Colony Blighted

In 2012, Colony Music was forced out of business after 60 years in Times Square when the new owner of the Brill Building, Stonehenge Properties, quintupled the rent to a reported $5 million per month.

While Stonehenge imagined a glitzy big-box chain store moving in, reality so far has been another kind of bleak.

After the legendary record and music shop was gutted, it became one of those temporary Halloween stores. Then it became a temporary Christmas shop called “Christmas Treasures.”

From ADFeldman’s Instagram, h/t Pippin Parker

Now, reader Marion Rosenfeld reports, it’s a crummy NYC souvenir shop–that is already going out of business.

Marion Rosenfeld

Insatiable greed took away one of the city’s most historic businesses, a shop that should have been protected from a massive and devastating rent hike. As I said in my Daily News op-ed last month, the city must pass the Small Business Jobs Survival Act to create fair negotiations of commercial lease renewals, and we need a selective rent control program for our oldest and most valuable mom and pops.

Without a strong policy that supports small businesses against greedy landlords and developers, the whole city will be filled with more soulless crap, just another brand of urban blight.

DVD Depot

VANISHED

Thomas Rinaldi of NY Neon writes in to let us know that DVD Depot, an adult establishment on 8th Avenue and 45th Street, has closed. Its doors and windows have been stickered over with Thor Equities’ “Retail Space Available” signage.

Thomas Rinaldi

Last year, as Crain’s reported, Thor paid $12 million for the two-story building:

“The building’s sale is a sign of the area’s changing face from the seedy video shops and fast-food outlets of yesterday to Times Square’s newer breed of trendy tenants. The current tenant in the space is DVD Depot, which deals in adult films and has been there for more than a decade. It is on a month-to-month lease and not expected to remain at the site.”

Thor’s rendering

Thor’s rendering of what they’d like to see here is the usual dull storefront, ideal for a suburban shopping mall chain. In fact, Thor loves those chains–naming about a million of them as selling points in the listing for the space:

“Across the street from the newly renovated Milford Plaza Hotel, and neighboring popular retailers American Apparel, American Eagle Outfitters, Forever 21, MAC, Oakley, Levi’s, Sunglass Hut, and more, and nearby Shake Shack, Chipotle, Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts, Pinkberry, PieFace, Au Bon Pain, 5 Napkin Burger, Jamba Juice, as well as a multitude of restaurants well known in the Theater District, 725 Eighth Avenue is surrounded by only the most successful national and international retailers.”

The newly renovated Milford Plaza–also bought by Thor–now has a glassy shopping arcade on its first floor, called “ROW NYC.”

Maybe Thor’s Joe Sitt bought the building just because he didn’t want ROW NYC’s suburban tourist shoppers looking out at flashy, trashy DVD Depot from the racks at Aeropostale and Build-A-Bear Workshop.

Thomas Rinaldi

As for the Depot, it wasn’t a famous old-timer of 8th Avenue, but it held its ground and kept the avenue honest. And it got some good press.

Vice awarded the place three out of five chubbies, and Cruising Gays gave it a solid review: “Clean, newer, safe, attendants not too aggressive. Crowd: Very diverse, suits after work and regular guy types most of the time. Not too many trolls or hustlers.”

Century-Old Ghost Sign Revealed

With the demolition of the Mayfair building, we also lost the Pig ‘N Whistle Pub on West 47th Street (since 1969). Its whole little building has come down. With those bricks gone, a pristine ghost sign has been revealed on the side of Night Hotel.

Photographer Aylon Samson spotted the sign and sent in the above shot. While the top part is painted over, it clearly says: “ROOMS $1.00” and “WITH BATH $1.50.”

A little digging shows that the building that bears the sign was Hotel Longacre. Opened in 1904, it was a stag hotel. In its advertising, it boasted being “exclusively bachelor” and “absolutely fireproof,” with amenities like a library, billiard hall, and restaurant.

The prices are those posted on the sign.

1912 advertisement

On the hotel’s postcard from the year 1910 is the motto: “A Room and a Bath a Dollar and a half.”

Clearly, the ghost sign belongs to the hotel. The exact date of the sign is not so easy to determine. In the postcard image and other photos, we see that the Longacre had a small brick companion already by 1910. The townhouse was set back from the hotel, leaving an open strip of brick onto which a sign could be painted — but wasn’t yet.

The demolished Pig ‘N Whistle building came further forward than the townhouse. Its facade stood even with the hotel’s, thus covering the ghost sign that must have been painted sometime after the 1910 photo.

Either the townhouse was demolished and replaced, or it was added onto and expanded–in the outline on the hotel, you can see the lighter space where the original townhouse stood. When that happened, I can’t figure. But with the sign’s prices the same as advertised in 1910, I’m going to guess it’s about 100 years old.

It will soon be covered up by a glass monstrosity, buried once more, for another hundred years or longer. Enjoy it while it lasts.

*UPDATE: Aylon just sent in another shot, this one with the hotel’s name clearly spelled out, plus — LUNCH 40 cents and DINNER 65 cents:

Aylon Samson

Times Square to East Village: 1986

In the summer of 1986, downtown videographer Nelson Sullivan filmed a group of drag queens on a walk from Times Square to the East Village. At some point, they run into RuPaul. And a shirtless guy in velvet pants with a large boombox on his shoulder.

The streets, compared to today’s throng, are practically empty. Ice cream cones are had at the dearly missed Howard Johnson’s.

RuPaul drifts down Avenue A in angel wings made of shredded paper, making a crunching noise in boots made of plastic grocery bags.

These are not your fresh and clean drag queens of today.

Mayfair Billboard

Continuing the sad story of the destruction of the Mayfair building in Times Square, 701 7th Avenue, a look at the visual history of its big, wraparound corner billboard.

photo by Aylon Samson

Photographer Aylon Samson sent in the above photo of the building currently wrapped in a black demolition shroud, the last of its many costume changes through the decades.

NYPL, c. 1935

The building was originally home to the Columbia vaudeville house, then the Loews Mayfair.

The billboard has sort of always been there, framed in lights, heralding the big-screen movies inside. Like The Day the Earth Stood Still and a spectacular 3-D Jane Russell being chased by sharks in Underwater! That was the heyday of the 1950s.

c. 1951

c. 1954

(In some photos of the Mayfair, you get a glimpse of the Parisian Dance Land taxi dance hall–above Whelan’s, in the lower right corner, next to the RKO Palace. The dance hall was featured in Stanley Kubrick’s film Killer’s Kiss. Read about that place here.)

c. 1954

c. 1955

Later, the Loews Mayfair became the DeMille theater, and the giant billboards continued, like this one from Jack Lemmon’s Luv.

c. 1967, via Vintage Images

At some point, the movie theater was broken up into a triplex, called the Embassy 2-3-4, and stopped advertising on its own billboard.

Panasonic took over, looking rather dull, but with a useful note about the weather, and still keeping the old Mayfair shape.

photo: Matt Weber, 1984

In more recent years, it was covered with a clutter of Broadway billboards, instead of one big one, losing its distinctive look.

Once the building’s demolition became imminent, the billboard was covered with black-and-white portraits of tourists, topped with a giant eyeball. (Yes, that is an army of people doing yoga in the middle of Broadway.)

Last year, the billboard was completely stripped away, revealing the building beneath for the first time in nearly a century.

photo by Aylon Samson

After the building is reduced to rubble, a giant glass box will go up, and Times Square will get a monstrous, wraparound TV screen.

It’s no 3-D Jane Russell.

the digitized future

Previously:
Mayfair’s interior artifacts
Plans for the new building
Mayfair’s exterior artifacts
Toys, Souvenirs, Jokes

Tourists Juice the Ball Drop

Citibank bikes have been parked in Times Square and hooked up to 12-volt “deep cycle batteries.” Stationary riders (mostly tourists, one assumes) are pedaling like crazy to charge the batteries. The energy they produce will then be dumped into the city’s power grid to “offset the demands” of the Waterford crystal ball’s midnight drop.

“With the year’s biggest party being powered by Citi Bike pedals,” said Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan, “the world is in for an even more electrifying experience when the ball drops.”

After filling the city’s veins with Bloomberg Administration-approved tourist juice, riders can then go to the Times Square Applebee’s for a $375 New Year’s Eve “ton of food” dinner.

It seems a perfect send-off for Bloomberg’s last moments in office. I’ll be counting the seconds.

But I prefer this version of New Year’s Eve in Times Square.

Colony for Christmas

As if getting Halloweenied wasn’t humiliation enough, now the former site of Colony Music has been turned into a temporary Christmas store–with the treacly name “Christmas Treasures on Broadway.”

From ADFeldman’s Instagram, h/t Pippin Parker

I guess Stonehenge Properties is having trouble finding a big-box national shopping mall chain store willing to pay the $5 million per month that put Colony out after 60 years in business.

See more unnerving photos on their Yelp page:

Ray’s Beauty Vanishes

VANISHED

Just a month ago I did a post on Ray Beauty Supply, calling it “one of the last old-school businesses left on 8th Avenue off Times Square.” Now a commenter writes in, “went to ray’s over the weekend and it’s closed for good. no one knows if they are going to reopen somewhere else. It closed like 3 weeks ago.”

None of their phone numbers are picking up. I went by to find the gates down and a pink sign in the window saying: “Soon to be going under renovations.” But there’s also a marshal’s notice dated 10/22 posted on the door, stating that the landlord has taken possession of the premises.

I asked the owner of the Army/Navy store next door if he knew the story. He just said, “They’re gone.”

Ray’s had been in business for over 50 years. Their claim to fame was being “New York’s Oldest Beauty Supply.”

Previously:
Ray Beauty Supply

Mayfair Revealed

As reported back in March, the former Loews Mayfair building in Times Square is coming down, to be replaced by an $800 million hotel wrapped in a giant television screen. Vanishing with the building will be its many architectural artifacts, visible inside the souvenir shop that recently closed at the site.

All photos: Aylon Samson

Now, photographer Aylon Samson lets us know that the big billboards that have covered the face of the building for probably the past 20 years have been removed–revealing the lovely architectural details of Mayfair’s facade.

Long hidden, out come the faces of lions and ladies that have framed dusty windows in darkness for decades. These details date back to 1909, when the building was constructed and originally housed the Columbia burlesque and vaudeville theater.

In the late 1920s, the theater was sold and redesigned by architect Thomas W. Lamb, king of the movie palace. This must have been when the facade above the marquee was also made over — to include tall bamboo-like shoots forming green and orange glazed terracotta pilasters. In between them climbs a wild filigree of scallops and fruited bounties.

Here and there, in a repeating pattern, a man’s face and partial torso appears. Looking down, with a prominent aquiline nose, he looks like he’s meant to be a Native American. He’s shirtless, with a band of leather tied around his muscular bicep, and he’s holding what appears to be a bowl. Perhaps some sort of offering to the gods of Hollywood?

enlarged detail

Soon, all these wonderful faces and features will be destroyed. All that history and symbolism. Turned to ruin and dust. And for what? More of the same soulless shimmer we’ve come to expect in the new New York. Nothing that will last. Nothing that will stir the spirit. Just pixels on top of pixels on top of pixels.

Previously:
Loews Mayfair Building
See the building’s artifacts
Between 47th and 48th

Music Row

It’s been awhile since I took a walk on Music Row, that block of West 48th Street once known for its many shops full of instruments, sheet music, and men (mostly) who knew how to build and repair.

A year ago, the Post reported that, after 50 years here, and ever expanding, Sam Ash would be leaving the block and moving to 34th Street. This meant leaving several empty storefronts behind. Sam Ash held so much real estate here, including the more recently taken over Manny’s Music, their move effectively killed the block.

Walking on Music Row today is like walking through a ghost town. Sam Ash’s empty storefronts, once capped with red awnings, are empty, white-painted hollows, each covered by a roll-down gate–and they run for much of the block. It looks like urban blight.

Demolition has begun for an incoming condo building. A Dunkin Donuts is “Now Open” in what had been Rod Baltimore’s New York Woodwind & Brass Music shop.

today

before

Rod Baltimore had been doing business on the block for about 50 years. In an interview with WNYC just last year he said that “he’ll never retire” and “made sure the store on Music Row will outlive him. ‘If I do go to the happy hunting ground, so to speak, if I go up to heaven or if I go down, I don’t know where I’m going yet, the store goes to the employees, whoever’s working at the time,’ he said.”

I don’t know what happened to Mr. Baltimore and his store, why it’s now a Dunkin Donuts. Baltimore’s website and Facebook page has not been updated in quite some time.

In 2007, I interviewed his son, Jon Baltimore, in the family’s original shop on 48th Street. He was forced to close in 2009 and moved nearby to 46th.

So what’s left?

There are just two buildings on this block that still contain music shops. There’s one slender brick building for Rudy’s, and another for Alex Carozza’s accordion shop.

Inside Carozza’s, you can visit the Accordion Museum, a little showroom filled with beautiful antique accordions. Alex is a nice guy, and he’ll tell you about the accordions there, each one an intricate work of art.

Rudy’s has been here since 1978, and while I sometimes hear rumors of their closure, no one at the shop has ever confirmed it.

Music lover Jarrod Lynn is hoping to landmark the block. He started a Facebook page for it and tells me, “It’s one of those New York places that I was sure was sacred. The thought of it being destroyed is almost totally incomprehensible to me.”

But destruction is the block’s most likely future. New York really needs more luxury condos and chain stores.

Also read:
Talking with Jon Baltimore
Closure of Manny’s
Strip Street