Week in Grieview

Posts this past blizzard week included (with a sunrise photo yesterday on Seventh Street)...

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• The owners of Cafe Mogador are opening a new bar on St. Mark's Place (Feb. 24) 

• Report: Plans for a 21-story residential building filed for the former St. Emeric lot on Avenue D (Feb. 25) 

• 1 person treated for minor injuries in East 5th Street fire (Feb. 22) 

• NYPD seeks suspect in alleged assault on Sunny and Annie's employee (Feb. 22) 

• The wisteria-adorned townhouse on Stuyvesant Street is for sale again (Feb. 26) 

• Reader-submitted snow photos from the great blizzard of February 2026 (Feb. 23) 

• Tompkins Sculpture Park (Feb. 24) 

• Meanwhile, in the adult section of Tompkins Square Park (Feb. 23) 

• The morning after (and day of) the blizzard of Feb. 22-23 (Feb. 23) 

• Back to the Gap (Feb. 28)

• February in review (Feb. 28)

• A band playing New Colossus Festival: Drook (Feb. 27)

• Sliders up next at 34 St. Mark's Place (Feb. 26) 

• Signage alert: New Mott Cleaners on 1st Avenue (Feb. 26) 

• The former Housewatch space is for lease on Avenue B (Feb. 25) 

.... and during the blizzard, six NYPD officers helped a motorist get unstuck on Second Avenue... thanks to the reader for the pic...

Articles to read: The man who bet on St. Mark’s (in 1959)

The New York Times via writer Alessandra Schade takes a deep dive into Charles FitzGerald, the longtime St. Mark's Place landlord credited with helping shape the block's countercultural identity. 

FitzGerald arrived in 1959, when St. Mark's between Second and Third Avenue was largely boarded up and dirt cheap. What began as a $28-a-month studio-and-storefront deal turned into a decades-long experiment in retail, risk-taking and reinvention. 

He opened Bowl & Board in 1961, followed by a string of eclectic shops — from crushed velvet and vintage Levi's to imported goods and raccoon coats — eventually assembling multiple buildings and seven storefronts along the block. 

Over the years, as the street evolved from an immigrant enclave to a bohemian hub to a global curiosity, FitzGerald focused less on profit and more on "vibe," often subsidizing tenants he believed added to the character of St. Mark's. 

Tenants say he acts more like a curator than a conventional landlord. During the pandemic, he paused rent for some commercial tenants to help them survive. He also planted the oak trees that now line the block (the first in 1974), donated $2 million from building sales to a Maine conservancy and most recently backed Village Works, the late-night bookstore devoted to New York culture. 

Now 91, FitzGerald says he's not sentimental about the street’s changes — from the Gap's arrival in 1988 to the coming Sephora — viewing St. Mark's instead as "an evolving thing." 

Read the article here.

 

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Sunday's opening shot

Tired of shoveling on First Avenue and Sixth Street.

Probably won't need the shovels for the snow flurries today. 

Tomorrow will struggle to get above the freezing mark... but AccuWeather alleges it will be "the coldest day until next winter." Woo?