One of only a handful of existing Greek revival buildings that survived the great fire of 1835, 211 Pearl St. was constructed in the early 1830s by William Colgate, the founder of Colgate-Palmolive. Colgate used the building as a warehouse at a time when Pearl St. bustled as a hub for trading in dry goods.
The building's current owner, Rockrose Development Corporation, received demolition permits for 211 Pearl from the city's Buildings Department on Dec. 13, 2002, a Buildings spokesperson said. Rockrose is considering plans to demolish the building to make way for a rear entrance for a new, 650-unit residential development the company is constructing west of Pearl St., near Maiden Lane, Platt and Gold Sts.
"It's kind of ironic that, after having endured the tragedy of 9/11, we're talking about destroying a building that symbolizes the strength and endurance of New York," said Councilmember Alan Gerson.
At 211 Pearl St., only a silver remains of the historic Greek revival building that had stood there since the early 1830s. But elsewhere in the city, parts of the demolished interior have found new life, in a restaurant on the Upper West Side, in a tree guard on E. Fourth St., and possibly even on a music video set for Madonna and Britney Spears.
Since opening on New York’s Lower East Side in late 2005, it has enjoyed great success among vegans and non-vegans alike. BabyCakes reportedly grossed $1.2 million in sales last year, and, thanks to a significant number of customers whom McKenna describes as “celebrities who aren’t even vegan but [are] health conscious,” will open a second Los Angeles location in the spring, right around the time the BabyCakes cookbook is scheduled to hit shelves.
bryan said...
I don't think it's the same dog, but there's one like it on Mulberry Street over the door to an Italian place. Careful to whoever's calling Mulberry above Canal "Chinatown": those kind of words could still get you hurt!
February 3, 2009 4:42 PM
Jill said...
I am sure it's the same one. My camera battery died on me during Chinese New Years, but Mulberry Street sounds exactly right. How many big brown dogs perched over a canopy can there possibly be in one small town?
Sintir . . . met some opposition from nine members of the Block Association. They collected a petition with 109 signatures trying to block the restaurant and cited ads the owners had apparently posted on their MySpace pages advertising upcoming live music performances. After a half an hour struggle, the ap was denied, the owner was in tears.
I underwent a "recession makeover" for the March issue of Harper's Bazaar (on stands February 17), and it was fun, to a point. There are three things I dislike: rice pudding, social climbers and photo shoots — though not necessarily in that order. I knew they were going to put my hair down. My hairdo has become my trademark and my curse because if I show up at a gala with my hair down, people shriek, "We want Ivana!" And I say, "You have Ivana." And they say, "No, we want the Ivana hairdo." So I told Bazaar, "I will not cut my hair, because if I do, I cannot put it in a chignon." But the crew was fabulous. And I had a great laugh about the story. If people were not interested, magazines would not write about me. I am what I am.
"You think I'm going to send a $10,000 Dolce & Gabbana suit to Honduras? UPS takes like three weeks. It's never going to arrive because somebody will steal it." Countries like that are beautiful but they are very poor, OK? So I am passing on that. Rossano is just looking for adventure. But I am really slightly worried. In the jungle there are no mobile phones, no computers and no cigarettes, but there are plenty of tarantulas, cockroaches and snakes. I hate those slimy things. I can deal with the sharks on Wall Street and the barracudas on Madison Avenue, but this is really too much."
By the late 19th century, the Bowery had become synonymous with skid row.
A lot of the Bowery’s reputation was deserved, but at least part of the blame for its near-universal name recognition was the musical A Trip to Chinatown, which featured the song “The Bowery.” Its chorus boasts:
The Bow'ry, the Bow'ry
They say such things and they do strange things,
On the Bow'ry! The Bow'ry!
I'll never go there any more.
By 1916, the street’s reputation had gotten so bad that civic groups battled to come up with a new name for the thoroughfare. One suggestion was “Cooper Avenue” in honor of Cooper Union founder (and Jell-O pioneer)* Peter Cooper.
A rival proposition recommended “Central Broadway.” It’s hard to imagine the chaos this name change might have brought about in a city that already featured Broadway, West Broadway, and East Broadway.
Neighbors, elected officials and friends from near and far gathered on Feb. 1, the Feast of St. Brigid, to celebrate the victory of the Committee to Save St. Brigid’s in the group’s long struggle to prevent the demolition of the 1849 church on Tompkins Square Park.
The committee saw its dream come true last May when the Catholic Archdiocese of New York announced it had accepted a $20 million donation from an anonymous donor, including $10 million to restore and maintain the building and the parish and another $10 million to endow parish schools in the area.
The donor is still anonymous and the archdiocese has declined to identify the “angel” who made the gift.
Edwin Torres, leader of the committee, told the gathering on Sunday that the archdiocese had received the last $5 million installment of the $10 million for the building restoration on Dec. 16 and that architects and engineers have been working in the building at 119 Avenue B since the beginning of the year.
“We’ve been at the site at least once a week and we’ve spoken to the engineers — they’re testing the bricks and mortar in the church to see the extent of the problems,” Torres said, adding, “This will probably be the last meeting of the committee — we’ve achieved what we set out to 10 years ago. But we’ll continue to monitor the site,” he said.
Lux Interior, who introduced the excitement of deviant rockabilly to the punk era as the lead singer of the Cramps, died early Wednesday in Glendale, Calif. He was 62.
The Cramps were founded in New York around 1976 by Lux Interior (born Erick Purkhiser in Stow, Ohio) and the guitarist Poison Ivy (Kristy Wallace) with a distinct musical and visual style. As connoisseurs of seemingly all forms of trashy pop culture from the 1950s and ’60s — ranging from ghoulish comic books to Z-grade horror films to the rawest garage rock — they developed a sound that mixed the menace of rockabilly’s primitivist fringe with dark psychedelia and the blunt simplicity of punk.
No, it’s not the faltering economy that’s putting venerable New York up for sale and shipment. It may be just coincidental that there is a flurry of outliers who are in a New York state of mind and want a part of it.
“We’re not taking anything from New York — the diner needed saving,” said Cheryl Pierce, who with her husband, Vince, bought the Moondance in 2007 for $7,500. They spent $40,000 to move it 2,125 miles to La Barge in western Wyoming, where it opened on Jan. 12 after a delay to replace a roof collapsed by snow.
It is hardly a new phenomenon, of course. New York has been exporting its bounties, willingly and unwillingly, since the days of Peter Stuyvesant and marauding redcoats.
More recently, according to the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission, cast-iron eagles from the old Pennsylvania Station and Grand Central Terminal have turned up at suburban estates, a kiosk from the 1939 World’s Fair is now a restaurant in New Jersey, parts of an 18th-century ship found at 175 Water Street were sent to the Mariners’ Museum in Newport News, Va., and old subway cars are swimming with the fishes as artificial reefs off the Delaware coast.
NYPD seeks suspects in ATM "not working"
NEW YORK - Police are looking for four people who have been scheming to steal money from bank customers using cash machines in Manhattan's East Village.
Police said Friday the suspects have run a low-tech scam multiple times since October.
After the target puts his or her bank card into an ATM, a woman approaches and says that machine isn't working. While the victim uses a nearby machine, a second suspect watches and notes the victim's personal code.
That suspect gives the code to a third person, who then punches it into the machine the victim initially used -- and didn't cancel out of. Because the machine is still activated by the victim's card, the suspect is able to use the code to withdraw money.
Police have security-camera photos of at least one suspect.
