The new stretch of the High Line, which extends the park from 20th to 30th streets, opened last week. Now twice as long, you can enter at 30th (elevator access); 28th, 26th, 23rd (elevator access coming soon), 20th, 18th, 16th (elevator access), 14th (elevator access), or Gansevoort Streets.
More photos after the jump.
Continue reading "Little Bytes Recommends: The New Stretch of the High Line" »
The name might remain affixed to the structure when it reopens in March, but the company that has been running one of the highest grossing restaurants in the United States is bankrupt and will shut the doors after dinner tomorrow. Most of its lavish decor including the Baccarat and Waterford chandeliers will be auctioned off to help pay its debts. (Imho, it was the only way to get rid of the world's nastiest doorman.)
2009, huh? It opened with the loss of the Rainbow Room and ended with the demise of Tavern on the Green...not to mention much finer restaurants like Chanterelle.
Here we go again:
Famed Gus's Pickles, stalwart of the Lower East Side for 89 years, is moving to Brooklyn.
(I will have to go there one day...). Owner Patricia Fairhurst says its because of higher rent and the city put a Muni meter in front of the store, blocking customer access.
Gus's is considered a landmark, like Katz's Deli and Kossar's Bialys. These delicious pickles fed not only the hungry of the 5 boros, but many of the establishments of the Borscht Belt.
For more info:
http://www.thelodownny.com/leslog/2009/07/guss-pickles-to-leave-lower-east-side.html
This has been another tidbyte from Cayce.
I've been able to visit the Highline three times since the first third of it opened in June. The section of the Highline that opened runs half a mile, from Gansevoort to 20th Street, winding over Tenth Avenue and passing beneath the new Standard Hotel and through the Chelsea Market Building. This innovative new public park is exactly 6.7 times more brilliant and awe-inspiring than I thought it would be. I look forward to many, many more walks.
Besides the Highline, Diller Scofidio + Renfro are busy renovating Lincoln Center, dramatically reshaping public space on the west side. Visit their beautifully interactive website for information and photos on these and other projects.
More pictures after the jump.
All of the talk about banning traffic in one of the busiest parts of the city, is finally being tried. (Or half tried: Seventh Avenue is still open.) Broadway between 47th and 42nd is now a pedestrian zone.
Read the New York Magazine article about the closures in Times and Herald Squares and about Janette Sadik-Kahn, the city's transportation commissioner.
The new furniture for the street has obviously not arrived yet. I think the temporary arrangement is a rather low class affair--Times Square shouldn't resemble a tail gate party or a backyard barbecue.
I also found it rather difficult to weave through all of the people sitting in the middle of the street. Part of this whole idea was to ease sidewalk congestion, but it now looks like we're going to be forced to navigate between pods of people resting between their fried shrimp at Bubba Gump's and their Planet Hollywood shopping sprees.
The new traffic patterns are hard to photograph. Seventh Avenue now cuts a giant swath through the square. Previous concrete islands have been chopped up and replaced with peculiar turn-only lanes.
It is a radically altered public space.
Only one avenue of traffic driving through Times Square?
Can't really call it the Crossroads of the World any more, can you?
As usual, Einstein says it best:
I can't keep up with all the closings. Every time I go for a walk or open the paper, I see that some other minor institution has closed. This empty box, pictured on the left, was the Brooks Brothers store on Fifth Avenue. Gone. Since I don't throw lawn parties for my banker friends, I never actually shopped there, but I did use the storefront on my tours--to discuss the oldest clothier in the U.S. and the first in the country to sell ready-made suits and buttondown Oxford shirts (the latter for the last 109 years). Besides dressing some of the most famous figures in American history (from Lincoln to F.D.R.), Brooks Brothers supplied the uniforms for the Union Army and played a large role in transforming New York City into a garment capital. Their flagship, since 1915, on Madison at 44th, is still open (I think it is...who knows anymore?) but their presence on Fifth has gone the way of Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns.
Recently, New York Magazine, in their Freakoutonomics feature, listed the following closings: Love Saves the Day (East Village), Le Gamin (Houston), DT-UT (Second Avenue and 84th Street), most of the shoe stores on 8th Street (but since the shoe stores on 8th Street supplanted all of the bookstores on 8th Street, I'm not shedding a tear over these), Key (Grand Street), Fresh (Reade Street), Jefferson Market (Sixth Avenue), Old Devil Moon (East Village),Trout (Boerum Hill), Chocolate Bar (West Village), and Cafe 79 (79th Street and First Avenue...a neighborhood diner that had been there for 35 years!!!!).
And what else? Well, there's the famous Kim's Video, which began in 1987 with 8000 movies and whose collection (much bigger now) is being shipped in its entirety to a foundation in Sicily. Read the New York Times article.
At the end of the month the legendary Oscar Wilde Bookshop will also shut its doors. I gave a reading there with Ellis Avery last December, but my favorite memory is walking through the Village with my parents the week my first novel, Suspension, was published. They were tagging along with me that day as I signed stock in several stores. I would sign and my father would move copies, already well displayed, into what he believed were more prominent spots. He was the one who first saw Suspension in the window at Oscar Wilde. He was the one to point it out and I'll never forget his excitement.
Finally, I didn't have time to form memories of The Sports Museum of America, which opened only last May in the Standard Oil Building at the foot of Broadway. What was intended in part to be the new home to the Heisman Trophy and its history, the Sports Museum closed after business on Friday.
Wow, it's hard to keep up with the closings in 2009, but here are two more possibilities:
Governor's Island in New York Harbor, which has become one of the great summer escapes, might not reopen this spring since funds were not provided in Governor Patterson's executive budget.
Come on Patterson, it's GOVERNOR'S Island.
And the Amato Opera Company looks to end its run after sixty-one years...thanks in part to one of New York's worst landlords. Read about the closing at the Gothamist or Curbed, and don't miss the piece about the opera itself posted last January in Vanishing New York.
In the poll we posted back in December, Little Byters recommended Gypsy and Spring Awakening as the two shows to see before closing. On January 11th, Gypsy played its final performance and last week's New York Magazine printed a wonderful behind-the-scenes photo journal (by Gillian Laub) of Patti Lupone on that day--from waking up in her windowless pied-a-terre through stretches in her dressing room and backstage respites to the curtain call and autographs at the stage door. There are many more photos included online at their website. To see all 37 pictures, view their slideshow.
On December 30th, we gave a list of ten major NYC institutions that ended their runs--Things We Lost in 2008. Well, only two weeks into 2009 and we can already give you four. This year began with the shuttering of the Palm Court at the Plaza and this week began with the closing of the Rainbow Room. (Both are supposedly temporary.) We also received the official announcement of the April closing of the Times Square Virgin Megastore (the highest volume music store in the U.S.), and heard rumors of a Duane Reade bankruptcy. The spokesman for our ubiquitous Duane Reade drugstores denies any financial difficulty; however, even if Duane Reade doesn't go anywhere, their famed shopping bags will.
Compare the famous Duane Reade logo (bottom) with the new bland brand (top):
Duane Reade started in 1960 with three stores named after their warehouse between Duane and Reade Streets. In 1997, there were 67 stores; in 2007, there were around 250.
For our brief history and joke about Duane Reade, see City Hall Park, Part Two on our walk up Broadway. (The Duane Reade bit starts at 2:11.)
Recently, every year seems to be a banner year of lost NYC institutions, but 2008 is one for the record books. Here are ten off the top of my head:
Wall Street
(If you think that one way arrow should be pointing down, realize that it is pointing south.)
However Wall Street survives, it's going to be drastically transformed with the loss of 40% of the Dow's value since its high last October, and the fall of some of the largest investment banks around including: