Vanishing New York Backup

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 busines...

Ever since the beloved Avignone pharmacy was forced out of its very, very long-time location on Bleecker Street, we've been waiting to see what would take its place. And here it is. Sweetgreen. It's a chain store. They make salads. They have over 45 locations across the country. They have a "story" and "core values." Their number one core value, according to their website, is " win, win, win ." At this newly opened location, they held a " private tasting exclusive to NYU ." Everyone inside looked really young and healthy and excited to be there. One young woman carried a tote bag that said "EAT PLANTS!" at the private NYU-only tasting  In the battle of Old New York versus New New York, I guess Sweetgreen won, won, won. Avignone was the oldest apothecary in the United States. Family run, it had been in business in New York City for 183 years. Then its building was sold to a hedge fund called Force Capital Manage...

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 reta...

When we last checked in with the doomed Market Diner it was locked behind green plywood . Now reader Shade Rupe sends in photos of the gruesome remains. photo: Shade Rupe A bit of stone foundation still stands. A stairway to nowhere. The rest is dust. photo: Shade Rupe The Market Diner was here since 1962. It was beautiful and unusual. Developer Joseph Moinian's Moinian Group bought it, evicted it, and is replacing it with a 13-story building . If it matches their existing two towers across the street, it will be yet another dull, dead luxury box. You can like those towers or hate those towers. But here's the thing: All the glass boxes around the city are making us sick--mentally and physically. They are literally killing us as they hasten our deaths. Cognitive neuroscientist Colin Ellard studied what happens to people on the sidewalk when they stand in front of a bland glass façade. In one study, he placed human subjects in front of the Whole Foods grocery stor...

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 strug...

Peter Missing is at work on a new mural at the First Street Green Art Park -- a giant, golden, cyclopean version of his infamous upside-down martini glass, a.k.a. " The Party's Over ," with scenes of toppling buildings and flowers. On his Instagram page , he writes: "We have started a new mural at Houston and 2nd Ave Peter Missing and Cyril Mazard at Art Park, NYC ... Happy to be back in the ghostland and my hood of the Lower East Side. Stop by over the next week and spin the art and politics around and grab me a mud coffee with milk and sugar from 1st and 1st - the nexus of the universe . See you soon and bring good vibes." To which he adds, " Missing Foundation performance in front of mural May 21, 2016." Mark your calendars. And let's hope the performance will include witches, yuppies, and mysterious satanic rituals. Just like in the old days. (h/t to Alex )

Showman's jazz club has been in Harlem since 1942. They've hosted many of the greats, including Sara Vaughan, Eartha Kitt, and Duke Ellington. With 74 years under their belt, they are Harlem's longest running jazz club -- after the wasteful and tragic destruction of the elder Lenox Lounge . Last week, Showman's posted the following "farewell" announcement on their Facebook page : Reader Carrie Butterworth sent in the tip and followed up with some questions for the owners. She reports: "Mona Lopez and Al Howard are selling the business so they can retire." Lopez and Howard have been running the club for the past 38 years. (Howard was one of the NYPD detectives who took the call when Martin Luther King was stabbed by a woman with a letter opener. He was also a supervisor on the hunt for Son of Sam.) Showman's has moved three times since 1942. Their original building, next to the Apollo, was destroyed by fire. "After playing at th...

Joe writes in about the closure of Mariella's Pizza on 16th Street and 3rd Avenue: "After 37 years, Mariella's bit the dust. I spoke to the owner and he was fuming over the long list of expenses, rent and rent tax being the biggest culprits. He was so pissed as he explained it to me, you would have thought I was the one throwing him out. They had the best food hands down of any pizzeria around! They always hosted a brisk business no matter what time of the day I went there, but as he fumed, 'After a while, how much can I charge for a slice?'" Back in February, I heard from Liz Solomon. She wrote: "There is a pizza place on the corner of 16th Street and 3rd Avenue called Mariella's. It has been there since 1976. Everyone needs a place like Mariella's in their life or they need to go back to Iowa. Great slices, pies, and low-end Italian food. Con-Ed workers came across the street in droves, kids from the extreme demographic divide of Fri...

Class Divide , a documentary about hyper-gentrification in Chelsea, the High Line, and the impact of stark inequality on both rich and poor, will be screening at IFC beginning this week. I'm no movie reviewer. I'll just say that this thing had me in tears and you should go see it. I talked with director Marc Levin and producer Daphne Pinkerson of Blowback Productions: Q: The film is impressively even-handed. As a viewer, I felt empathy for both the rich kids of the Avenues School and the poor kids of the projects. Everyone seems caught in a system they have no control over. Did you go into making the film with a particular viewpoint? How did that change--or not--during the process? A: We certainly knew that the gap between rich and poor was at Gilded Age levels and believed that was not good. Our last few films looked at the human consequences of this economic divide and we were searching for a way to continue covering this situation. We realized that the stark eco...

The Streit's matzo factory, on the Lower East Side since 1915, is scheduled for demolition, ironically, the week of Passover. At the same time, Michael Levine's " Streit’s Matzo and the American Dream ” will have its premiere at Film Forum from April 20 - 26. To mark the occasions, Art on A Gallery will feature an exhibit on Streit's, opening later this week. At the gallery, Michael will be showing photographs from the company's history, along with parts of the factory's antique machinery, which has been in storage since Streit's shuttered last year and moved out of town. The stippler will be there--that machine that presses the little holes into the matzo--along with the cutting machine and some pieces of the Carnegie Steel rails that guided the swinging baskets of matzo through the factory. Along with archival prints from history, you'll find the photographs of Joseph O. Holmes , who captured the last days of the Rivington factory, alo...

I'm a fan of the great, but somehow little known, Forlini's restaurant , so I was excited to see they put some vintage photos up on their website of the place back in the 1950s and 60s. Forlini's dates to 1943. It's a favorite place for judges , lawyers, and other people involved in the justice system, thanks to its location close to the State Supreme Court house. Tourists to Little Italy seem to be completely ignorant of its existence, and let's hope it stays that way. About once a month or so, you can go and hear the song stylings of Mr. Angelo Ruggiero , a scene that should not be missed. Check out the full gallery of vintage photos here .

It is 1996 and I’m in love with Coney Island. I’m in love with its decrepit, ancient buildings, crumbling but also vibrating with color and life. Ice cream, cotton candy, corn dogs, fried clams. I’m in love with the smell of grease and seashore. The feeling of being at the edge of the world. On the margin. Way out there. Beyond. And I can’t get enough of the freaks. I go to Sideshows by the Seashore to see their 10-in-1 show. Zenobia, played by Jennifer Miller, is the bearded lady. She wears plain clothes, pants and a shirt, no makeup, nothing theatrical. The focus is her beard, thick and woolly, a bit wild. With her long wavy hair, she looks, if not like Jesus, then one of the apostles. A hippie. She goes through her spiel: "I am a woman with a beard,” she announces. “If I called myself The Bearded Lady, I would be claiming that I, Zenobia, was the one, the only, woman with a beard in the entire world. The Bearded Lady. Could that possibly be true? Of course not. The world ...

Kossar's Bialys, under new ownership, got a makeover a couple months ago. So I went by to check it out. Founded in 1936 , it's still on Grand Street and it's still called Kossar's. So there's that. The interior used to be unfussy, haphazard, almost industrial. I liked it that way. Here's what it used to look like: (Note the lack of cute sandwich names on the menu board.) Now the place is shiny and new. With cute sandwich names. Which is the way everything seems to go. Here's what it looks like now: The new place is basically inoffensive. Nothing to be excited about and nothing, really, to complain about either. Except. The menu offers two special services: "YES," it reads, "WE TOAST AND SCOOP!" This is not a message to New Yorkers. This is a message to tourists and to the extended-stay tourists known as recent transplants who don't ever intend to become New Yorkers. Because while some New Yorkers might t...