Reporting by Stacie Joy
Late this past Thursday afternoon, this two-floor high "Untitled" sign arrived on the SE corner of Avenue A and Fifth Street...
We fielded several reader queries about the sign. Given its placement (and despite its permanence), a few readers thought this might be related to an event at Mast, the bookstore-gallery in the corner retail space.
Well, it has nothing to do with Mast. An employee there was just as confused and surprised as others, and they questioned the placement above the business. (And Untitled isn't out of the realm of possibilities for the name of a bookstore.)
Sources tell us this is now the name of the 6-story building here at 58-72 Avenue A between Fourth Street and Fifth Street, which an LLC purchased for $64 million last fall.
Meanwhile, readers also noted another new detail in the building: A copy of David Hockney's "Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures)" recently arrived in the refurbished Avenue A lobby... (the painting sold in 2018 for more than the building cost... and to be clear, this is not the original)...
Several renovated apartments, now configured with up to four bedrooms (previously one and two) plus in-unit washer-dryer combos and split-unit AC, are currently on the rental market.
"Untitled"....????
ReplyDeleteWhy not call it "The Kardashian"?
It would have been just as shallow, vapid, hip, and ridiculous..
There’s a clothing store on 8th St no 6th Ave called ‘Untitled’
ReplyDeleteApartments are combined in order to deregulate them.
ReplyDeleteIt’s called “Frankensteining” apartments.
DeleteThere has been a recent trend of combining apartments into ridiculous sizes (3-6 beds) and charging insane rents that only transient wealth can afford. It takes housing away from people who would normally plant roots and build the community. I also believe this is a loophole that enables removing rent-stabilized units. I feel this city is headed for a cliff at some point, when the homeless population explodes and no one can afford the rents, no matter who you are. It's scary.
ReplyDeleteI would be furious if I was the owner of Mast.
ReplyDeleteBuildings don’t need names. Also don’t need names uninterested in naming. Font and letter/margin spacing proportions, at that, are atrocious.
ReplyDeleteI live in the building. The owners are not combining apartments; they are making the bedrooms and living areas in the empty units smaller to add more bedrooms. The new bedrooms are very small but they each do have a window.
ReplyDeleteWhat 11:43 describes is a good thing then. Means one unit can house multiple people that might otherwise take multiple units elsewhere. Hopefully helps lower pressure on housing stock.
Delete3 tiny ass Bedrms, "stylish kitchen", "sophisticated bathrooms" $8500/ month. Plus they got you by the balls with a 20 month lease.
ReplyDeleteThis is just so dumb. A photocopy of a spectacle.
ReplyDeleteI went to look at one (for kicks) and it literally looks like a dorm room. Long hallway, a bunch of tiny bedrooms and a small lounge area where the kitchen is. This new reno is obviously geared to college students or frat/sorority young professional types who don't mind living with 5 roommates so they can "party" in the east village. This is why only obnoxious loud bars like mama's or pocco's are packed. The hood has been taken over by a frat house. In this case, literally, a frat house.
ReplyDeleteUntitled for the Entitled (™)
ReplyDeleteThe Hockney is so telling! A fancy British artist, associated with California, whose best-known works involve dispassionate, blank-feeling swimming pools and few or no people. PLUS THIS ONE IS NOT EVEN AN ORIGINAL. How completely un-NYC, let alone un-East-Village, can you get?
ReplyDeleteGOLLY IF ONLY WE HAD AN ARTISTIC HERITAGE HERE IN THE EV.
@4:55: that's so good it deserves ™ !
ReplyDeleteor it could be simplified to Entitled.
and Titled isn't a bad name for a book store, except the name is Mast!
they should ask the owners to move the sign.
This makes me so sad. I lived in the building for 5 years and moved during COVID. Such fond memories of raising my son there and having a warm, homey environment. Just seems so sterile now.
ReplyDeleteThe return of SRO ..."slightly more stylish ! "Slightly" more expensive.
ReplyDeleteYeah, the painting in the lobby is the east village's biggest problem
ReplyDeletebuy original art by local artists for your lobby.
ReplyDeleteHaters gonna hate:
ReplyDeleteThis one thread actually manages to criticize the owners of this bldg. both for combining apts./reducing housing stock (commenters 10:02; 10:15) and for shoehorning in more bdrms./"frankensteining" in more tenants (11:52; 3:31).
Pick one, please.
Or are we all Goldilocks, wanting things just as they are, afraid if someone "moves" our "cheese"?
Props, then to commenter 12:13, for intellectual honesty.
Neigbor clearly doesn't live in a rental building that has basically been turned into a dorm. It's awful as the kids who move in have no respect for the building, their neighbors or the community. That's what will now happen to this lovely building that housed families invested in the community. To think that somehow this will help the housing crisis is like thinking Reagans or Trumps trickle down economics was a success.
ReplyDelete