An East Village view of what will be the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere

Bobby Williams took this photo from his perch in the East Village... showing the glass nearing the top of One World Trade Center ... Still waiting for that last piece of the spire and a steel beacon to cap the building at 1,776 feet.

Per The Atlantic, "it will officially become the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere and the third-tallest building in the world, behind the Burj Khalifa in Dubai and the Abraj Al Bait Clock Tower in Mecca."

And did you see the views from inside the 100th-Floor Observation Deck from last month?

Here's another Citi Bikes docking station for St. Mark's Place

This morning, Shawn Chittle spotted workers installing the Citi Bikes docking station on the north side of St. Mark's Place ... just east of Second Avenue...







Early Monday morning, workers installed the docking stations on the same side of St. Mark's closer to First Avenue.

Per Citi Bikes:

• North side of St. Mark's Place near Second Avenue
This station will have 39 docks and is located in a no-parking area of the street.

• North side of St. Mark's Place near First Avenue
This station will have 31 docks and is located in a no-parking area of the street.

So 70 docks total for the block. (Perhaps we can now call this stretch Citi Bikes Place?)

And if the FDNY seemed annoyed by one docking station on this block... wait until they see this...

Out and About in the East Village

In this weekly feature, East Village-based photographer James Maher provides us with a quick snapshot of someone who lives and/or works in the East Village.



By James Maher

Name: Terry
Occupation: Factory Worker
Location: 6th Street and 2nd Avenue
Time: 12:15 on Monday, April 29

I’m coming from Social Tees [Animal Rescue]. I know the owner since it’s where I take my other four cats. Right now I have an apartment in Crown Heights and I heard [the kitten] crying there for three days. I thought he was a bird and I couldn’t find him at first.

He’s a baby. The mother left him. His eye was shut so I took him upstairs and flushed it with hot water and then I gave him some Amoxicillin. I don’t know why but something told me to give him that for the infection. And then I gave him some stuff for his eye.

My family is Basque. They come from the Pyrenees mountain from Spain and France. I'm from 7th Street and Avenue B. I’m 60 years old. This is where I’m from. I’ve been all around the Lower East Side. I‘ve lived in other places but this has always been home.

I mostly worked in factories. I put together costume jewelry. It was no big thing. I worked in publishing. I write and I used to write a lot of poetry. I even tried acting school.

My whole family was down here. They never left. This was my real family, but when I was young I was given to foster parents in the Bronx and I got raped and beat up and all of that by them. I’ve suffered.

I’ve been in the streets most of my life. I had my friends and my family around here, but I didn’t go to my family. I don’t know how I survived. I hardly ate. I wouldn’t ask anybody for anything. I was too traumatized. People would come and bring my food and I would shake in my boots because I didn’t want anybody to touch me. And I didn’t know how to ask for help.

So I started hanging out with gay people. They were accepting. But I was never gay. They just assumed I was. I was always very quiet or sad. I was never talkative. I don’t know how to tell you how I went through all that trauma and survived it.

I think it has a lot to do with being Basque. Our history is very interesting. When I say I’m Basque to somebody that knows what it is they go, “What?” We’re cavemen — all the way from the caves.

I tried drugs in my 30s. I started late. Before that I was just trying to get through my own trauma. I was lucky I started late or I would’ve been dead. I’ve never seen so many weird people in my life. I’ve seen rock stars; I’ve seen movie stars come here — all that stuff. I remember the lines around the block for drugs. People just didn’t care I guess. It was wild; it was a wild town.

The cat is fine. He’s fighting. If I let him walk, he’ll walk all over me, but I can’t yet because I don’t want him to get sick. I know what it’s like to suffer and that’s why I like to rescue things. It’s to be human.

James Maher is a fine art and studio photographer based in the East Village. Find his website here.

Reader report: Citi Bikes to arrive at the end of the month

[Photo on East 4th Street by @LinzaPinz]

As you may have noticed, Citi Bikes docking stations have been arriving here fastly and furiously the last 72 hours... during the docking station installation on East 13th Street yesterday, a supervisor type handing out flyers told EVG reader Gary the following (paraphrased):

He said that bikes will be in the end of May ... and that it is a 1-year pilot program for Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn. If it is successful, then it will roll out in the rest of the city.

Meanwhile, check out the Citi Bike site for how it all works here ... and their FAQs.

Residents shuttle from the Mars Bar building to Jupiter 21

[July 2011]

Catching up with this feature yesterday in The Wall Street Journal... which provides an update on Jupiter 21, the residential building at the former site of Mars Bar and the buildings at Second Avenue and East First Street...



Several of the residents of the former buildings will be moving into co-ops here at the promised rate of $10. (You can read the article for all the background on how this deal transpired.)

In an unusual blend of old and new New York, nine long-term tenants of two small buildings on Second Avenue struck deals to buy cooperative units in a new 12-story building, where they will share hallways with 51 mostly young renters — many new to New York and unfamiliar with the neighborhood's history.

The bulky new building will be known as Jupiter 21, and will feature a model of the planet Jupiter hanging in the lobby.

Rents for the rest of the new residents will range from $3,000 to $10,000 a month.

And returning residents such as Andrea Legge, an artist who lived in the previous building for decades, won't be subjected to Jupiter 21's leftovers.

"I am grateful they didn't give us lowlifes apartments in the back," she said. "I feel hugely entitled to this luxury apartment, but I feel completely unworthy of it at the same time."

The longtime residents also discussed how the block looked in the 1980s.

"There was nothing romantic about it," Ms. Legge said. "There were needle junkies in the basements. It stunk and it was all so over."

[Image via Gothamist, reposted with permission]

Now will the Mars Bar return as well?

Previously.

51 Astor Place sidewalk bridge is coming down...

Via Twitter yesterday afternoon, @kxd8053 let us know that workers were starting to remove the remaining section of the sidewalk bridge around 51 Astor Place... which provides a slightly less obstructed view of...
‏






And a few commenters here and on Facebook have said that they are starting to come around a bit to the building...

Cafe, tapas bar proposed for former Avenue B pet shop

Zee's Pet Shop closed up here on Avenue B just south of East 10th Street last spring. Now there's an applicant with designs on opening a 30-seat cafe-tapas bar with a retail component. The applicants will appear before the CB3/SLA committee this month.

Reps for Donostia (EV Cafe LLC), 155 Avenue B, filed an application on the CB3 website for a beer-wine license. Here's what we know from looking at the document online (PDF):

• The proposed hours are 10 a.m. to midnight.

• Listed food: "Spanish tapas, sandwiches, salads, meats, cheeses, etc."

• "The principal has worked as an employee a several fine dining establishments including Craft, db Bistro Moderne, Estiatorio Milos."

And a reminder about the meeting info:

SLA & DCA Licensing Committee
Monday, May 20 at 6:30pm — University Settlement Neighborhood Center
189 Allen Street (btwn Houston & Stanton Sts) (north of main entrance)

Amex shoot takes over Avenue A skid row for the afternoon

A crew was on Avenue A at East Seventh Street today filming some sort of commercial involving, well – all this...



... along the site that usually looks like this of late...





Perhaps becoming the edgy go-to spot now for shoots.

Photos today by Bobby Williams.

[Updated] And here is the Citi Bikes docking station on East 13th Street at Avenue A

On the south side of the street just east of the Avenue... photos via EVG reader Gary.





Now just 49,764 Citi Bikes post remain for the week...

Updated 3:03

Final product, via @danielleintheev ...

Citi Bikes docking station arrives on East Seventh Street at Avenue A

Happening this afternoon...





At some point we'll recap how many have been dropped off. Find the map here showing the bike share locations.

And these photos are courtesy of Michael Sullivan, who along with his business partner Aaron Thorp, recently opened WINESHOP at 438 E. Ninth St. (Previously the brief home of Cigkoftem, the Turkish vegetarian fast-food chain...)

-----

...and another reader submitted shot from the corner... via Craig S.

Uh-oh — FDNY discovers the Citi Bikes docking stations

This afternoon at the new Citi Bikes docking station on St. Mark's Place just west of First Avenue... Per Jose Garcia: "The fire department just discovered that the new Citi Bikes are smack dab in the middle of the firelane. They seemed very unhappy."

[Updated] Someone is unloading a shitload of (mostly) free records now on East 2nd Street

On East Second Street just east of Second Avenue near Anthology Film Archives, per EVG reader Stephanie.

An EVG Facebook friend has more: "The workers are trying to make some cash by charging a buck for the good stuff but most of it all is free. Boxes and boxes of Stones, Beatles, Beach Boys, Hendrix, Badfinger etc etc. I got a fancy gatefold EP by the Dentists."

Anyone know more about who these belonged too?

Updated:

Dang. Nice to see this... Oh, if you see a copy of "Zinc Alloy and the Hidden Riders of Tomorrow," please put it aside for me.



Via Todd Norlander on Facebook...

Updated 3:20

A new photo from Stephanie... still lots of vinyl left...

Free chairs (and history!) on Second Avenue

This was the scene a little earlier outside 110 Second Ave. near East Seventh street... a lot of free chairs. (Have no idea if they are still there.) Photos by Derek Berg.





Anyway! Lots of history at this address — the Isaac T. Hopper Home, a circa 1839 Greek Revival townhouse that serves as a halfway house for female prisoners.

The Times had a feature on the home a few years back:

In 1846, The Evening Post said that there were “two great avenues for elegant residences”: Fifth and Second Avenues. Construction on Second had already produced chaste Greek Revival houses like No. 110, built in 1838 and soon occupied by Ralph Mead, a merchant on Coenties Slip. The simple red-brick front is relieved only by a projecting portico with brownstone Ionic columns — the Greek was a movement of buttoned-up reserve.

By that time Isaac T. Hopper was famous in New York as an uncompromising reformer and abolitionist. On his death in 1852, The Liberator, an abolitionist newspaper, said that “the fugitive slave, the unfortunate criminal, the children of poverty, all commanded his warmest sympathy.” From his work evolved the Isaac T. Hopper Home, devoted to helping women who had been released from prison.

Read the whole article here.

EV Grieve Etc.: Mourning Edition

[Outside Grace Church on Broadway and East 10th Street. Photo by Evan OHara]

Six miracles of East Village Ungentrification (Fork in the Road)

Video: John Penley is an Anarcho Yippie (Vimeo)

The tragedy of Cooper Union (Felix Salmon/Reuters)

Did 7-Eleven kill this Chelsea deli? (Jeremiah's Vanishing New York)

Proposed Soho House on Ludlow to show Taylor Mead films next week (The Lo-Down)

West Village co-op sues over Citi Bikes docking stations (DNAinfo)

Emerald Inn is closing. But moving! (West Side Rag)

Where you can find a SF Burrito Mojado in the East Village (Fork in the Road)

Clemente Soto Velez Center wins Landmarks Conservancy Award (BoweryBoogie)

FlipKey looking to turn Stuy Town into hotels for tourists (New York Post)

Selling the CBGB movie overseas (Deadline.com)

Alleged costumers customers of notorious LES drug ring included bartender at the Bowery Hotel (New York Post)

Springtime summer in the city (Slum Goddess)

Revisiting some lost storefronts (Flaming Pablum)

East River Park in 1902 (Ephemeral New York)

Soon, you might be able to do your post office business at a former Duane Reade

We're due for an update on the the proposed relocation of the Peter Stuyvesant Post Office on East 14th Street... there was a town hall meeting on the subject last Monday... Jefferson Siegel has a nice recap of the contentious meeting in the current issue of The Villager.

There's a lot to cover.

Briefly.

1) People are generally pissed off by this possible closure.

2) The plan would work something like this: The carriers who sort and deliver mail to homes and businesses in the area would be shipped off to the Madison Square Station on East 23rd Street near Third Avenue while large parcel services would operate out of the F.D.R. Station at 54th Street and Third Avenue. (Handy!)

The USPS would lease the former Duane Reade on East 14th Street near First Avenue for retail services, such as stamp sales and P.O. boxes. (At least the space wouldn't become another bank branch, as rumored.)



3) Residents have until next Tuesday (May 7) to submit their comments to USPS. From the article:

Comments, which must include the name Peter Stuyvesant Post Office, can be sent to: Joseph J. Mulvey, Facilities Implementation, U.S. Postal Service, 2 Congress St., Room 8, Milford, MA 01757-9998.

(Be sure to use the correct postage.)

Despite being pressed on the topic, the USPS rep at the meeting wouldn't divulge the building's landlord. The landlord reportedly told the USPS that he/she has other plans for the building, which was erected in 1951.

Right the whole Villager article here.

Previously on EV Grieve:
UPDATED: Did you hear the rumor about the Peter Stuyvesant Post Office branch closing?

Posters urge residents to 'voice your opinion' about the former PS 64

These posters arrived last night around the neighborhood...


[Photo via MoRUS]

...urging residents to speak out against the plan to turn the former PS 64 and CHARAS/El Bohio community center into a 500-bed dorm on East Ninth Street just east of Avenue B.

The building is a topic of discussion at two upcoming CB3 committee meetings... as well as at a Landmarks Preservation public hearing... (we'll have more information on that meeting later).



Meanwhile, there is a petition campaign in circulation that reads:

COMMUNITY USE - NOT DORMITORY

Respect our community. Respect this community treasure: Old P.S. 64 located at 605 East 9th Street.

Old P.S. 64, a designated New York City landmark, has a long and valued history serving our community. This building could easily serve our community again. Dormitory use of this building does not serve our community. Cooper Union should not house students in old P.S. 64.

We ask that old P.S. 64 be returned to use for our community.

Find the petition here.

Previously on EV Grieve:
Will old PS 64 get a theater for nonprofit groups?

Rebranded P.S. 64 up for grabs: Please welcome University House at Tompkins Square Park to the neighborhood

Deed for 'community facility use only' at the former P.S. 64 now on the market

Report: Former PS 64 one step closer to becoming a 500-bed dorm for multiple NYC colleges

Petition campaign asks: 'Return PS 64 to the Community'

Motor City Bar to remain open through June

Back in February, we first heard that Motor City Bar would be closing on Ludlow.

At the time, we heard they'd close sometime between March and June.

Here's an update from the Motor City folks: They plan to be open through June. And there's a Grand Finale Party planned for June 23 featuring The Swingin' Neckbreakers. Stay tuned for more details.

The landlord chose not to renew the bar's lease... Motor City opened at 127 Ludlow in 1996.

Previously on EV Grieve:
Reader report: Motor City Bar is closing on Ludlow Street

Iconic Hand Rolls has apparently closed

Bill the Libertarian Anarchist noted that workers were clearing out Iconic Hand Rolls last night on First Avenue near St. Mark's Place... the temaki shop opened last June here ... and this morning, the space is completely empty. Perhaps they're just remodeling.



No mention of a closure or renovation on the Iconic website or on their usually active Facebook or Twitter accounts. The phone number is not in service at this time.

The restaurant recently launched a campaign in which 50 Iconic logo stickers were placed within a five-block radius of the store. Per Washington Square News: "Clues on the whereabouts of the stickers will be posted on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Those who find the stickers can use them to redeem a free temaki roll, a cone-shaped and hand-rolled sushi, from the store."

And there were these new ads, like this one on St. Mark's Place...



Iconic Hand Rolls had some tough luck at the outset — their AC conked out and they had to remain closed during their first weekend in business. And there was that plywood mischief too.

Longtime parishioners hope to be able to salvage items from the doomed Mary Help of Christians

As you likely know, permits were filed last Thursday to demolish the now-vacant parcel of Mary Help of Christians that includes the church, school and rectory, according to DOB records.

Developer Douglas Steiner has plans for a residential development on this prime East Village space on Avenue A and East 11th Street and East 12th Street.

We heard from a longtime parishioner, who said that she is "hurt and confused beyond words" about the impending demolition.

Some of us have been speaking about trying to secure a few items from the church that are of great historical significance, most specifically the church bells and the cement statue of Mary Help of Christians outside located on 11th Street on the upper floors of the school ... in order to gift them over to the Salesian order. There also some liturgical books that the Salesians have inquired about. The pipe organ unfortunately is beyond our capabilities.

The former parishioners are hoping to be able to contact Steiner and see if these items can be salvaged.

Image via Curbed.

Previously on EV Grieve:
Permits filed to demolish Mary Help of Christians church, school and rectory

Baiting Mary Help of Christians

Mary Pupillo - 'A true relic of the East Village'

The Schumacher announces itself on Bleecker Street

Just noting the recent arrival of branding for The Schumacher on Bleecker at Mott... the building was once the Schumacher & Ettlinger printing company, which began in the 1860s. They were one of the many German lithographic companies that created advertisement art for the cigar industry.

Curbed has been reporting on this project. Among the details:

The building will contain 20 two- to four-bedroom apartments priced from about $3 million to $25 million.

And it will look like this...



Read more at Curbed here.