40 years gone! Revisiting a classic New York magazine cover story from 1984

If you had a copy of New York magazine this week in 1984, you likely read Craig Unger's cover story, "The Lower East Side: There Goes the Neighborhood." 

Generations have said, "There goes the neighborhood," or various variations, like "The East Village is dead," and even more specifically, as Ada Calhoun has documented, "St. Marks is dead."

I first mentioned this piece on June 6, 2008, roughly seven months into EVG's existence. (It was the first EVG post that attracted much attention outside some amazing die-hards.) 

The copy below is from the 2008 EVG post. You can read the full article via Curbed here.

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The piece begins in the early 1980s with the rotting hulk of the Christodora House on Avenue B at Ninth Street and the young man eager to own it, Harry Skydell. 

Skydell's enthusiasm was indeed mysterious. The sixteen-story building he wanted to buy, on Avenue B facing Tompkins Square Park, was surrounded by burned-out buildings that crawled with pushers and junkies. It was boarded up, ripped out, and flooded...Early in the seventies, the city had put up the Christodora up for auction and nobody bid. 

The building was eventually sold in 1975 for $62,500. (Last I saw, two-bedroom units there—roughly 1,100 square feet—averaged $1.6 million or so.) 

The article discusses the influx of chain stores, art galleries and "chic cafes."

"And real-estate values are exploding" as a result. Said one longtime resident on the changes: "I've lived in my rent-controlled apartment for years and pay $115 a month. I live on the Lower East Side. The young kids who just moved in upstairs and pay $700 a month for the same space — they live in the East Village."

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Here are a few images/pages from the cover story... the photo below is on 10th Street, steps west of Avenue B... 

'There goes the neighborhood' — 30 years later

Just realized that this issue of New York magazine was on newsstands 30 years ago this week… so here's a look back at the issue via an EVG post from June 6, 2008 ...

That's the headline for the May 28, 1984, New York magazine cover story that I recently came across. The piece begins in the early 1980s with the rotting hulk of the Christodora and the young man eager to own it, Harry Skydell.

Skydell's enthusiasm was indeed mysterious. The sixteen-story building he wanted to buy, on Avenue B facing Tompkins Square Park, was surrounded by burned-out buildings that crawled with pushers and junkies. It was boarded up, ripped out, and flooded...Early in the seventies, the city had put up the Christodora up for auction and nobody bid.

The building was eventually sold in 1975 for $62,500. (Last I saw, two-bedroom units there — roughly 1,100 square feet — average $1.6 million or so. Of course, they're rarely available.)

The article talks about the influx of chain stores, art galleries and chic cafes. "And real-estate values are exploding" as a result. Said one longtime resident on the changes: "I've lived in my rent-controlled apartment for years and pay $115 a month. I live on the Lower East Side. The young kids who just moved in upstairs and pay $700 a month for the same space — they live in the East Village."

There are so many interesting passages in the article by Craig Unger that I'd end up excerpting the whole thing. So it's below. You can click on each image to read it. Meanwhile, what do you think would be the headline for this story today?

Crunch Bowery opens with a preemptive 'there goes the neighborhood'

Crunch Bowery opened for business yesterday … and they are apparently making a funny with the "there goes the neighborhood" line …



The Crunch around the corner on Lafayette will close soon … because! As BoweryBoogie reported on May 16, 708 Broadway/404 Lafayette is being converted into a — ding! ding! — hotel!

Previously on EV Grieve:
Crunch moving to the Bowery; CB3 OKs New York Sports Club on Avenue A

The Lower East Side/East Village: The neighborhood continues to go (AGAIN AND AGAIN AND...)

I recently posted the May 28, 1984, New York magazine cover story titled "The Lower East Side: There Goes the Neighborhood." WELL! Turns out New York wasn't the only media outlet in town to notice something going on in the East Village/Lower East Side.

On Sept. 2, 1984, the Times took a similar look at the neighborhood in a piece cleverly titled "The gentrification of the East Village."

To some excerpts!

WHEN Susan Kelley looks out her window she sees a beginning. ''There are so many young professionals sitting on the stoops, ties undone, just talking,'' said the 24-year-old Wall Street real-estate broker as she surveyed East 13th Street, where she has lived for two years. ''There's a feeling of togetherness, of movement. A feeling that things are different every day.''

When Barbara Shaum looks out her window she sees an end. ''I see them walking down the street in identical blue suits with their briefcases and I think, 'There goes the neighborhood,' '' said the leathercrafts maker who has lived in a loft behind her studio on East Seventh Street for 21 years. ''Why are all these people coming here, where they're so riotously out of place? I don't want my neighborhood to change.''

In the meantime, residents of the East Village live in a mixture of past and present, hope and anxiety.

The neighborhood is now home to people like Miss Kelley, who graduated from the State University of New York at Binghamton two years ago with a degree in art history and works for a Wall Street real estate broker. She moved to her renovated two-bedroom apartment on 13th Street because the rent was low - $900 a month, which she splits with a friend - and ''because it was an adventure - I liked the idea of being part of the change.''

It is also home to people like Mrs. Shaum, who watched her neighbors come and go in waves for more than two decades - first immigrants, then flower children, then drug dealers and now young artists and professionals. The rent on her store and adjoining loft was $200 until last year, when her landlord tried to evict her and renovate the building. After a court fight he agreed to give her a three-year lease at $450 a month for the first two years, $500 a month for the last year. ''But when that is up,'' she said ''he's going to try to make me leave again.''

Their neighbors are people like Sally Randall, a fashion editor whose tastes run toward magenta eye glitter and who moved to the area as a student nine years ago and stayed because ''I liked the atmosphere.'' Or Carolyn Dwyer, a clothes designer who opened her boutique, Carioca, on East Ninth Street eight years ago ''because I didn't want to live someplace slick like SoHo.'' Or Mark Clifford, a business writer who has lived near Tompkins Square for three years and felt the need to defend the red Lacoste shirt he was wore to brunch one Saturday morning. ''I'm not one of the preppies everyone's railing against,'' he said. ''This shirt happens to be older than me.''

They recognize the changes they and their peers have brought to the neighborhood.

''When I took these spaces over, nobody wanted them,'' Miss Dwyer said. ''It was a mess outside. People threw garbage in my doorway. I cleaned up, I did my time. To be threatened after you helped to make it a nice place is an insult.''

"...a very conspicuous display of the wealthy sucking up and devouring even more of the soul of downtown NYC"

Bob at Neither More Nor Less has posted his photos and recap of the John Varvatos protest from this past Thursday night.

He writes, in part:

No matter how well meaning Mr. Varvatos' intentions may have been , and actually be , what many local artists and musicians saw in his Thursday evening extravaganza was just another example of a very conspicuous display of the wealthy sucking up and devouring even more of the soul of downtown NYC.

As always, he took many great photos, such as this one.