M Schames Sign

I sketched this distinctive storefront some years ago. The business relocated many years ago, but its sign remained. I just heard that the building is being demolished, but the cool news is that the sign was saved by the New York Sign Museum.

R.I.P. Stomp

Today is the last performance of Stomp. If you're not familiar with it, it's a wordless stage show of a group of performers creating music and choreography entirely acoustically, using found objects and industrial materials like garbage can lids, brooms, radiator hoses, and the like. It's been at this same location for 29 years, performing 11,472 times.

I've never seen the show, but it's still a landmark of the Lower East Side. I've walked past its distinctive marquee a million times. I did this drawing as part of Save Our Stages series. Stomp was able to re-open after pandemic restrictions were lifted, but the international tourists who made up a large part of its audience have not returned, at least to this venue. The building has a long, long history, stretching back to the early 20th century as part of the Yiddish Theater, and later home to the original Little Shop of Horrors, John Leguizamo's Mambo Mouth, and Eric Bogosian's Sex, Drugs, and Rock and Roll. Hopefully, that tradition continues.

EV Grieve: Bang Gone: Stomp's Long Run On 2nd Avenue Concludes

Before It's Gone: The Elizabeth Street Garden

Somehow, I'd never been to the Elizabeth Street Garden in 20+ years of living in New York City, despite having spent plenty of time in the Lower East Side. At least, I don't remember ever going there, and it's a memorable place. But when I heard it was in imminent danger of succumbing to yet another development plan, I made a point of visiting to check it out for my "Before It's Gone" series.

In 1990, an antiques dealer named Allan Reiver leased an abandoned city-owned lot next to his gallery/store to serve as overflow storage for his stock. He kept antique busts and oversize sculptures on it, and eventually began to plant perennials, grass, and trees. People started to come through the store to hang out in the green space, and eventually, in 2013, he added a public entrance to the garden. Besides being a green space, in recent years it has become a community space, hosting yoga classes, concerts, movie nights, readings, and the like.

A few years ago, the city announced plans to turn the lot over to a developer who would build housing units. The pitch is that it would be very affordable housing for senior citizens. They also promise that units will be set aside for the homeless, and that it will be a green eco-friendly building, and LGBTQ-friendly. A lot of promises. And apparently this lot is the only site anywhere in the city that this can be built. Last month, the city served the garden with an eviction notice. Some neighborhood locals, including the late Allan Reiver's son, Joseph, are attempting to fight it in court, but I imagine  that will go the way it usually does. 

As to the question of whether this place is worth saving, I was a bit agnostic, and still am. After visiting this garden, it really did strike me as a special spot, especially in this area of the city, which is really lacking green spaces. It helped that it was a particularly beautiful, unseasonably warm Autumn day when I went. The garden was full of people of all types, enjoying the day and chilling in this peaceful, beautiful spot. What makes it especially attractive is that it has such a quirky, individual, organic character, as opposed to all the generic, cookie cutter plazas that get plopped down by planners.

On the other hand, truly affordable housing really is very, very needed. I'm a bit skeptical of all the promises this developer is making, but it sounds really great on paper. At least it's not just another luxury condo or overpriced retail space. Also, there's a lot of anti-development sentiment that seems to me borders on fetishization. Some people want to preserve every single building, every site, every inch of the city, no matter what, just on some principle. 

Recently, I've been reading a book called Lost New York, and it's striking in how many things have existed in this city which were, in their time, considered iconic and irreplaceable. Much more so than this garden, and with a lot more history . . . it occurred to me that perhaps the reason I wasn't familiar with this garden is because actually it's only been open to the public for less than a decade. So, that puts it into some perspective. It will still be a sad day when this gets bulldozed - I wish the garden's defenders luck, but I don't think they have a chance. So go check it out while you can.

Save Our Stages Part 2

More performance space during the pandemic. The exciting news is that I and this series will be featured on the Urban Sketchers YouTube Channel. It's goes live tomorrow, February 21, at 10 AM EST. I've heard from a lot of theater workers who are really responding to these pieces, and the interview series I've done (which will be in the next post.)

There are some small glimpses of hope on the horizon. The State of New York will be sponsoring these pop-up performance series, and the City of New York will be allowing permits for venues to have outdoor ticketed shows. The new administration has a series relief plan in the works, and of course, the vaccine is rolling out. It's still going to be a long, long road back for all these places.

Radio City Music Hall, home of the Rockettes, a 5960-seat music hall. Designed by Edward Durell Stone and Donald Deskey, it opened on December 27, 1932. It was designated a New York City Landmark in 1978.

The Orpheum Theatre is a 299-seat theater that has been in the Lower East Side since the early 20th-Century. By 1904, it was the Yiddish-language Player’s Theatre, part of the “Jewish Rialto'' along 2nd Ave. In the 1920s, it became a filmhouse, but was back to live performance by 1958. Among the shows that played here were the original Little Shop of Horrors, Eric Bogosian’s Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll, John Leguizamo’s Mambo Mouth, David Mamet’s Oleanna, and Sandra Bernhard’s Without You I’m Nothing. It has been home to Stomp since 1994, having performed over 10,000 performances before the shutdown.

The Wild Project is the smallest venue in this series with just 89 seats. The building was originally a bottle factory. When I first came to New York, there were lots of little theaters like this, where small companies and independent artists could mount a production for not a lot of money. Over the years, they’ve dwindled due to economic pressures, and during the pandemic, even more have closed.

Queens Theatre, located in Flushing Meadows Corona Park. It is housed in a remnant of the 1964 World’s Fair, the former Theaterama, near the Unisphere. Behind it loom the Observation Towers and the Tent of Tomorrow. You might recognize those towers from the 1997 movie Men In Black, where they were revealed to be flying saucers in disguise. I used to do quite a bit of work out there.

HERE Arts Center was founded in 1993. I worked there for several years in the early 2000s.  I believe the building used to be a mattress factory. Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues debuted here. It presents dozens of shows each year: theater, dance, music, puppetry, and contemporary opera, and uncategorizable performance.

While on a cruise to Scotland in 1887, composer Walter and his wife Louise Damrosch asked steel magnate Andrew Carnegie to build a new home for music in NYC. Carnegie Hall opened on May 5, 1891, with Pyotr Ilych Tchaikovsky conducting his own music in his American debut. It quickly became one of the most prestigious venues for showcasing both classical and popular music. By the late 1950s it had fallen into disrepair and was slated for demolition. It was saved by a campaign led by violinist Issac Stern and other civic leaders. The building was purchased by the City of New York in 1960 and leased to the non-profit Carnegie Hall Corporation. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1962 and a NYC Historical Landmark in 1967. The building contains three halls, the largest of which is six stories tall with five levels of audience, seating 2,804. I just saw on the news today that for the first time in its history, Carnegie Hall has cancelled its entire season, at least until October of 2021.

Theater For The New City was founded in 1971 as an off-shoot of the Judson Poets Theatre. It was named after a speech by Mayor John Lindsay that envisioned a ‘new city’ for all. It is known for presenting radical political plays and community involvement. It moved to the former First Avenue Retail Market building in 1986. The building was built in 1938 by the Work Projects Administration as part of a project to replace informal pushcart markets. These markets were crowded, filthy, and plagued by corruption. Mayor LaGuardia pushed for reform of the markets, and used the WPA to build a series of permanent marketplaces, including the First Ave. Market, the Fulton Fish Market, the Bronx Terminal Market, and the Gansevoort Market. At the time that Theater For The New City occupied the building, it was being used as storage for the Sanitation Department.

Arlene’s Grocery is a bar and music venue in the Lower East Side. It opened 1995 in a building that had previously housed a Puerto Rican bodega and a butcher shop. The venue took its name from the bodega, the signage of which still remains. It became a main component of the local NYC music scene and an important incubator of unsigned rock bands, helping to further the careers of artists such as Lady Gaga, Jeff Buckley, Lana Del Rey, Arcade Fire, and The Strokes.

Richard Rodgers Theatre was built in 1925. It’s a 1321-seat Broadway house, named after the composer who, in partnership with Lorenzo Hart and Oscar Hammerstein, created dozens of musicals, including Oklahoma!, The Sound of Music, and many more. Guys and Dolls, Damn Yankees, How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, Chicago, and In The Heights are among the classic shows that premiered here. Hamilton was in the midst of its blockbuster run when Broadway was shuttered.

Guggenheim Bandshell in Damrosch Park, part of the Lincoln Center complex. Damrosch Park was named after a family of prominent musicians. It opened in 1969. In the summer it hosts Lincoln Center Out Of Doors and the outdoor dance party, Midsummer Night Swing. It used to be the site of the Big Apple Circus and Fashion Week.

Before It's Gone updates

New York City is in constant flux. Businesses come and go, buildings are torn down, renovated, constructed. A lot of my work has become creating a record of those transformations. At times I have deliberately set out to put down in my sketchbooks places that I know, or anticipate, will soon be gone, which I've filed under the tag "Before It's Gone." And as I travel through the city, I often notice that something I've drawn in the past has disappeared or changed. So here is an update on those posts.

This 1922 building was originally a movie theater, turned into a gas station, and finally an auto repair shop run by the Lee Brothers. They sold the property in 2018. When I passed by last week, it was surrounded by the plywood walls that indicate that demolition is imminent. It will be replaced by a four-story residential building.

The Sunshine Cinema was demolished a few weeks ago. A big, ugly glass tower will go up in its place.

Zoltar is gone, at least from this location. Gem Spa, the store where he was located, is struggling.  Last spring, it lost its tobacco and lottery license after an employee sold cigarettes to an underage customer, which cost them 80% of their income, and they are in debt and being sued for back rent. It doesn't sound hopeful for the Gem Spa, but the Zoltar machine survives. It was relocated to a pizza shop in Bushwick. I recently discovered another one at a crab shack in Red Hook.

13th St Rep, however, is still hanging in there. I found out today that it's featured in a new film,  Before You Know It, that used it as a main location.

Kensington Stables is also still there. I was pretty sure that this Brooklyn stable had reached the end of its rope, but it was purchased by a horse-loving businessman. It has been re-named Prospect Park Stables, its original name from 1917, and the new owner is restoring riding paths in the park and planning renovations and expansion. I'm a little skeptical of the plans to incorporate a "coffee and tea spot" to this building, but I'm very happy there's still a horse stable smack dab in the middle of Brooklyn.  

The old Kosciuszko Bridge was demolished, and a new second span just opened. The new bridges look cool, especially when they're lit up at night, but time will tell if traffic is actually any better.

The old signage on the S Beckenstein building is still extant.

For several years, I worked for a summer theater festival at The Wild Project on East 3rd St., across from the Miracle Garden. This bike and scooter were chained to the fence, in the exact same location, year after year. Until this summer! First, the wheels were stolen off the scooter, and then it disappeared. Then the bike was flagged for removal by the Sanitation Dept., and soon after it was gone.

This strange snail ride was replaced by a kangaroo, I think, and more recently by a horse. This past weekend, the horse ride was out of order, so maybe it will change again. There are other coin-operated rides on this block (every few weeks, by four-year old twins will do a circuit of all of them). They will periodically change from one animal or off-model cartoon character to another. I wonder if there is any sort of schedule or plan for rotating them in and out.

The Abandoned Loews Canal St Theatre

A while back, I was walking down the street on the Eastern-most stretch of Canal Street when this defunct television store caught my eye. Then I looked up at the rest of the building and said, "Whoa, what the heck is this place?"

This was originally the Loew's Canal Theater. Built in 1927, it was designed by Thomas W. Lamb, one of the country's most prominent theater architects, and, with 2,314 seats, was the second-largest movie theater in the city at the time. It was part of the empire of Marcus Loew, who made his fortune with a series of penny arcades and vaudeville houses and then movie theaters, and was a co-founder of MGM Studios. Loew died the year this theater opened. Despite its size and elegance, it primarily showed B movies and serials. In 1932, an explosion damaged the box office, while a simultaneous blast occurred at another Loew's theater. It was suspected to be the work of the striking Motion Picture Operators' Union Local 306, but nothing was proven.

It closed in the 1950s, and in the early 60s, the lobby was converted into a retail space and the theater used as a warehouse. The interior of the theater still remains, dilapidated and decaying. Incredible ruin porn photos can be seen here, here, here and here.

The appliance and repair shop was the last retail store, closing several years ago. There have been various plans to convert it into an arts center or residences, but nothing has come of those plans. You can sometimes see someone going into the building; maybe it's still being used for storage? The façade was designated a New York City Landmark in 2010. At the Landmarks Commission hearing, Thomas Sung, the current owner, said, "At some point in life we all must recognize, I guess, the value beyond a commercial purpose." If only more real estate developers would have this epiphany!


History and Photos of the Theater

After The Final Curtain - Loews Canal Theatre

Untapped Cities - Inside The Abdandoned Loews Canal Theater

Animal New York - Closer Look at Decaying Loews Canal Theatre

Curbed - Decaying Loews Canal Theater Makes For Incredible Ruin Porn

Gothamist - Inside the Abandoned Old Loews Theatre on Canal Street

Mapping Yiddish New York - Yiddish Empires - Marcus Loew and Loews Canal Street Theatre

Before It's Gone: Sunshine Cinema

This one is already kind of gone. The Sunshine Cinema had its last screening on January 21. The building is still standing, for now. It will be demolished in a few weeks, to be replaced by, you guessed it, a glass high-rise tower.

The building, at East Houston and Forsyth Street, was built in 1898. It was originally a Dutch Reformed Church. It later became a prize fight club called the Houston Athletic Club, and in 1909, it was purchased by Charles Steiner and Abraham Minsky for $96,000 (approximately $2 million in today's money). They turned it into the Houston Hippodrome, offering movies and Yiddish vaudeville, catering to the Lower East Side's large Jewish immigrant population. It was renovated and renamed Sunshine Theater in 1917. Eventually the theater went out of business, and the building was used as a warehouse for a family hardware store for decades. In the late 1990s, Tim Nye secured the lease and partnered with the Los Angeles-based movie chain Landmark Theaters to renovate the building. It opened with its old name, Sunshine Cinemas, in 2001.

The Sunshine became a fixture in NYC's cultural landscape, and was successful. But its rent was well below current market rate, and its lease was about to end, and so . . . The building was sold to East End Capital and K Property Group last year for $31.5 million. Despite its long history, it was turned down for landmark status because it had had too many alterations over the decades. And so, that was that for the Sunshine Cinema. It's a familiar story by now.

I don't wring my hands every single time an old building is torn down or a long-lived business goes out of business. To be honest,  I hadn't been to the Sunshine in many years. I think a lot of people fetishize old New York buildings and businesses without question. My friend Noah Diamond wrote a piece called 400 Years In Manhattan, and one passage has always stuck in my mind:

We're on our fourth Madison Square Garden, and there are plans for a fifth. We're on our second Yankee Stadium, and there are plans for a third. Of course, many are heartbroken at the thought that Yankee Stadium will be demolished, and it's easy to sympathize with them. But it's also easy to sympathize with those who were heartbroken in 1923, when the current stadium replaced the original one; to them, the Yankee Stadium we know and love is a soulless imposter. People were heartbroken in 1930 when the original Waldorf-Astoria Hotel on Thirty-Fourth and Fifth was demolished; they said that without that building, this just wouldn't be New York City anymore. But in its place, we built the Empire State Building. Did that make it more or less like New York City?

Noah makes a good point here. But. One thing that strikes me about much of the current development of the city is how plain and dull and uninspiring it really is. This is the building that will be constructed on the site of the Sunshine.

I can't imagine that if this torn down in 100 years, that people will mourn it. Will anyone have nostalgic sentiments for all these glass boxes? Will anyone argue for landmark status to preserve these things? Will a sense of history ever attach to these ubiquitous generic glass towers? Maybe they will. Maybe everyone will be like, "We're losing all our classic early-21st century minimlaist glass architecture!" But here's another thing: With the exception of its stint as a warehouse, this building had always been a place of communal activity; first as a church, then as a sporting club, then as an entertainment venue. Its replacement is just boring offices. Hard to imagine that an office building will find a place in people's hearts. But then again, the Empire State Building is just a very tall office building, so who can say?


Sources:
http://tenement-museum.blogspot.com/2011/06/meet-neighbors-landmarks-sunshine.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/21/nyregion/sunshine-movie-theater-closing.html

http://www.boweryboogie.com/2018/01/sunshine-cinema-will-close-good-january-21/

http://www.thelodownny.com/leslog/2018/01/heres-the-glassy-tower-set-to-replace-the-historic-sunshine-cinema.html

Miracle Garden

For the last several years, my summer gig has been working on a play festival for Clubbed Thumb theater. The venue is across the street from this community garden, the Miracle Garden, and last summer I spent my down time drawing it.

This lot was once occupied by a dilapidated, drug-infested building. In the 1983, it was torn down, and the local community was able to secure the lot for a garden. The initial plants all died due to bad soil, but they were able to resurrect it, hence the name "Miracle Garden." For more of the history of the garden, including a film interview with Penny Evans, one of the main forces behind it, visit their website here.

This was actually my third attempt at this view, drawn from the roof of the Wild Project across the street. I still wasn't 100% satisfied, but three tries was enough for me.

These have been there, unmoved, for at least two years. I think it's hilarious that someone used such a huge chain to secure these two rusted old bikes. They are a 1980s Challenger BMX scooter and Schwinn L'il Chik bike. I wonder if they've been there since the garden was built!

The garden is run completely by volunteers, so you never know when it will be open, but if it is, you can visit and hang out in this little oasis on East 3rd St. between Avenues A and B.

Zoltar

My first sketch of 2018. New York had two solid weeks of below-freezing temperatures, but it finally warmed up. Which was still in the 30's, but it felt downright balmy. Zoltar has been on my To-Draw list for a while.

This Zoltar Fortune Teller stands in front of Gem Spa at the corner of Second Ave. and St Mark's Place. Despite its name, the store has nothing to do with gems or spas. "Gem" supposedly is an anagram of Gladys, Etta, and Miriam, the wives of the store's previous owners. I don't know why it's called "Spa." It's a corner store/newsstand known for its egg creams, and was a counter-culture center for the Beats and then the hippies in the 50s and 60s.

Zoltar is probably most famous today from his appearance in the movie Big, but I was surprised to learn that there's been a long line of Zoltar (or Zoltan) machines. This is the last one in New York City. There used to be one at FAO Schwarz, and there was one at Coney Island that was destroyed by Superstorm Sandy. The store has been there since the 1920s, but Zoltar has only been there since 2012. He continually spouts those four phrases, beckoning the East Village passerby. I didn't spend the two dollars to get my fortune. From what I've read, Zoltar just spits out a ticket with a fortune cookie-type saying on it. People seem disappointed by this, but really, what were they expecting?