyers said they weren't interested in the furniture, the sellers are probably the ones who threw it out.
ReplyDeleteOh dear. If the sugar was there then the sugar was there. LOl!!! 12.29pm...so throw it out!!! No one wanted it......Trolls .....lol.
Delete11:10 AM: "Go buy your own furniture. These comments are embarrassing and pathetic."
ReplyDeleteAnd if you can't buy your own furniture, move to suburbia. And get a crip, get a life.
There, I think I have covered most of the usual suspect REBNY/Troll points. Irony switch off.
11:10 am: OK, broker!
ReplyDeleteThe Artek Aalto stools pictured sell for $385 each at DWR. The Saarinen dining table shown sells for $5545 at DWR.
ReplyDelete@5:42- Someone at least gets it. The Seller is almost always contractually obliged to leave the premises "broom clean"and dispose of anything not nailed down. The Buyer has nothing to do with this. It's also code violation to leave piles of junk on the street and lawyers don't like it because of possible liability issues. But the notion that this would help make some bum, or young punk, or homeless person's life somehow more comfortable is ludicrous. Go buy your own shit or pick it out of a dumpster or just wait for garbage night outside London London Terrace on 24 St.
ReplyDeleteFrom what I understand through researching, the Ottendorfers put a restrictive covenant in the deed for that building that requires a LIBRARY on the left and a CLINIC on the right, IN PERPETUITY.
ReplyDeleteI wonder HOW the right side of that building fell into private hands as a "luxury" residence that is now being flipped to a new owner.
Meanwhile, those who tossed those extremely RE-usable items in the garbage ARE total ASSHOLES!
--Chris Flash
We're going to turn all this planet's resources into trash, and YOU'LL LIKE IT!!!
ReplyDeleteThrift, tidiness, conservation of nature...it's amazing how each of these virtues, which Republicans of previous generations would have at least paid lip service to, have become "entitlement" to today's right, because it involves the slightest infringement on the God-given right of every white man to be a vortex of destruction moving freely across the earth.
Bye the bye, that's most definitely not an authentic Saarinen. It's cheapo spray painted junky particle board, not lacquer. The dead give away is the edges aren't tapered nor would one ever see screws underneath the table bottom. Saarinen's are always screwed on to a center rod on the aluminum base. Fret not social justice warriors. Damp particle board is like a gourmet meal in a French restaurant to a pack of hungry termites. They'll be eating and pooping their brains out for the next couple of weeks.
ReplyDeleteThe furniture was thrown away by the OLD owner, not the new owner.
ReplyDeleteThe new owner is a well known neighborhood hero.