Chinatown

Recent sketches from Chinatown.

Sands Street Gate

I've been accepted as a visiting artist at The Brooklyn Navy Yard. I figured a good introductory piece would be of the Sands Street entry gates, at the Western boundary of the Navy Yard.

The Brooklyn Navy Yard was established by the Federal government in 1801, and built ships for the U.S. Naval Fleet until 1966. At the height of World War II, it employed over 70,000 workers. Today, it still has working dry docks, but the bulk of it is devoted to various commercial and maufacturing businesses, and is in the midst of dramatic growth and expansion. One of the goals of my residency is to get down as much of the older remnants of the Yard as I can.

These gates were built in 1896. Old photographs show that there were originally a pair of eagles flanking the entrance, and additional faux-medieval turrets to the rear. The  buildings were modified, added to, and eventually subtracted from over the years. A 1937 photo shows a large addition which housed the Labor Board, and shows the walls and turrets covered in ivy.  At some point, the turrets had been removed and the entire structure encased in a plywood shell, as it became the main entry to the NYPD tow yard.

ca 1904. via Brooklyn Navy Yard Archives

1937. Brooklyn Navy Yard Archives

ca 2009, via Brownstoner

The gatehouses were restored to a semblance of their original state by the Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corporation in 2015. The Gatehouse on the right now houses a coffee shop-by-day/whiskey tasting room-by-night run by Kings County Distillery, which is located in the Yard.

Clark Street Shoe Shine

This shoeshine station is outside a shoe/watch/jewelry repair shop in the entrance to the Clark Street Station of the 2/3 line in Brooklyn Heights. I've never seen anyone actually shining shoes there, but I don't frequent that station very often, so maybe I've just missed them. That repairman - who's called "The Shoemaster" - looks like he's been there a long while.

Pratt Draw-A-Thon 2018

Last week, I went to the Pratt Draw-A-Thon, a 24-hour drawing marathon with 18 models hosted by the Pratt Art Institute. I only stayed for about four hours, but that was long enough to produce a bunch of drawings.

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: Lee Brothers' Auto

Every once in awhile, I get off at the Carroll Gardens stop at Smith and 3rd St. and this building catches my eye, especially when the afternoon sun is cutting across it, casting these dramatic shadows. Every time I made a mental note to draw it someday. A few weeks ago, I happened across this post saying that the property would be demolished and replaced with a residential development, so it instantly became one of my "Before It's Gone" projects.

The building is kind of an eyesore, but sometimes eyesores are more interesting to me, visually. In addition to the shadows created by the auto shop's deep overhang, I'm also intrigued by the decaying Mediterranean-style roof and façade on the left. I love these bits of leftover archictecture. I think of it as a type of architectural palimpsest, "something reused or altered but still bearing visible traces of its earlier form," a phrase derived from old manusctipts in "which the original writing has been effaced to make room for later writing but of which traces remain."

In this case, that part of the building is the century-old remnants of the Court Theatre, a movie house which operated from 1922 to 1941. I think that Spanish-esque tiled roof is part of the Hispanophile trend in architecture of the late 1920s, where buildings were given faux-European characteristics to lend them a sense of elegance and sophistication. I wrote about this before in my post on the Seville Studios.

As the photo below shows, the original theater, which had 560 seats, was more than double the current length. At some point, it was cut in half, perhaps for the construction of 3rd Street, which now runs where that billboard was. Why the whole building wasn't demolished, I have no idea. Surely it would have been easier than demolishing half of it, and gutting the other half to turn a theater into a garage? And yet no one bothered to removed that little piece of decorative roof. Here's another old photo of the theater.

1932 photo by Percy Loomis Sperr. NY Public Library

In 1942, it was turned into a gas station called Pep Service Station, and in 1992 it was purchased by the Lee Brothers, who operated it until recently. Apparently, there has been talk of the brothers closing their shop for years, but now it's definitely happening. It will be replaced by a four story residential building.


Sources:
https://pardonmeforasking.blogspot.com/2018/01/after-years-of-planning-its-official.html

https://pardonmeforasking.blogspot.com/2014/11/it-was-bound-to-happen-lee-brothers.html

https://www.brownstoner.com/architecture/brooklyn-architecture-375-smith-street-court-theater-carroll-gardens/

http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/22021

Smith Union Market

This little corner store in Carroll Gardens caught my eye last week. It was shuttered in the middle of the day, so I was unsure if it was still open for business. I looked it up later, expecting to find the same old story about a small business being priced out by skyrocketing rent, or a business owner who'd reached retirement age without a successor. What I found out was quite different and unexpected!

The store is owned by Vinny Taliercio. It opened in 1945, one of three meat markets owned by his grandfather, Placido Scopelliti. His daughter, Marie, married Vincent Taliercio, who took over the meat market and diversified it into a general store. After Vincent's death in 1986, son Vinny joined his mother and two brothers in running the store. Vinny, now 65, is the only surviving sibling, and their children did not join the business.

I didn't get to see the inside, but a New York Times article describes it like this: "Take all the random stuff out of that dresser drawer where it tends to land, and all that stuff's distant cousins in the kitchen drawer, and the exotic little screws and bolts from the untouched corners of the toolbox. Put them all on shelves in a dark little room, add coolers stocked with beer, and declare everything for sale. That's pretty much the business model at the Smith Union Market in Brooklyn." It's a local landmark, an institution in the neighborhood, and a meeting place for local elders.

So why the shuttered doors? Well, in February, Mr. Taliercio was arrested in a sweep of Genovese Organized Crime Family. He's alleged to have acted as a middleman for a mafia gambling network. Reportedly, he was caught on police wiretaps arranging bets between the mafia and bettors, including celebrities including Charlie Sheen, Tony Danza, Paul Sorvino, James Caan, Larry David, and James L Brooks.

Mr. Taliercio made bail and has been back at the store, but I guess he has some matters to take care of. He, of course, denies the allegations. "I work 98 hours a week, seven days a week," he says. "No mobster works those hours."


Sources:

Behind Old Doors: Smith Union Market

NY Times: Corner Store Owner Denies Family Ties: All Five Families

https://www.casino.org/news/charlie-sheen-james-caan-hollywood-celebs-caught-up-in-mafia-gambling-sting