The Carnegie Deli & America

I went to the Carnegie Deli recently to experience it before it shutters forever this New Year's Eve after 79 years in business. It's closing not because of the rent, but because the owner is tired of it all. Someone wants to buy the place and keep it going, but the owner is not interested. It's closing. Period. So I went.



If you've tried to get into the Carnegie you know it's almost impossible, thanks to the hordes of tourists mobbing at the door day and night. Tourists have always dined at the Carnegie--I did when I was a teenage tourist--but today the city suffers under mass tourism and there are many places--parks, museums--that are no longer enjoyable because of them.

So I got there at 8:00 in the morning, the moment it opened. Only a few diners were inside. It was quiet, the speakers playing light music from the 70s and 80s. Kenny Rogers, Barry Manilow, Neil Diamond. Their images hang on the walls, in the famous sea of autographed head shots.

What will happen to all those head shots when Carnegie goes? What will happen to Larry Hagman, David Hasselhoff, Mr. T?



I couldn't bring myself to eat an overloaded pastrami sandwich at 8:00 in the morning, so I ordered eggs. A mistake. Nothing interesting happened. No Borscht Belt comedians were hanging out, cracking wise. Just the tourists, most of them looking tired and somewhat depressed.

As I was leaving, the place had already begun to crowd. A group of giddy young women took up a whole long table, every single one carrying those flowery quilted duffel bags you only see tourists carrying. They were loud. Bachelorettes. I left.



I decided to go to the Guggenheim just to use the golden toilet known as "America." I walked across Central Park, hoping that by the time I arrived at my destination my breakfast would have inspired a solid production. A shit in a golden toilet would be something. But this was not to be.



Again, I arrived early. I got to use the toilet right away, before the crowds showed up. The attendant informed us that people wait as long as two hours for the opportunity to evacuate into solid gold. Maybe they want to feel like Donald Trump. Maybe they want to make a statement, some sort of private protest. Or maybe they're just nihilists.

Does anyone prep for this experience by swallowing a handful of Just Another Rich Kid's gold pills so they can shit gold in the gold toilet?

I stepped inside and closed the door. Alone with the toilet, I snapped a few photos, then did what anyone does. A belly full of Carnegie Deli coffee went into "America." I can't say that I felt any better about the whole thing--the tourists, the loss of New York's character, hyper-gentrification, the presidential election, America, the way everything is going (down the shitter?). But I did feel like I'd accomplished some elemental mission, and it was still early in the day, after all. So there was that.

D'Auito's For Rent

Back in 2013, D'Auito's bakery closed after nearly 80 years in business. It's been sitting shuttered since, untouched and unchanged, until now.


2013

D'Aiuto's was the home of Baby Watson, "the best cheesecake on Earth." After a decline and struggle, the family sold the building on 8th Avenue and 30th Street--on the condition that the new owner keep the business going. That seemed to work out. The family and the building owners were optimistic. As Politico wrote: "the legacy of the Baby Watson cheesecakes continues, barreling into the future buck-naked and grinning."

Then the place shuttered, for reasons unknown. The Real Deal reported that it would be demolished for an 11-story apartment-hotel.

Still, the cheesecakes kept coming. You could find them for sale a few doors down at Jessie's Express Cafe. Or at D'Aiuto's other location, the Mona Lisa Cafe in Brooklyn. Then Mona Lisa closed in 2015. The cakes stopped showing up at Jessie's. I went in to check awhile back and no one could tell me what became of the cheesecakes--or D'Aiuto's.

Recently, a For Rent sign went up in the window. Once someone takes the lease, we'll have to say goodbye to that glorious storefront design, with it colorful cheesecakes and naked baby, and the antique neon, too.


today

Gross' Balls

Back in April I reported that S&G Gross pawnbrokers had closed after 115 years in business. I worried about what would happen to their antique golden balls, the great symbol of pawnshops, hanging over 8th Avenue near 34th Street.


April

Now they're gone.

The neon sign is gone, too, and the place has been plywooded and installed with tourists who stand around and point into the sky.

Let's hope those balls are in good hands.


today

Gotham Book Mart Project

I really loved Gotham Book Mart. I loved walking to it past all the diamond shops on 47th, glimpsing their famous sign--"Wise Men Fish Here"--and feeling that rush, browsing through the shelves, always finding something wonderful and unusual. For years now, every time I venture close to its former location, I get a pang of sadness that I can't go there ever again.

So here's something.

After the shop closed in 2007, its entire contents--about 200,000 books and other items--were donated to the University of Pennsylvania by Edmondo Schwartz and Leonard Lauder. And now they're gradually appearing on a blog called The Gotham Book Mart Project.

Here are a few that seem especially special:

On Donnell's Replacement & $375 Cocktails

The new 53rd Street Library opened recently, replacing the beloved Donnell library. Sleek, stark, and only one-third the size of the old Donnell, the new space is true to the architect’s original fantasy rendering, a bizarre scenario in which people sit on designer bleacher seats, staring blankly into space, not reading books.


Library entrance beyond the Baccarat and its guard

The entire library is bizarre. There are not many books, though there is plenty of vast empty space that could hold them (Justin Davidson calls it a "perfect haven for checking stock prices and Twitter"), and the glossy wood floor is conspicuously loud underfoot, booming with every step. But the ampitheater that ushers guests inside has got to be the strangest part.

As it leads you down into the subterranean space, it blatantly recalls the High Line's "10th Avenue Square," where people sit on wooden steps and look out at traffic. On the right-hand wall is a metal mesh screen that brings to mind the skin of the New Museum on the Bowery.

There are no books on display here. (Books "smell like old people," after all.) People mostly chat and check their Facebook feeds. The steps are oddly placed and feel precarious, making you cling to the handrail as you go.



The people sitting on these steps are compelled to watch an unavoidably large video screen placed in front of them, where flashing scenes of New York City include several shots of luxury towers, built or under construction.

To watch people watching this, in a library that replaced a library that was destroyed so a luxury tower could rise, is to participate in a surreal nightmare of modern neoliberal urbanization.

As I sat there, watching people passively watch the screen, I remembered one of the last times I was inside the old Donnell. It was a very different scene.



Back in 2007 the library hosted a Municipal Art Society discussion entitled “Is New York Losing Its Soul?” Tickets for the event quickly sold out and people loitered outside the library hoping for scalpers. Inside, the audience was restless, ready to be whipped into a froth. We’d been living in Bloomberg’s New York for five years, and we were not happy.

The moderator, Clyde Haberman of the Times, started off by saying there was an implied "yes" to the question of the night, New York is losing its soul. You feel it, he said “under the relentless bulldozer of homogenization…as you see one small shop, one small restaurant after another just basically ground down and replaced by--does it have to be one more bank? Does it have to be one more Duane Reade or CVS? People on the Upper West Side are nearly in revolt, but they won't revolt because they'll just go to Starbucks and take care of that.” After an enthusiastic round of applause, he continued, crediting the soul loss to “an administration that has yet to meet a developer to whom it wishes to say no.”

That administration was Bloomberg’s, a crew of businessmen and socialites hell-bent on turning Manhattan, and much of the city, into what the mayor liked to call a “luxury product.” Most of us didn’t understand it then, but he was using zoning, branding, eminent domain, and corporate welfare to reconstruct New York for the very wealthy.


Empty space, no books

Just one year after the Donnell Library hosted that discussion on the loss of New York’s soul, it became a victim of the same phenomenon.

Built in 1955 and still the second busiest branch of the New York Public Library, the popular Donnell had long been a center of culture, featuring films, concerts, lectures, and readings by poets such as Marianne Moore. They had a great music library. A.A. Milne’s original Winnie the Pooh doll lived there, sitting in his threadbare fur in a bulletproof, climate-controlled glass cube. Like that Pooh and other well-loved velveteens, the Donnell was on the scruffy side, a fact that made it friendly—and vulnerable to those who insist that everything must be shiny and new. Paul LeClerc, president of the New York Public Library, seemed to be suffering from status anxiety when he told the Times, “We’re very conscious of the quality of design that is presently on that street. We’re not going to be the poor, shabby neighbor anymore.”

A tragic symbol of the city’s shift from public to private, community to corporate, socialist to neoliberal, the Donnell was shuttered in 2008, sold off to help fund an ill-conceived, glitzy renovation of the library’s Main Branch on Fifth Avenue (itself renamed that year after billionaire donor Stephen Schwarzman, a man who “had become,” wrote The New Yorker, “the designated villain of an era on Wall Street—an era of rapacious capitalists and heedless self-indulgence").

The Donnell sat empty until 2011 when, against public protest, it was demolished to make room for a 50-story, $403 million combination hotel and condo tower. Opened in 2015, the Baccarat Hotel & Residences New York boasts rooms that rent for $899 and suites for $18,000 per night, a restaurant that caters to “Eurotrash, oligarch wannabes, and hedge-funders (New York Post), and “a boutique store selling crystal with price tags up to $10,000” (Wall Street Journal), all topped by a $60 million penthouse where “the master bedroom is large enough to house two New York studio apartments” (Forbes) -- and where the tenants (who are probably never home) have their own private library.

It probably has more books in it than the public library in Baccarat's basement.


Baccarat bar and lounge

After I toured the new library, I went upstairs to explore the Baccarat.

The second-floor bar and lounge is open to the public. The place is decked out. People sit in leather seats surrounded by their shopping bags and check their Facebook feeds. They talk about money and real estate. They talk about the far-flung places they've traveled and what everything costs. "Do you know they serve a dish for $64,000? For that much money, I want endless orgasms with my dinner."

The Baccarat bar doesn't serve anything that expensive, but they do their part. They have specialty cocktails and premium cocktails, which are not cheap, along with one "super premium" cocktail known as "Le Roi."

It costs $375.

To get the Le Roi, you have to order in advance so that Baccarat can fashion a custom-made glass to pour it into. In goes the most expensive gin in the world, Nolet's Reserve, which sells for $700 a bottle. This is mixed with Grey Goose VX and Lillet Rose. You then get the exclusive privilege of drinking the cocktail from the custom-made glass--which, by the way, you apparently can't take with you. This is not McDonald's, where you're encouraged to "collect them all."

For $375, I'd at least want to bring home the souvenir glass. 



In his review of the new library, Times critic David Dunlap noted parenthetically that there is a “column to be written about secretive plutocrats buying investment aeries in the sky while public institutions are relegated to basements. Some other day.”

I hope that day comes soon. The way the 53rd Street Library is set up, it seems doomed to fail as a library. How long before we hear reports of "under-utilization" and the place is closed? Which, let's be honest, may well have been the plan all along.

Alex's Shoe Repair

VANISHING

Reader Sasha writes in to report that Alex's Shoe Repair on 44th and Vanderbilt, across from Grand Central, is closing.



Sasha says: "They've been there for ages, and do great work but just lost their lease. He's closing down and not relocating. I was in there for a shine earlier and Alex is bereft, as were many of the customers coming in--lots of head shaking and sad words. Pretty much all the midtown shoe repair places are disappearing, it's a real shame."

The sign in the window says May 27 will be their last.

Missing Silk Clock

Recently, I received this note in an email:

"I am a granddaughter of Alfred Schwarzenbach and my father worked in the building for years. We are all appalled about the disappearance of the clock! How can we find it? Who has the authority to simply take it away? If they don't want it, why not give it back to the family? All questions with no answers! Maybe you can give us some!"

It came from Ines Franck in Switzerland. She is referring to a post I did in 2014 about the lovely Silk Clock on the former Schwarzenbach building on Park Avenue and 32nd Street.


Before, via 14to42

The clock was removed when the building was sold, stripped, streamlined, and turned into TIAA-CREF's 470 Park Avenue South.

At the time, we wondered what would happen to the clock. Would it return to the public sidewalk once the renovations were done?


After

My original tipster on the story went over and took a look.

The Silk Clock has not been returned to the exterior where it can be enjoyed by all. He also searched the lobby and found no trace of the Silk Clock. Only cold marble and security guards.



The clock was originally installed here in 1926. Every hour Zoroaster would wave a wand, causing the Queen of Silk to emerge from her cocoon, holding a tulip. (Click to watch.)

Since it's no longer part of the building, Ines Franck's family would like her grandfather's clock back. She vows to keep searching for it. If you have any clues to the clock's whereabouts, please let us know.

UPDATE: Reader Sheila contacted TIAA-CREF. She reports that they responded on Facebook: "we like the clock too, so we’re restoring it! It will be rehung on the building’s north entrance as soon as it's complete for all New Yorkers to enjoy."


via David Cobb Craig, Street Clocks in NY

S&G Gross

VANISHED

S&G Gross pawnbrokers has been in New York City for over a century. Their building on 8th Avenue and 34th Street is an antique treasure for its neon sign and vintage symbol of the three golden spheres.

Now Gross is gone.



The gates are down, a sign in the window says: "We have moved" and "We've been purchased by Gem Pawnbrokers," up the avenue at 40th Street. Gem is a chain with over 25 locations around the city, Westchester, and Long Island.

"Thank you all the years as our dedicated customers," Gross says in their goodbye note, "it was our pleasure to serve you."



"Established in 1901 by Sol and Gus Gross," according to their website, "the business has continued under the leadership of Robert Gross. The succession has been continued by Robert's son Gary and Gary's daughter Randi. All three generations continue to work together to form a strong nucleus for the continued success of the business."

After 115 years, that's over. With no fanfare. Just an empty window with empty jewelry cases and a lonesome handwritten sign for LADIES MOVADO.



The pawnshop had been in this location since 1918.

How old are those golden spheres? They are dented in spots, like moons struck by passing asteroids but still defying gravity.

It is extremely rare in the city to find the medieval pawnbroker symbol, and in glorious three dimensions such as this. (The symbol dates back to the Medici Family.) I have always enjoyed walking by and seeing them, looking up to make sure they were still there.



The trio also appears atop the neon sign. I will hate to see them go.

What will happen to this piece of New York history now that the Gross family has left the building? What horrible frozen yogurt or cupcake chain will come to destroy them?

Lee's Art Shop

VANISHING

After 65 years in business, Lee's Art Shop on West 57th Street is closing sometime in the next four to six weeks.


from Lee's Art Shop

The building was purchased in 2013 by real estate investor Joseph Safdieh of Safka Holdings, after which he proceeded to sue the owners, David Steinberg and Jill Isaacs, according to The Real Deal, "for refusing to further extend the due diligence period on the property despite several outstanding issues relating to its certificate of occupancy."

That deal fell through--and Thor's Joe Sitt got in on the action. Safka then sued Thor.

Through all the fighting over the property, Lee's stayed open.


photo: NY Times

Steinberg and Isaacs are the children of Gilbert Steinberg, who died in 2008. With his wife, Ruth, Steinberg bought the original store in 1951 and moved it to this building in 1975. They purchased the building 20 years later.

"The building would likely be transformed into a high-end retail box," industry pros told The Real Deal three years ago. The distinctive structure was built in 1897 and is known as the Society House of the American Society of Civil Engineers. It was once home to a Schrafft’s restaurant. And it is landmarked.

Lee's is beloved across the city. "It never fails," wrote the Times in 2012. "You go into Lee’s Art Shop, half a block from Carnegie Hall, as a customer — usually for something prosaic like a couple of Pilot Razor Points from their amazing 215-slot pen rack — and leave wishing you were an artist."

The shop is currently having a major liquidation sale, with deals up to 75% off.

Gene's Coffee Shop

VANISHED

A few weeks ago, while wandering around the east side of midtown, I found myself for the first time in Gene's Coffee Shop on 60th Street between Park and Madison. One of those overlooked treasures of the vanishing city, Gene's felt like a real find. An endangered species. A good old New York City coffee shop. Excited to be there, I thought: Now I have a place to eat in this neighborhood.

Well, call me a jinx.


photo via Yelp

Reader MM writes in: "On Thursday, there was a sign that they were closed for the day because of a gas cut-off. This seemed plausible, there's a huge building going up directly across the street. Today there was an eviction notice in the door."

Is this yet another case of death by gas cut-off? It almost happened to the B&H Dairy. It did happen to The Stage restaurant in the East Village, La Taza de Oro in Chelsea, Mariella's Pizza in Gramercy, and possibly several other small and older restaurants.

Businesses struggle without gas, lose money, and fold. Or the landlords take advantage of stricter gas codes, tightened since the Second Avenue explosion, and use them to evict. We don't know if that's the case here, but it's a growing problem in the city that no one in the mainstream media is reporting on -- and it is killing local businesses.



For some time, Gene's has been buried under scaffolding, which may have been a contributing factor to the closing.

Writes MM: "I work in this neighborhood, a lot of the diners have been dispossessed, usually because their buildings are knocked down. In this case, Gene's was suffering a little from the construction, but I figured they'd do okay when the new building went up. You could order and have things delivered in less than 10 minutes. The restaurant was always sparkling clean, with friendly staff of Greek and Spanish guys, dishing out food for people who worked nearby and for tourists. Eviction papers indicate the lease goes back to 1983, though the restaurant may be older."

Unless there's hope for Gene's, another authentic New York coffee shop vanishes--in a city where we are losing them by the day.


via Facebook

The Lambs

The Lambs is America’s oldest professional theatrical club, founded in Manhattan in 1874. It is open to actors, writers, and other theater people. Members have included Fred Astaire, Irving Berlin, George M. Cohan, W.C. Fields, John Philip Sousa, along with thousands more.

The club has moved around quite a bit, especially in its early years, starting out at Delmonico’s Restaurant, settling on West 44th for most of the 20th century, and then finally ending up at their current location on West 51st Street in 1976.

But after 142 years, The Lambs may have come to the end of the road. Their landlord, the Women's National Republican Club, is hiking the rent -- and the future of this illustrious club is unknown in a city where the rent is too damn high.




I chatted via email with Marc Baron, Shepherd of the flock, about The Lambs' history and its possible future.

He explained: “The Lambs had a WW1 transport ship named in its honor, a train car in the 1920s (it still exists), a cigar, and a seat in the National Theater in Washington, DC. Our Lambs Foundation (founded in 1943) provides financial grants to non-profit theater companies, theatre charities, and education for the arts.

Any person working in theater, film, television, radio, music--whether a performer, writer, composer, producer--have had their lives touched by the actions of more than 6,660 Lambs over the Club's 140 years of existence.

Today, The Lambs continues in promoting new works of theater, and provides a congenial atmosphere where members enjoy the companionship of other professionals of the arts.”



The Lambs theatrical club is not to be confused with The Lambs Club restaurant.

After losing their own building on 44th Street, the structure was gutted and became a Chatwal Hotel. The hoteliers opened The Lambs Club restaurant in 2010. At the time, Sam Sifton called it "a clubbish offering from Geoffrey Zakarian, the silverback gorilla of Midtown hotel restaurateurs."

Marc Baron has others words for it. He says the restaurant is “feeding off our remarkable history and adding confusion that we are located elsewhere.” He wants to set that record straight.



As for the current space, Baron says, “Our lease expires July 1, and the landlord has asked for a 50% increase.”

That increase will force The Lambs to double their membership dues, likely causing them to lose members. They hope to increase membership and donations to stay alive.

“An increase of this size,” says Baron, “could force us to move, or worse, not find permanent quarters and, therefore, lead us to a horrible end.”


Keep up with The Lambs on Facebook

Preview Sandwich Shop

On West 53rd Street, under the green awning for the Hello Deli, located in the CBS building, is an old sign for a lost sandwich shop.



Rupert Jee's Hello Deli was famous for its proprietor's appearances on the David Letterman show. But what of the Preview Sandwich Shop?



Just look at that gorgeous typeface. What more is there to say?

Carnegie Reopens

Last week I noted that the Carnegie Deli promised to reopen in 2016. Who knew it would be so soon? They announced on their website and Facebook page yesterday that they are reopening today:



Gargantuan sandwiches and creamy cheesecake! Also, "Dilly the Pickle Mascot" will be in the house.

And here's a shot of life inside from last week via Brian Fitzgerald on Twitter. Thumbs up!

Carnegie Deli Comeback

Is the shuttered Carnegie Deli coming back?

Reader Brian Fitzgerald shared the following via Twitter:



"We would like to set the record straight," begins the December 17 letter posted in the window, "Carnegie Deli will reopen in 2016. We are ONLY temporarily closed."

It continues: "being closed has been a painful hardship on our family, employees and a heartbreak to our loyal customers. Over the past several months, we have experienced a number of surprise setbacks including: many unforeseen structural complications, months of inspections, and required renovations that have taken much longer than any of us expected."

(Sounds a lot like what happened to the B&H.)

Shuttered by the City last April when a possible illegal gas hookup was discovered, right after the Second Avenue explosion, the Carnegie deli has been closed since. As Ted Merwin wrote in the Post, "The loss of the Carnegie would be an outsized one for New York." It's been here since 1937.

Last month, the upstairs tenants got their gas turned back on--a hopeful sign for the restaurant. And in other hopeful signs, even in the recent blizzard, the neon lights of the Carnegie Deli were blazing:

The Ziegfeld

VANISHING

By now you've probably heard the news that the Ziegfeld movie theater will be closing after 46 years.



It is "not a movie palace from the golden-age of movie palaces," as James Barron recently pointed out. But it was modeled on them, upholstered in red velvet with crystal chandeliers and plaster filigree.

It is not the original Ziegfeld, opened in 1927 and demolished in 1966 against public protest. The original was meant for live theater, the Ziegfeld Follies, not movies. When it opened, Will Rogers said, "I hope you never have to put in a movie screen." But it did eventually become a movie house, before it was sold, razed (along with two apartment buildings), and replaced by a skyscraper.



When the current Ziegfeld opened, the owners celebrated its "space-age technology." Ziegfeld's daughter, Patricia, remarked, "Progress seems to do nasty things to tradition, doesn't it?" But, she continued, "tradition has been preserved in this new theater... I'm sure Daddy would have approved of it since everything is so Ziegfeldian."

On Saturday nights, for a short time, formal attire was required by moviegoers.



The Ziegfeld is also not--as many are saying--the last single-screen movie theater in Manhattan. For that, we still have The Paris, which dates back to 1948.

What the Ziegfeld is, more than anything, more than any other, is enormous. The auditorium is vast, with rows of red seats stretching back and up into the horizon. It was a thrill whenever a blockbuster played at the Ziegfeld because that's where you'd want to see it. Big movies need big screens in big auditoriums. And when you went to a movie there, it felt like a special occasion--like an event.



The Ziegfeld has history. Forty-six years is not a century, but it's still a significant vintage. And attached to that forty-six years is the name. Ziegfeld! So New York.

And with vitrines placed throughout the lobby, it also houses the Ziegfeld Museum, a collection of artifacts from the original Follies.

What will happen to the Ziegfeld Museum? To the costumes that once belonged to divas like Lillian Lorraine? And to the programs and photographs from other performers long gone? And the bust of Fanny Brice? What will happen to the bust of Fanny Brice?

Not to mention the weird "STORY OF THIS WOOD" plaque screwed to the wall, informing moviegoers: "Carbon 14-isotope dating shows this wood has been buried in a peat bog near Cambridge, England, since 2120 B.C."

What will happen to all that when the Ziegfeld becomes an upscale corporate event space?



The first movie to play in this theater, back in 1969, was Marooned, a space-age thriller. The last movie will be Star Wars, another story in outer space. What does it all mean?

We hear Thursday may be the last day.

During this weekend's blizzard, New Yorkers lined up to get inside. To say goodbye. They took pictures of the old place. They stroked the velvet walls. They stood in the long, wide aisles of the auditorium and bemoaned the coming destruction. One man looked up at the sky-high ceiling and said, to no one in particular, "Where else can you have an experience like this?"