A Peep at Greenwich Village

From Dave Brigham:

Near the end of August I drove to New York City with my daughter and one of her friends. They wanted to check out New York University during the day, and go to a concert at night. While they did a self-guided audio tour of the NYU campus near Washington Square Park, I tagged along with my camera. After the tour, we got lunch and then walked around a bit more.

Here's some of what I saw.

I was quite charmed by these buildings on MacDougal Street, which is one of the most well-known addressess in Greenwich Village. On the right is #177, which was built in 1834; I'm assuming the building on the left rose around the same time. They abut 181 MacDougal Street, a 16-unit, full-service condominium that was under construction. That building was designed by Morris Adjmi Architects.

MacDougal Street is where Eleanor Roosevelt moved after the death of her husband, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In the middle of last century, its cafes attracted artists such as Jackson Pollock, Beat Generation writers Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, author James Baldwin and musicans including Bob Dylan, according to this article from Untapped New York and this one from Grandlife.

I will cover more of the street's highlights below.

I learned the name of this street during my college years, when I heard Dan Green's 1968 psychedelic song, "MacDougal Street Freak Out," on the radio:

At 126 East 13th Street, I stopped to admire one of the windows, and noticed a plaque mentioning Frank Stella.

The name rang a bell, although I had no clue why. Stella, who died earlier this year at age 87, was an influential and well-known artist known for his minimalist works. "Stella’s works are held in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Kunstmuseum Basel, the Art Institute of Chicago, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and the Tate Gallery in London, among others," according to this Artnet profile.

Stella, who in 2009 was awarded the National Medal of Arts by President Barack Obama, lived and worked in New York City for decades. The Beaux Arts building on East 13th Street, of which I wish I'd taken more photos, dates to 1904 and is "one of the last remaining buildings in New York City built to stage horse auctions," according to this Curbed New York article.

A short distance away, I walked past a place with a dark, yet heroic, history.

I didn't make images of the plaques on the exterior wall listing the 12 members of this firehouse who died on 9/11. I wanted to stop for a moment to reflect, but my daughter and her friend were walking well ahead of me and I didn't want to lag too far behind. This is the station for Ladder Company 3 on East 13th Street. During the horrible terrorist attacks in 2001, the company reported to the North Tower of the World Trade Center. "As the time of the attacks coincided with the morning tour change, both tours remained on duty, and the company arrived at the World Trade Center carrying more men than usual," according to Wikipedia. "Captain Patrick J. Brown and his men were last known to be on the 35th floor of the tower before the North Tower collapsed. Ladder Company 3 received some of the heaviest casualties of any fire company in the FDNY."

Heavy stuff.

At the intersection of East 13th Street and Broadway stands a knockout of a building.

Built in 1893-94, the Roosevelt Building stands out for its architecture, its engineering, its history and its connection to a storied-and-moneyed New York family.

"Prominently situated on the northwest corner of Broadway and East 13th Street, the Roosevelt Building is an outstanding example of the high-rise commercial development that occurred south of Union Square during the late-19th century using innovative new technology such as elevators, electricity, and metal framing," according to a New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission designation report from 2019.

"The striking transitional Romanesque Revival/Renaissance Revival-style, iron- and steel-frame building has a tripartite configuration that includes a two-story rusticated stone base with upper sections clad in Roman brick and elaborate terracotta ornamentation," the report continues. "A column topped with a copper cupola anchors the building’s southeast corner....Detailed examination of the building reveals layers of intertwining and overlapping terra cotta ornamentation clustered primarily on the pilaster capitals and in undulate bands along the intermediate cornices that project above the second, sixth, and eighth stories on both designed facades. Though much of the ornamentation is classically-inspired in form, it is enhanced with a multitude of references to ancient mythology – lions, humans wearing lion heads, dragon-like monsters, gods, and half-beings with the body of a beast or human and tails of a sea creature – set within a backdrop of wild, swirling foliage."

Damn - I want to hang off the side of this building on a window-washing scaffold!

As you may have guessed by the building's name, it was developed by the well-to-do Roosevelt clan, which at the time included two uncles of future president Teddy Roosevelt. "Architect Stephen D. Hatch designed the eight-story Roosevelt Building...for James A. Roosevelt and Robert Barnwell Roosevelt, who, together with other members of the Roosevelt family, formed the Broadway Improvement Company to oversee their real estate ventures. [They were] [h]eirs of the wealthy merchant Cornelius V.S. Roosevelt. CVS Roosevelt, as he was known, worked with his father as a hardware importer, and inherited a large sum upon the elder man's death in 1840.

In addition to garment-related businesses, the Roosevelt Building was home in its early years to the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company, which was later renamed the Biograph Company, according to the report. "It was the first company in the United States devoted entirely to film production and exhibition, and for two decades was one of the most prolific, releasing over 3000 short films and 12 feature films," according to Wikipedia. "During the height of silent film as a medium, Biograph was the most prominent U.S. film studio and one of the most respected and influential studios worldwide, only rivaled by Germany's UFA, Sweden's Svensk Filmindustri and France's Pathé. The company was home to pioneering director D. W. Griffith and such actors as Mary Pickford, Lillian Gish, and Lionel Barrymore."

OK, moving on. Along West 8th Street, amid all of the lovely late-19th and early-20th century homes and chic boutiques and restaurants, there is a bit of smut.

The Hustler Hollywood store sells lingerie, sex toys, party gifts and more. The chain operates dozens of outlets in cities ranging from Albuquerque to West Palm Beach.

At 414 6th Avenue, there is an apothecary that's been in business for 186 years.

C.O. Bigelow claims to be the oldest such store in America. And who am I to disagree?! When I saw the old painted sign for the store (seen below), I figured it was a ghost sign for a long-out-of-business store. But no.

"Vermont Physician Dr. Galen Hunter founded C.O. Bigelow, originally called The Village Apothecary Shoppe, located a few steps away from our current location at 102 Sixth Avenue," according to the shop's web site. "Part of our unique legacy has been the passing of ownership from employer to employee," the site continues. "Clarence Otis Bigelow, who worked alongside Dr. Hunter for years, purchased the store and renamed it C.O. Bigelow."

The store's soda fountain, which served famous people including the New York Dolls, John Belushi and the rest of the SNL cast, former mayor Ed Koch, filmmaker John Waters and lawyer William Kunstler, was shuttered in 1984.

The Ginsberg family, which acquired the apothecary in 1939, maintains ownership.

Nearby, at the corner of Greenwich Avenue and West 10th Street, we had a fantastic lunch at Rosemary's, an Italian restaurant that opened in 2012. It is the low, white building in the photo below.

After we ate, I spied another ghost sign along 6th Avenue, but my daughter and her friend were heading the opposite direction, so I made a long-distance shot.

The sign advertised a real estate company at 450 6th Avenue. The best part of the sign, which you unfortunately can't see here, is the old phone number: Algonquin 4-1817.

Heading south-southwest on 6th Avenue, I saw a nice old "time and temp" sign.

I'm guessing this was originally on a bank. I'm not sure whether this space is currently occupied.

I liked the look of the building on 6th Avenue housing Village Bazaar, which offers (offered?) tattoos, piercings and smoking accessories.

On Bleecker Street, surrounded by Winston Churchill Square, Downing Street Playground and Father Demo Square, is an outlet of Molly's Cupcakes. I couldn't resist the contrast (although I would've preferred a cupcake).

At 251 Bleecker Street I saw a great decorative panel that unfortunately has been lightly defaced.

Bert Waggott was "a long-time Greenwich Village resident, graphic designer and professor of graphic design at Pratt Institute," according to this article of appreciation after his passing in July 2015. He was passionate about working on the aforementioned Winston Churchill Square garden.

As for the Federal-style building where Waggott plied his trade, it was built in 1829 (!) and altered in 1927 and again in 1931, according to this Greenwich Village Historic District Extension II Designation Report from 2010.

We eventually wound up back on MacDougal Street, where I spied some nice signs.

In the foreground is Off the Wagon, which calls itself the "busiest, most popular bar in Greenwich Village." Next is Artichoke Basille's Pizza, which opened in 2008; and last, and unfortunately most difficult to see, is Minetta Tavern, which is a new incarnation of a joint that opened in 1937 and was "frequented by various layabouts and hangers-on including Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound, Eugene O'Neill, E. E. Cummings, Dylan Thomas, and Joe Gould, as well as by various writers, poets, and pugilists," per it web site. Honestly, I walked right past this place without even noticing it.

Last but not least is Cafe Wha? This place seemed like a place I should know, although I didn't know why.

A storied club with a chopped-up history, Cafe Wha? was opened in 1959 by Manny Roth, uncle of Van Halen singer David Lee Roth. The building at the corner of Minetta Lane was "a garage that used to be an old horse stable," per the club's web site. "You had to down steep stairs to reach the dark basement, which was bisected by a trough once used as a gutter for horse dung."

Between its opening and closure in 1968, the club hosted folk icon Bob Dylan, a young and unproven Bruce Springsteen, guitar god Jimi Hendrix, and comedians including Woody Allen, Lenny Bruce and Joan Rivers. From 1968 until 1987, the club was owned by Menachem "Manny" Dworman, who ran the place as Cafe Feenjon, per Wikipedia. "In 1987, the club was taken over by [Manny's son] Noam, who changed the room back to a rock music format, and changed the name back to Cafe Wha?

So, it turns out, a little more than a week ago, my daughter was accepted to NYU. I look forward to exploring more of Greenwich Village!

I have written about New York City before. Below are links to those posts:

February 19, 2022, "New York City Flashback: Views from a Tour Bus"

February 12, 2022, "New York City Flashback: Views from the High Line"

February 5, 2022, "New York City Flashback: Views While Strolling and Shopping"

January 29, 2022, "New York City Flashback: The Transit Museum"