New graffiti in the Library restrooms

Uh, the Library bar. Avenue A.

A few things about Woolworths

The City Room had a fun piece the other day on the old Olympic-size swimming pool in the F.H. Woolworth Building on lower Broadway.

An early promotional brochure for the building promised tenants an “immense Swimming Pool and Turkish Bath establishment, open day and night,” equipped with “every modern device making for comfort, safety and sanitation.” This was in addition to the Postkeller restaurant, the barber shop and the Hospital Room “for female stenographers, clerks and others, where they may receive first-aid treatment and simple remedies at the hands of a competent nurse.”

Speaking of Woolworth stores, which closed for good in the city in 2001, here's some footage of the old Woolworth's location in downtown Flushing from 1997:



Which reminds me of eating at the Woolworth's lunch counter on 14th Street...and wasn't there one on Park Avenue South around 23rd Street? The food was pretty awful at times, but it was cheap, of course.

Here's a Woolworth's menu from 1960 (via Mr. Monopoly):

East 10th Street across from Tompkins Square Park seems like a lovely place to live, but...

Between Avenue A and Avenue B. Click on the images to enlarge.

Hotel Reserve now ready for your, uh, reservation

The Hotel Reserve opened earlier this month on Nassau Street at Maiden Lane in the Financial District. It was originally reported that this would be a Wyndham Garden Hotel. But Hotel Reserve has such a more local flavor given that the Federal Reserve is directly across the street.





Pretty spiffy design...The hotel is L-shaped and wraps around three low-rise buildings that sit on the corner of Maiden and Nassau.



So why did they do something seemingly so complicated? According to an article from October 2007 in the Times titled New buildings that embrace the old:

These challenges pale in comparison with the difficulties faced by Gene Kaufman, an architect who designed a 113-room hotel that is being built just a few blocks from Wall Street.

This L-shaped hotel, which will be a Wyndham, will have entrances at 51 Nassau Street — opposite the New York Federal Reserve Building — and 20 Maiden Lane. But its longest street frontage will actually be in a dark, narrow one-block alley called Liberty Place.

The hotel is being built on this odd-shaped lot because it has to encompass three low-rise buildings on the corner of Nassau Street and Maiden Lane that the developer, the McSam Hotel Group, was unable to acquire. These buildings all had commercial tenants with long leases who could not be enticed to leave, Mr. Kaufman said.

“These old buildings were in very bad condition, so we had to be careful not to create any vibrations that could damage them,” Mr. Kaufman said. But, he said, that was just the beginning of his headaches.

For one thing, the New York City subway system passes directly beneath this site, and it has ventilation shafts on all three sides of the building. This meant the developer had to dig deeper for the foundation. But as the excavation began, he discovered that the three older buildings had foundations extending into the property lines for the hotel.

“We’ve wrapped around little buildings before; we’ve built against the subway before; we’ve built on narrow sites before,” Mr. Kaufman said. But never all at once. “It was like fitting a diamond into a setting,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Win Won on Liberty Place survived all the construction.



Here's what it looked like in late spring.

Hotel Plaza Athénée is closing for six months

Found ourselves at the swanky ol' Hotel Plaza Athénée on 64th Street near Madison Avenue on Christmas Eve. (Looong story while we were there.) Anyway, on the way out of the Bar Seine there, several staff members offered us holiday greetings and casually mentioned the hotel would be closed for the next six months. As if we were regulars there or something. Whaaa?




So one of the dapper gentlemen went on to say the hotel -- with 114 guestrooms and 35 suites (rooms start at $795 a night) -- would be closing as of Jan. 5 for renovations, including things like upgrading the electrical system. I asked him what he'd be doing during that time. Paraphrasing a bit here, but essentially: "I don't know. I guess I'll have to go on unemployment." He also said he recently sold his house. I'll spare you the rest of his rather sad plight. No mention of the closing on the hotel's Web site. (At least as of Dec. 27.)

In September 1984, the property, formerly called the Alrae, was completely renovated. It reopened as the Plaza Athénée.

P.S. Yes, I know.

Door is no long "bizarrely heavy" -- now the springs are just tight

Dec. 15!


Dec. 27!


Dirt Candy on East Ninth Street between Avenue A and First Avenue.

First Avenue trench filled

On Dec. 17, I did a post on the trench that stretches across First Avenue at Sixth Street. As I mentioned, I know someone who lives in a building adjacent to the trench. "I'm really afraid the constant earthquakes will stress my crappy building enough to make the already warped floors collapse."



Anyway, good news for the resident (and anyone who lives nearby) as well as bicyclists, M15 passengers...the trench was filled in the other day...Nice and smooth now.

Foo shoppers

Another building now for sale on Avenue B

Between 11th Street and 12th Street.

Previously on EV Grieve:
There are more than 20 empty storefronts along Avenue B

Dumpster of the day

First Avenue near Ninth Street.

It's not polite to stare

On Fourth Avenue near 13th Street. I have to admit I was curious what this ad was for...Any guesses? What is the logical client for an ad with a model making the Ass Face? A hotel, of course! The Fontainebleau in Miami Beach. Part of the hotel's "rediscover" campaign.

Oh, as you probably know, the formerly iconic hotel was featured in Goldfinger.

Dumpster of the day

10th Street between Avenue A and Avenue B.

"The landscape of New York will be virtually unchanged for two years"

From the Times:

Nearly $5 billion in development projects in New York City have been delayed or canceled because of the economic crisis, an extraordinary body blow to an industry that last year provided 130,000 unionized jobs, according to numbers tracked by a local trade group.

The setbacks for development — perhaps the single greatest economic force in the city over the last two decades — are likely to mean, in the words of one researcher, that the landscape of New York will be virtually unchanged for two years.

“There’s no way to finance a project,” said the researcher, Stephen R. Blank of the Urban Land Institute, a nonprofit group.

Charles Blaichman is not about to argue with that assessment. Looking south from the eighth floor of a half-finished office tower on 14th Street on a recent day, Mr. Blaichman pointed to buildings he had developed in the meatpacking district. But when he turned north to the blocks along the High Line, once among the most sought-after areas for development, he surveyed a landscape of frustration: the planned sites of three luxury hotels, all stalled by recession.

My apologies!

Got drawn into some dumbass barside conversation...I said with much certainty that, despite being released on Nov. 27, the stuffed turkey Australia was no longer playing anywhere in the city.



I was wrong: It's at the Village East! Hurry! Should be on DVD by Tuesday.

When a beloved neighborhood bar relocates...

Do the regulars follow? On the eve of the P & G closing and moving, the Times looks into the issue...

[I]f drinking and dining have always been a moveable feast in New York, is charisma cartable? Can the character of everything from venerable pubs to palatial eateries migrate with their names and owners? This portability issue has gained new urgency in a season of economic disarray, when property owners are less willing to extend the leases of even the most beloved old-timers.

Loyalists can be fickle, and geography perilous. “New York is so provincial, three blocks is a huge distance,” said Patrick Daley, the owner of Kettle of Fish, the classic step-down barroom at 59 Christopher Street in Sheridan Square, in the space formerly inhabited by the Lion’s Head, a lionized writers’ pub, which closed in 1996.

Not in the article but worth noting: Sophie's moved from Avenue A to its current location on East Fifth Street in the mid-1980s.

Previously on EV Grieve:
An appreciation: the P & G Cafe

Noted

Dunno how long this flier has been up...but I just noticed it yesterday at Seventh Street and Avenue A. The flier goes on to accuse an area business owner of hiring "child molesters." It's signed by a "concerned parent in the neighborhood."

Random photos from Dec. 24 here and in Midtown and a little bit of the UES

Meanwhile, a little closer to home...

Gifts that weren't given or received this Dec. 25

At Duane Reade. Maybe next year Tom!

The Kids are Alright

1998. Coney Island High. Joey Ramone and the Dictators.

My mind is going. I can feel it

I can't help myself. Seventh Street at First Avenue.



What the liar said earlier:
This is the last post related to a King-of-the-Hill beheading or vandalism -- unless somebody does something really clever or cruel (or more cruel)