Intelligencer

Ghosts of New York

A remembrance of things demolished.

By Alec Appelbaum
Published Dec 30, 2007

There’s collateral damage from New York’s construction boom. Making room for all those new buildings means tearing down many old ones. It’s a radical transformation of the cityscape: The Department of Buildings issued 3,653 demolition permits in 2006 and another 2,952 in 2007. Landmarked structures are protected, of course, but just because something’s not a landmark doesn’t mean its passing should go unnoticed. Here, some of the notable buildings lost in 2007.

(Photo: David Dunlap/The New York Times/Redux)

COLONIAL CLUB, Upper West Side
Built: 1892.
What it was: Designed by Henry Kilburn as a “Colonial palazzo,” the first social club in the nabe.
What it will be: A nineteen-story tower with 196 rental units and ground-floor retail.

(Photo: Erica Morasset)

AMERICAN RED CROSS BUILDING, Upper West Side
Built: 1963.
What it was: The charity’s regional HQ, designed by Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill, became a 9/11 destination as New Yorkers queued to give blood. The Red Cross sold it for $72 million in 2004.
What it will be: A 42-story rental tower by Handel Architects, who did the very tall and very glassy Trump Soho.

(Photo: Tracy Collins)

177–179 FLATBUSH AVENUE, Downtown Brooklyn
Built: Circa 1930s.
What it was: Originally a general store; lately, an auto-repair shop, a car-stereo repair shop, and the JRG Fashion Café. Bruce Ratner’s bulldozers demolished the buildings this year.
What it will be: The site for one of Frank Gehry’s controversial Atlantic Yards buildings, eventually.

(Photo: Dima Garvysh/AP)

THE PLAYPEN, Times Square
Built: 1916.
What it was: Designed by Eisendrath & Horwitz, the firm behind Beth Elohim synagogue in Park Slope, it was built as a vaudeville theater, morphed into a movie house, and later became a porn palace.
What it will be: A 22-story hotel and small adjacent apartment building at Eighth Avenue and 44th Street.

(Photo: Everett Bogue)

GERTEL’S BAKERY, Lower East Side
Built: Early 1900s.
What it was: A five-story, mid-1800s tenement was converted to the one-level bakery where, most recently, Latino teens sold kosher pastries and giant, shiny challahs to Hasidic Jews.
What it will be: The DOB calls the site a condominium. Gertel’s pastries, now made in Brooklyn, are still available around the corner at Flicker’s cafe.

(Photo: John Roleke)

HACKETT BUILDING, Long Island City
Built: 1885.
What it was: Queens’ City Hall until the city’s 1898 consolidation; Borough Hall until 1916. Most recently, it housed a coffee shop.
What it will be: An eight-story, 31-unit glass condo.