Vanishing New York Backup

Here's what's left of the once great and gorgeous Lenox Lounge. There's nothing but a pile of brick and timber, a couple of broken walls, and the ghosts of Harlem past. photo: Lynn Lieberman ( AFineLyne ) Untapped Cities has more photos, if you'd like to rend your garments and beat your breast in grief. The demolition began earlier this month after a long, sad story--which you can read here . And, yeah, it was the rent. It's almost always the rent. Regulations on commercial rent would have prevented this.

After 73 years of legendary life in Harlem, and after 4 years of sitting empty and wasted, the once great Lenox Lounge is currently being demolished . It is a terrible shame that could have been avoided. today If the city had commercial rent control, as it did for many years, it would have been avoided. If the City Council had passed the Small Business Jobs Survival Act , it might have been avoided. But City Hall refuses to protect small business people against landlord greed, claiming that it's a free-market society --which it is not. Corporate chains in the city are regularly chosen by Business Improvement Districts and given millions of dollars in tax breaks and incentives. That's not laissez-faire . That's corporate welfare. Thanks to City Hall's catering to big business, we have lost the Lenox Lounge, along with countless other precious local landmarks. For the soul of the city, the price of that loss is high. Owner Alvin Reed, Daily News photo, 2012 ...

VANISHING Liberty House , at 112th and Broadway, is vanishing after 49 years in business. And it's no ordinary local shop. photo: Jed Egan, New York magazine It is the last of its kind, a small chain of New York shops first organized in 1965 by Abbie Hoffman and other civil rights workers in Mississippi to sell goods made by poor women of color, with the profits going back to the original communities, and to support the Civil Rights Movement. I talked to co-owner Martha who told me the shop will shutter at the end of April . They'll be having a sale until then, from 20% to 50% off. This time, it's not the rent. "People aren't shopping," Martha said. "They're going online. It's convenient. They tell me, 'I can sit at home and shop in my pajamas.' But people have to shop local or else there won't be any stores anymore." photo via Liberty House Facebook page The second-to-last Liberty House shuttered in 2007, also on ...

This morning I shared the news that the Lenox Lounge might be demolished completely. Now Harlem Bespoke offers the architect's rendering of what's to come (thanks Andrew)--and it's horrifying: Horrifying. Right down to the architect's choice to depict Harlemites as rich Anglo-Saxon conquerors with cell phones, shopping bags--and formal wear.

Is it possible that the former Lenox Lounge will be completely demolished? *UPDATE: Yes--and here's what's coming. New York Yimby notes: "An anonymous Midtown East-based LLC has filed applications for a four-story, 18,987-square-foot commercial building at 286 Lenox Avenue." So, either two stories will be added to the existing building, or the whole thing will be torn down and replaced. The Lenox Lounge closed on New Year's Eve 2013 after 73 years in Harlem. The landlord had doubled the rent from $10,000 to $20,000 and handed the lease to Richie Notar, the jet-setting entrepreneur behind the Nobu luxury restaurant chain. "I don’t want to change a thing about how it looks," Notar told the Daily News , adding that his renamed Notar Jazz Club would be "not too much different than what it is now." But lounge owner Alvin Reed stripped the vintage facade before he left, rather than have its history co-opted. Someone spray-painted "...

Author Richard Price spoke at the New York Times' " Cities for Tomorrow " conference earlier this week. He talked a bit about gentrification in Harlem and "that eternal argument: Is this good for Harlem or bad for Harlem?" NY Times photo He said: "The big picture is: Everything that's happening now in Harlem, everything that's being built in Harlem is with someone like me in mind , preferably 30 years younger than me. The born-heres? They're looking around and seeing new restaurants, and high rises going up, and new trees planted, and they know it's not for them. It's like: You're in the way..." "It's like white people discovered Harlem like Europeans discovered America, and the Indians are going, 'Really? What are we standing on, cream cheese?' ... So whatever's exciting and new is a little bit of a death knell." He talked about the recent closure of Pathmark and the opening of Whole Foods o...

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...

The Trowel & Square Ballroom on Harlem's 125th Street had a great old sign. The typeface. The word "ballroom." And "social functions." Good stuff. Anyway, it's gone. The letters have been ripped down and the sign has been covered with a Ripco real estate banner. The Salvation Army thrift store on the first floor has also vanished. The entire building is available. It sold in 2014 . Located in the Croft Brothers Building, the Trowel & Square used to be the Tusken Ballroom, "used at least once as a meeting place by Malcolm X and his recently-formed Muslim Mosque, on June 22, 1964," according to Daytonian in Manhattan . And next for this space? Probably another chain, as the whole of 125th Street is being wrapped in chains .

Recently, I took a walk by the once glorious Lenox Lounge . After three years, the building is still sitting empty -- and up for rent. What happened to all those grand plans to take over this piece of Harlem history? After 73 years in business, the club served its last drinks on New Year's Eve, December 31, 2012. The landlord had doubled the rent, from $10,000 to $20,000 per month, essentially forcing owner Alvin Reed out of business. Richie Notar, of luxury restaurant chain Nobu, was taking over the spot. At the time, many suspected this was another--call it a history grab, like the takeover of Rocco Ristorante , Bill's Gay 90s , Minetta Tavern , and countless other historic dining and drinking establishments. Deep-pocketed new owners with mini restaurant empires like to cash in on the cachet that comes with the classics--after they turn them upscale, of course. Instead of letting the newcomers profit on Harlem history, so infused in the club's aesthetic, Alvin ...

The Pathmark supermarket on East Harlem's 125th Street closed this weekend amid controversy , more controversy , and the despair of 30,000 customers who have few places left to buy groceries. After the Pathmark opened in 1999, a number of small grocers shut down, leaving residents dependent on the big supermarket. The Times reported that the grocery store's intended role would be to increase development : "the Pathmark's popularity is having a big impact on the neighborhood. Not only has it altered the fortunes of the unsightly intersection where it is located, it is also helping to spur development across 125th Street." At the time, Karen A. Phillips, chief executive of the Abyssinian Development Corporation, who put in the store, said the supermarket had "done what it was supposed to do -- inspire new commercial development" through the heart of Harlem. Then, last year, Abyssinian sold the Pathmark site to mega-developer Extell for nearly ...

Up along the Hudson River Greenway, somewhere around Harlem, if you're going on foot or by bicycle and you're paying attention, you'll find some odd pieces of art. Gathered from the detritus that washes up from the Hudson, they don't seem to be commissioned and have no sense of permanence. They're built from driftwood, sticks, chunks of rope and floating bits, Styrofoam and lengths of corrugated tubing. I wonder who made them and why. I wonder how long they'll last before they're washed and blown away, and if their creator will make something new in their place once they're gone. A man named Tom Loback used to make them. He said there were other artists, too. From the Times : "Mr. Loback said he does not have his open-air gallery to himself, noting that there are other artists who make something out of logs and tree branches gathered along the riverbank. He calls them El Ropo and Doodad because one’s signature element is rope bi...

Harlem's M&G Diner shuttered back in 2008 when the beloved soul food restaurant went on vacation and never returned. It had been around for maybe 40 years. Most of the antique signage was removed and the spectacular facade was made miserably dull. Now reader Christina Wilkinson sends in a shot of the new business in the space. It's called Capsule . They sell men's "streetwear," brands like G-Star, Billionaire Boys Club, Ralph Lauren. Christina Wilkinson Photographers James and Karla Murray took before-and-after photos of M&G awhile back. James and Karla Murray : Click photo to enlarge In the older shot, the façade is resplendent, its red awning announcing SOUL FOOD in a typeface slightly serifed, while above, neon signs fringed in lights deliriously announce “Southern fried chicken” that promises to be “old fashion’ BUT Good!” (The letter “i” is dotted with a star.) Is the “BUT” meant to mean “nonetheless,” to say that while the chicken is ...

Last week, the Columbia Spectator published an op-ed entitled "Is Columbia really destroying Harlem’s authenticity?" Written by first-year student Cristian Zaharia, it supports the school's expansion into Harlem, which was made possible via eminent domain . Zaharia argues that Harlem's authentic culture is not African-American, but one of ever-changing cultures dating back to the Dutch, and that the expansion "will be the start of a new, fresh era for the neighborhood." On his Facebook page , Harlem historian and activist Michael Henry Adams wrote a reasoned and impassioned response. It is reproduced here in full, with his permission: Adams arrested while protesting the demolition of Harlem's Renaissance Ballroom and Casino, photo by Antwan Minter Harlem has numerous lovely old buildings reflecting varied cultures, even former synagogues. But throughout history, nothing about Harlem has made it renown, world-wide, apart from black people. One ma...

Hyper-gentrification --the jet-fueled process in which city government and corporations collude to displace the existing culture and population of New York and replace it with something shinier, wealthier, and homogenized for your safety--is often used by real estate agents to rebrand and sell "newly discovered" neighborhoods. Sometimes, the sell can be unabashed in its revanchist rhetoric. A reader sent in a newsletter from one real estate agent working to sell Harlem. I'll let the text speak for itself. - "New Yorkers are always debating which hood is the hottest. Is Bushwick the next Williamsburg? NoHo the next Tribeca? It’s Harlem: buy now and you will thank me." - " Harlem is getting a tech-led makeover , thanks to a new series of economic development initiatives aimed at combating the neighborhood's infamous high unemployment rates and widespread poverty." - "Blue-collar retirees are watching their neighborhood, once crime-infe...

After the closing and stripping of the famed Lenox Lounge on New Year's Day , this press release just came in from the publicist representing the club: LENOX LOUNGE…THE FAT LADY NEVER SANG Despite numerous reports to the contrary, the Lenox Lounge brand will continue without skipping a beat. Tyreta Foster, Esq. and Angélica Thomas, Esq. of Foster Lynch & Thomas, LLC negotiated in earnest throughout the 2012 Holiday Season with Eric Feinberg, Esq. to ensure that Lenox Lounge and its famed Art Deco sign would once again light up the heart of Lenox Avenue. Alvin Reed, the owner of the lounge, finally inked the deal for the new location at 333 Lenox Avenue on New Year’s Eve. “Just as I restored Lenox Lounge in 2000, I am determined to expand the brand just 2 blocks away,” said Reed. Reed’s latest endeavor will feature 2 floors with an option of a third. “Of course the famed Zebra Room will get a second act,” Reed continued. “Lenox Lounge has always been a spot where e...

The Lenox Lounge closed on New Year's Eve after 73 years in Harlem. The landlord doubled the rent on its current owner Alvin Reed, from $10,000 to $20,000 per month, essentially forcing him out of business after 24 years of stewardship. On New Year's Day, these heartbreaking photos appeared on Twitter and Instagram. Already the gorgeous chrome neon letters are gone and the door has been plywooded and padlocked. The historically detailed facade has been ripped off , leaving only the underbelly of weathered wood. It is painful to look at. Photo: Nobodies of Note 1/1/13 The interior gutting has begun. The long wooden bar has been ripped out. Photo: Hosea Johnson Was this done by Alvin Reed or the new owners? Black Enterprise reported last month, "When Reed leaves he’ll be taking the iconic Lenox Lounge neon sign with him." Said Reed, “If they want to use Lenox Lounge, they will have to negotiate with me. I brought it back and I want to see it stay the...