Before It's Gone: Papaya King

 

Another day, another vanishing NYC icon. Papaya King has sold hot dogs and tropical juices on the corner of 86th Street and 3rd Avenue since the 1940s. But last year, the lot where the restaurant sits was purchased by Extell Development for $21 million. While the eatery has not yet been evicted, demolition plans for the building have been filed. Extell is known for building high-rise luxury towers, such as the Central Park Tower, the tallest residential building in the world.

The business was founded in 1932 by Gus Poulos, a Greek immigrant (hmm, funny how many of these histories feature immigrants). Originally, Gus just sold tropical fruit drinks, which he'd developed a passion for while on vacation in Florida. However, the largely German population of the neighborhood didn't know what papayas or guava even were. As his son, Peter, explained in this interview, "People did not know what these juices were. So he had to spend a lot of time and money giving away these juices every day to the public - and literature, trying to educate them what papaya is, what this fruit was, that fruit was." Eventually, Poulos added something to the menu that Germans did know - frankfurters - and thus Papaya Dog was born. Its success spawned a number of similarly-named restaurants, such as Gray's Papaya and Papaya Dog.

The business was passed on to Peter Poulos, Gus' son, who sold it to another owner in the early 2000s. Now that the end of Papaya Dog is near, Poulos sounds sanguine about it. "It's too valuable of a corner to make it a one-story building. It's like everything else. Everything has to come to an end eventually."

Process Pix:

Virgin Islands Sketchbook

A couple of weeks ago, me and the family went on vacation to the St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands. I figured I wouldn't have much if any solo time for the long-term, labor intensive sketches I usually do, and I've been wanting to try something new anyway. So I bought a small, inexpensive sketchbook and a small watercolor kit. The book was 3.5x5.5 inches (8.9x14 cm), much smaller than my usual 9x12 sketchbook, and the color was all watercolor. All drawn so much faster and looser than I ever do. It's how most urban sketchers work, but it's pretty alien to me. I need a lot more practice and technique, but I liked how some of them came out.

Creque Alley is one of a series of narrow passageways near the shoreline in Charlotte Amalie, the main town of St Thomas. These warehouses once were notorious for housing pirates' loot; now they house restaurants and lots and lots of jewelry stores. It was also the namesake of a song by the Mamas and the Papas, (they added an 'e' in the title of  'Creeque Alley'). Supposedly they wrote the song while crashing with hippies in this alley, though the song doesn't mention the Virgin Islands at all.

The view from our hotel overlooked the bay where the cruise ships docked.

Magen's Beach is probably the most famous of the St. Thomas beaches, so it was the first one we hit. It was great, but actually not our favorite of the trip.

The observatory at Coral World Ocean Park. When you go downstairs, you're under the water and can view all the sealife swimming around.

It immediately reminded me of the Hall of Doom from the old Super-Friends cartoon.

We spent one day on neighboring St. John's Island and made a stop at the Annaberg Plantation, The remnants of this slave plantation are now part of the Virgin Islands National Park. This structure is the ruins of the windmill, standing 38 feet (11.5 m) high.

There is another, similar plantation windmill ruin that stands at the top of the Peace Hill trail.

This is not my favorite painting of the week, but it was my favorite beach, Secret Harbor.

Cold Milling Machine, new and old

This beast of a machine was parked in my neighborhood for several days. It's a Wirtgen Cold Milling Machine, used to remove concrete and asphalt, stripping down the road before it's repaved. I really enjoy drawing construction vehicles with really complicated bits and parts. Not sure how successful the background technique was.

I remembered drawing a similar machine some time back, and was able to dig it up. I drew this 11 years ago. I've improved over the decade, but have I improved that much?

Jacob Dangler Mansion

I heard about this mansion in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, that was about to be torn down. I found some free time to travel out there and draw it for my "Before It's Gone" collection. Scaffolding already surrounded the building, and reportedly the interior had already been gutted. It was a beautiful day for sketching. A passer-by saw me drawing and said, "Beautiful, right? It's about to come down!" 

It was the usual story of the property being bought by a developer who was going to build some ugly, expensive glass apartments on the lot. And, as usual, there was a group of people protesting and trying to get the Landmarks Commission to declare it an historic site and thus save it from demolition. The big twist is that this time it worked! In literally the last minutes of the commission meeting, days before demolition was to start, they voted to consider landmark status for this building. It's not a done deal that the building will be landmarked, or what becomes of it if it is, but there's a possibility that it'll be saved.

Jacob Dangler emigrated to the U.S. as a young man from Germany in the 1860s. He began working in the grocery business in Brooklyn, eventually opening his own meat and provisions shop on Myrtle Ave. in Williamsburg in 1880. He had become prominent in the field as well as the real estate business by the turn of the 20th century. He married Louise Dangler, who kept the books for his businesses, and they had three sons.

Theobald Engelhardt, a fellow German immigrant, was a prolific architect who had a heavy hand in determining the architectural look of Bushwick, Williamsburg, and Bedford Stuyvesant. He designed Dangler's factory and other properties, and then this mansion, located near Dangler's businesses. Built in 1897, it was designed in a striking French Gothic style and cost $50,000 to construct. The huge home measures 58' X 85' (17.6m X 26m), with over 12,000 square feet (1115 sq m) of floor space, and included a bowling alley in the basement. 

Dangler died in 1939, at the age of 87. He'd never retired, working until the end of his life. His son inherited the mansion, but put it on the market in 1940. In 1943, Willow Temple, a lodge of the Knights of Pythias, purchased the building, and in 1967, it was sold to the Oriental Grand Chapter of the Eastern Star, an African-American, female-oriented masonic organization. The interior rooms were expanded, and additions were built, for use by Masonic lodges and other organizations, and for local community gatherings and events like weddings, baby showers, dances, and the like.

Links

Brownstoner History of the Dangler Mansion

Inscope Arch

Inscope Arch, in the southern end of Central Park, near the zoo and the pond.

Central Park has an intricate system of bridges and arches that were designed to accommodate both pedestrian and equine traffic. These spans allow one form of traffic to pass over or under the other. Originally, there were 27 arches and bridges constructed between 1859 and 1866, with others added later. Each bridge and arch has a unique design, all designed by Calvert Vaux, some with assistance from Jacob Wrey Mould.

The Inscope Arch, built in 1873, is one of the newer bridges. It was built in response to a bottleneck of pedestrians and horseback and carriage drivers on the East Drive near the Pond. Vaux and Mould designed it in the then-popular Ruskinian Gothic style, facing the Tuscan arch with pink and gray granite. Built on swamp land, it is 12 feet (3.7 m) tall, 13 feet 7 inches (4.14 m) wide, and 34 feet (10 m) long. It was restored in the 1970s and then again in the early 2000s.

Process:

As usual, it was drawn on site in pencil, then inked with Pigma Micron pens, and then painted in layers, mostly with water soluble pencils and watercolor washes.

Kolstein & Son - 58th St.

 On display in the window of Samuel Kolstein & Son, the Manhattan showroom of a Long Island-based business that repairs and restores violins, violas, cellos and basses.

Samuel Kolstein was born to Russian-Jewish immigrant parents in the Lower East Side in 1915. He was accepted to Juilliard as a piano major, and chose bass as a second choice instrument. He came to become a renowned luthier and bowmaker, and established his first shop on 56th St and 6th Ave. in 1943.  His son, Barrie, joined the shop in 1971 and eventually succeeded his father, and in 2918 passed the business on to his mentee, Manny Alvarez, another immigrant son.

Happy Star Wars Day

My annual Star Wars drawing for Star Wars Day.