Campanile & Rubber Stamps

A reader wrote in to let us know that the Campanile restaurant on E. 29th Street has closed. It's been awhile. Eater shared the news a year ago--and I missed it. They wrote:

"Northern Italian eatery Campanile has closed after 18 years of business. According to the restaurant's Facebook, the building was sold and the landlord wants to turn it into a high rise."

The building that housed Campanile at 30 E. 29th was originally the very old New York Telephone Building. I can't locate any plans for a high rise here, but something's happening along this block.



One building away, neighbor Stampworx is also gone. They'd been around since 1946. Probably as long as Campanile's pink neon sign's been hanging there, the remnant of another restaurant.

Stampworx was located in a wooden house owned in the 1800s by the Pringle family. It has a lovely second-floor facade and an interesting history.
 


Life used to take me to this block somewhat regularly. I liked standing outside and looking up at the twin vertical signs of RUBBER STAMPS and RESTAURANT. That sliver felt like part of an older city.

One night, I saw a man in the doorway of the building between the two. He was behind the glass, playing a flute. The Campanile's neon sign shone pink, making the night air blush.

I meant to write about it, but never did. I took a photo, but that's lost somewhere in the clutter of my photo archive. Still, I remember it well. It was one of those little New York scenes that only happen in old buildings.

Campanile's gone. The rubber stamps shop is gone. And the man who played the flute is probably gone, too. I don't know what will come to replace them all, but we can guess.

St. Sava Serbian Orthodox Church

Last evening, after their Easter celebration, St. Sava Serbian Orthodox Church burned in a massive, four-alarm blaze battled by nearly 200 firefighters.

Photos shared immediately on social media showed the church engulfed in flames, exploding through the stained glass rose window, destroying the roof, leaving nothing but the brownstone shell. Thick, dark smoke billowed high into the air over the area around Madison Square Park.


Tim Teeman, Twitter


photo: Zokster Something

The congregation of St. Sava had just celebrated their Easter services earlier in the day. Photos posted to their Facebook page only two hours before the fire showed a full house inside the landmarked historic church.

Early reports stated that no one was inside during the fire. Parishioners stood on the street, watching and weeping.

“We're all alive, but the building is gone,” the parish priest, Fr. Djokan Majstorovic, told RT. And what a beautiful building it was.


Easter celebration, photo via St. Sava Facebook page

In 2003, Christopher Gray wrote about the church for the New York Times. Built in 1855 by architect Richard Upjohn and sold to the Serbian congregation in 1943, it was originally an extension of downtown's Trinity Church.

Gray wrote, "The interior of the church is a spectacular antique -- a vast, high space, with all of the 19th-century decoration, hanging brass lamps, wall coverings, oak pews and polychromed tile floor almost untouched."

New York Architecture called the interior "Upjohn's masterpiece... Its loftiness and brilliance of proportion make it entirely different from anything else of its time. The most striking features, the long single aisled nave and open roof ceiling, resemble St. Louis' 13th Century Sainte Chapelle in Paris. When combined with the fully exposed truss ceiling of Norway pine, the beautifully polychromed panels with gold stars on a field of blue, and the painted apse walls (by German artist Habastrak), the chapel interior becomes as ecclesiastically proper as its Mother Church."


Easter celebration, photo via St. Sava Facebook page

By 9:00 p.m., photos showed a hollow shell, without a roof, as firefighters continued to spray their hoses on the steaming remains.

Some news reports stated that the structure was in danger of collapse.


Ashley Sears, twitter

St. Sava's was in the midst of restorations -- and negotiations.

In 2014, the Real Deal reported that Robert Gladstone’s Madison Equities sued the church for "allegedly breaching a letter of intent by not disclosing a $13.5 million bill the religious institution owed to brokerage Tenantwise. Madison agreed to help fix up the landmarked sanctuary on West 26th Street in exchange for the use of its air rights."

"Madison is looking to tap into unused air rights at the site of the landmarked church at 13 West 25th Street, as well as those belonging to the property adjacent to the church — just under 200,000 square feet of air rights in total — to construct a commercial building."

Councilmember Corey Johnson noted on Twitter, "Developer wants to build 850ft tower here."



That tower would go on the parking lot next to St. Sava's, home to what remains of the Chelsea Flea Market.

With the landmarked church destroyed, the future of both sites is uncertain. The cause of the fire has yet to be determined, but investigators have officially called it "suspicious."

Update: Some say candles were the culprit. Others are not so sure.


after the fire, photo via St. Sava Facebook page

Academy Records

In a city rapidly losing its record shops, Academy Records is alive and well on West 18th Street. It's actually crowded on Saturday afternoons with giddy music collectors.

(I've been holding this post, unpublished, for quite some time because I'm afraid to jinx the place. But I don't have that kind of power, right? So here goes.)



Inside, it feels like New York. Like the real New York we used to know, not so long ago. And it should. Academy's been around since 1977.

Here you will find actual New Yorkers. It's as if some giant sifter has panned across the shopping mall of Fifth Avenue, weeded out the tourists and the dullest newbies, and deposited the gold right here. You can tell these people are New Yorkers because they feel like New Yorkers, even if they don't live in New York. They've got an edge to them. An energy.

How to describe this? If you don't know what I mean, well, you either know or you don't.



I'm telling you, it's like walking into the pre-Bloomberg city. If you're feeling sick and sad and fed up with it all, with everything this city has become, go into Academy Records and you'll feel better.

You might even feel hopeful as you listen to the frantic click, click, click of CD jewel cases snapping as fingers flip through the selections in their bins.



Shoppers walk through the crowd with armloads.

These people are passionate. They're not fooling around.

Do not get in their way.

Think Less

Barnes & Noble is removing its stores from Queens, including a location in Forest Hills that preservationists tried to save. It's ironic to fight for a chain, but the neighborhood is otherwise a bookstore desert. And what's coming to replace it? A Target.

Meanwhile, on Fifth Avenue and 18th Street, the flagship Barnes & Noble bookstore (since 1932 and closed in 2014) has been completely transformed into a Banana Republic.



The plaque on the outside wall ("Founded 1873") has been pried off, leaving a shadowy scar on the masonry.

Inside, a message for all who might still think books have value: THINK LESS.



(I took this picture awhile ago, so it may not be there anymore. It was there when they opened.)

B&N to Banana

The original Barnes & Noble flagship store on 5th Avenue closed this past January. It had been there since 1932.

The Banana Republic that is taking its place has a message for us: "Good things are worth the wait."

Another Newsstand Gone

For many years, by the northeast corner of 23rd and Park Avenue South, there stood a lovely little newsstand. It was bright blue. It remained, until very recently, an unlikely survivor of Bloomberg's Cemusa onslaught.


I wish I could find my other photos of it

Here it is (was) on Google maps, surviving defiantly in front of Pret A Manger, Bank of America, 7-Eleven, New York Sports Club, and Baked By Melissa cupcakes, across from Walgreens, Bath & Body Works, and the Vitamin Shoppe.

It was crooked and quirky, just like all our newsstands used to be. It had character. Really, it was the only bit of original New York character left on that chain-strangled corner.



I always admired it when I walked by, grateful to it for still standing against the dull tide of glass and chrome. But on a recent walk past, I found it was gone. Some construction is being done to the subway entrance.

"Where's the newsstand?" I asked a nearby construction worker. "Disappeared," he said. "They got rid of it."

I asked another, who told me, "The City took it away."



Then I asked a neighboring newsstand vendor.

"I don't know. Maybe they're putting in one of these," he said, gesturing to his generic Cemusa box. "They did it to me."

He explained how the City removed his newsstand and then took two years to get him a new one. During those two years, he had no business. It's important to understand that the city's newsstand vendors used to own their stands, some passed down for generations, but Bloomberg took them away and gave them to Cemusa, a Spanish corporation that now leases them to the vendors who used to be owners.

"I consider that stealing," I told him, paying for my peanut M&M's.

"Yes, well," he replied with a shrug, "the City doesn't see it that way."


See Also:
History of the New York Newsstand
More Newsstand Deaths
Newsstand Slaughter
Hojo's Lost Newsstand
Another Newsstand
Union Square Newsstand