Tuesday, April 15, 2014
Income Tax E-File
A gentle reminder to get those taxes filed, and a teaser for a new post coming later this week. Stay tuned...
"Income Tax E-File," Duke Insurance Agency, 763 Leonard St., Greenpoint, Brooklyn
Tuesday, March 25, 2014
Before McHale's
The late great McHale's Bar and Grill, formerly at 46th and 8th, is known to some of us as a place we either went or (in my case) wish we'd gone to soak up the flavor of "old" New York. Big neon signs outside, timeworn ambience within, it had all the attributes that an old place can only get by being, well, old. Booted out in 2006, developers soon after bulldozed the brick building that housed it and threw up a 46-story luxury residential high-rise, modestly christened "Platinum 247."
Even though such establishments were already patently endangered by the time McHale's closed in 2006, something about its disappearance struck an especially resonant chord: lengthy eulogies ran in almost every paper and all over the blogosphere. The loss of its handsome neon, which I never managed to photograph, helped prompt me to write my book on New York's old neon signs.
But even though it seemed to have been there from time immemorial, McHale's had predecessors of its own. And as I learned while researching the neon book, McHale's neon was not the first to decorate the northeasterly corner of 46th and 8th.
Go raise a glass to McHale's neon, preserved and displayed at Emmett O'Lunney's Irish Bar at 50th and B'way. (T. Rinaldi)
And yet it is McHale's neon for which we remember this corner today. Grand as they were, the Fish-n-Chips signs lasted just a few years before McHale's (or the Gaity Cafe, as it was known in its first years) opened its doors around 1939. Food for reflection, then, on the utter unlikelihood of longterm survival for any sign or business in this dog-eat-dog town, and our admiration for those like McHale's that manage to defy the odds.
SPECIAL THANKS to Jim and Karla Murray for the McHale's before-and-after up top. See more heartwrenching then-and-nows from Jim and Karla at Jeremiah's Vanishing New York.
SEE ALSO:
• Eulogies for McHale's passing, at Flaming Pablum, the New York Times, and the Lost City blog.
• Afterlife for McHale's neon, at JVNY and at the Lost City blog.
IN OTHER NEON NEWS:
• By way of Jeremiah Moss and Bowery Boogie: the recently departed Famous Oyster Bar neon is slated for resurrection on the Lower East Side.
• Via Project Neon: RIP Kiosk Neon in SoHo, at least for now.
• Some So-Cal neon eye candy from Debra Jane, here and here.
• From the Lost City blog: good news for some of my favorite script neon in town (even though it's sheathed in Plexi) - Sarge's Deli in east Midtown is back!
McHale's Then-and-Now. (James and Karla Murray) See more of Jim and Karla's before-and-afters here.
Even though such establishments were already patently endangered by the time McHale's closed in 2006, something about its disappearance struck an especially resonant chord: lengthy eulogies ran in almost every paper and all over the blogosphere. The loss of its handsome neon, which I never managed to photograph, helped prompt me to write my book on New York's old neon signs.
But even though it seemed to have been there from time immemorial, McHale's had predecessors of its own. And as I learned while researching the neon book, McHale's neon was not the first to decorate the northeasterly corner of 46th and 8th.
McHale's neon predecessor at 46th and 8th shows up in business directories as the matter-of-factly named "Fish and Chips Corp." (Signs of the Times magazine, used with permission)
Behold, the long lost little corner eatery known succinctly as Fish-and-Chip Corp., here illustrated in a 1934 ad for Dongan neon sign transformers. Some pretty remarkable storefront neon, no? This was, after all, the real golden age of neon signage in New York, the period when sign makers went all out with some very clever, highly original designs. This particular signage was the work of the Artkraft Sign Co, before the merger that gave us the legendary Artkraft Strauss Sign Co. SPECIAL THANKS to Jim and Karla Murray for the McHale's before-and-after up top. See more heartwrenching then-and-nows from Jim and Karla at Jeremiah's Vanishing New York.
SEE ALSO:
• Eulogies for McHale's passing, at Flaming Pablum, the New York Times, and the Lost City blog.
• Afterlife for McHale's neon, at JVNY and at the Lost City blog.
IN OTHER NEON NEWS:
• By way of Jeremiah Moss and Bowery Boogie: the recently departed Famous Oyster Bar neon is slated for resurrection on the Lower East Side.
• Via Project Neon: RIP Kiosk Neon in SoHo, at least for now.
• Some So-Cal neon eye candy from Debra Jane, here and here.
• From the Lost City blog: good news for some of my favorite script neon in town (even though it's sheathed in Plexi) - Sarge's Deli in east Midtown is back!
Sunday, March 9, 2014
Flash Dancers
Some weeks ago, while stealing back toward the 8th Avenue subway from my farewell visit to the now-vanished Famous Oyster Bar, I happened upon another neon casualty in the streets above Times Square. Near the corner of Broadway and 52nd Street, FlashDancers, that veritable institution of bread-n-butter New York sleaze, has gone LED.
This doesn't exactly tell us anything we don't already know. FlashDancer's old neon was pretty mundane – not even a pale ghostly echo of the Pussycat Theatre, an extravaganza of neon smut that once stood just down the street. Yet if the new sign's icecold LED glare and ultraboring Arial letterforms are any indication of the state of neon or sleaze in New York today . . . Heaven help us.
• New York neon admiration from the Ephemeral New York Blog.
• A new project to document San Francisco's enviable assemblage of vintage neon.
• Similarly SanFran: a SF neon scavenger hunt.
• And still more Bay Area neon, courtesy of Debra Jane.
• From Jeremiah's Vanishing New York, a reminder that the Subway Inn is on borrowed time. Gather ye cheap beers while ye may.
• From Project Neon, a lovely homage to the newly-relit Long Island Restaurant neon in Brooklyn.
• Like it or not: North Jersey's great Marcal factory sign has been reborn, with LEDs.
• Shorpy brings us this historic detail view of a rare opalescent-neon hybrid sign.
IN OTHER NEON NEWS:
• Stay tuned for an announcement on my next New York neon walking tour!• New York neon admiration from the Ephemeral New York Blog.
• A new project to document San Francisco's enviable assemblage of vintage neon.
• Similarly SanFran: a SF neon scavenger hunt.
• And still more Bay Area neon, courtesy of Debra Jane.
• From Jeremiah's Vanishing New York, a reminder that the Subway Inn is on borrowed time. Gather ye cheap beers while ye may.
• From Project Neon, a lovely homage to the newly-relit Long Island Restaurant neon in Brooklyn.
• Like it or not: North Jersey's great Marcal factory sign has been reborn, with LEDs.
• Shorpy brings us this historic detail view of a rare opalescent-neon hybrid sign.
Sunday, February 23, 2014
Long Gone Neon, Part 1
Almost any time I need to track down an old photo of anything in New York, I go to the New York Public Library's incredible collection of historic photos gathered together under the rather ungainly collection heading of "Photographic Views of New York City, 1870s-1970s." The collection includes more than 54,000 photographs, four of which appear in the neon book. For many years viewable only on microfiche, today the photos can be found (and prints purchased) online, at the NYPL's digital gallery.
"Splended Lunch Bar" ~ 125th St., N. side, looking east from Madison to Park, Aug. 3, 1936, P.L. Sperr. Then and Now.
Among many other remarkable things, the photos record thousands of old neon signs long vanished from the city streets. The bulk of the collection dates to the 1930s, most of them taken by the (vastly underrated) photographer Percy Loomis Sperr (1890-1964), whom the library commissioned to "document the changing face of New York City, with a particular emphasis on new building construction, and on the structures torn down and replaced." As the photographs show, neon signs had spread like wildfire all across the city by the 1930s, defining the character of the midcentury New York.
Browsing these photos, the signs are impossible to miss. What follows is a random assortment of 1930s New York neon, spotted while browsing the collection. Not a single one of these remains today, as you'll see by clicking the Google StreetView links below the photos (the "Now" links below). Watch for the stylistic transition that played out in the mid-1930s, as sign shops abandoned stamped metal edge moldings and serifed letterforms in favor of a more streamlined aesthetic. The full, un-cropped photos can be viewed (and purchased) at the NYPL's digital gallery (follow the "Then" links below).
"Hyman Spitz Florist." (and "Miles Shoes," etc.) ~ Pitkin Ave., north side, looking east from Rockaway Ave. P.L. Sperr, May 8, 1936. Then and Now.
Dinner Jackets "To Hire" ~ Brooklyn: 5th Avenue, North from 6th Street, Brooklyn - P.L. Sperr, Nov. 5, 1941. Then and Now.
IN OTHER NEON NEWS:
• Just when you think you've seen it all: Junior's, the downtown Brooklyn institution, is selling its flagship location for redevelopment.
• Neon artist Chryssa has died. Among the first artists to begin working with neon, in the early 1960s.
• Did anyone check out Keith Sonnier's neon work at the Pace Gallery this month?
• At HuffPost, more neon art, from the UK.
• And still more neon art, closer to home: works by Iván Navarro at Madison Square Park.
• From NPR, some interesting perspective on the ongoing LED revolution in lighting.
Sunday, February 9, 2014
Famous Oyster Bar
There's not much to say about the self-proclaimed Famous Oyster Bar of midtown, except that its signs had been among my very favorite things to see in this neighborhood for a long, long time. No more: the place closed two Sundays ago after 55 years in business.
(T. Rinaldi)
The Famous Oyster Bar's fascia signs boasted particularly evocative midcentury letterforms; the swing sign was curious in that it seemed to have been re-lettered from a previous incarnation (its stylized silhouette didn't quite jive stylistically with the lettering, and abandoned electrode housings in the arced space above suggested that some tubing had been removed).
(T. Rinaldi)
In a sterile part of town that seems especially hostile to anything the least bit ephemeral, the very sight of these signs made me feel that I still lived in the city as I once imagined it, the New York of Jack Lemmon movies and Checker cabs, stale sandwiches at the Automat and graffiti-covered Redbirds flying underground by night.
(T. Rinaldi)
Much as I always admired its signage, I had never actually patronized the Famous Oyster Bar of West 54th Street. The owners had so heavily reworked its interior that I figured I might just as well enjoy this place for what I liked best about it, from outside. But when Jeremiah Moss broke the news that the Oyster Bar would breathe its last, with about 24 hours' notice, I decided I'd better get the hell up there.
(T. Rinaldi)
I don't much care for coming around such places in their final hours. I prefer to experience them on a normal day - just another guy in just another restaurant, as though there were a whole world of such places out beyond the threshold. For the Oyster Bar, I decided to come anyway - it was that or nothing. The staff there had been so friendly when I rang them up to ask about their signs for the neon book, I felt I obliged to check-in at least once.
(T. Rinaldi)
So Sunday night I went over and sidled up to the bar. I ordered a cocktail, then one more. I watched the Grammy awards get started on TV. The kitchen closed as I finished my drink. Closed for good, after 55 years. A little more of that old city of my imagination dissipated back into the spirit world from whence it came, away out there with Jack Lemmon and the Redbirds ... the banjo-strumming bohemians of Greenwich Village.
"Neon in daylight is a great pleasure" - Frank O'Hara. (T. Rinaldi)
The Famous Oyster Bar's fascia signs boasted particularly evocative midcentury letterforms; the swing sign was curious in that it seemed to have been re-lettered from a previous incarnation (its stylized silhouette didn't quite jive stylistically with the lettering, and abandoned electrode housings in the arced space above suggested that some tubing had been removed).
Much as I always admired its signage, I had never actually patronized the Famous Oyster Bar of West 54th Street. The owners had so heavily reworked its interior that I figured I might just as well enjoy this place for what I liked best about it, from outside. But when Jeremiah Moss broke the news that the Oyster Bar would breathe its last, with about 24 hours' notice, I decided I'd better get the hell up there.
(T. Rinaldi)
Tuesday, January 28, 2014
Penn Bar & Grill
A dormant Facebook "Community" page honors one of my favorite vanished signs: that of the Penn Bar & Grill, which formerly presided over the southeasterly corner of Eighth Ave and West 31st Street in Manhattan, just across from Penn Station.
The Penn Bar & Grill, 31st and 8th, January 1998. (Penn Bar & Grill's Facebook Community page, photographer unknown.)
Actually, the Facebook page pays homage not so much to the sign, but to the the bar it advertised, which anchored this corner for about 50 years. I never managed to pay a visit: it vanished in November 1998, just a few months before I made my first foray to the watering holes of this then still quite seedy block. I was in town from DC, staying with college cohorts at the Hotel Pennsylvania for the NCAA b-ball playoffs. Finding the Penn Bar closed, we ventured instead to the neighboring Blarney Stone, two doors down, which then still looked like something straight out of Super Fly. The Blarney Stone survives today, its decor and clientele unrecognizable, but its neon still intact.
The Penn Bar signs were New York classics: all stainless steel "raceway" signs, housings with filleted ends, round-topped "A"s, lower-upper-case "N"s, "C"-shaped "E"s. (Aonghais MacInnes)
The Penn Bar was one of those places that fascinated me as far back as I can remember. As a kid in the late 80s, somewhere in the back of my little brain I recall likening its ship's prow "Cafe" lettering to that of another favorite: the dearly departed P&G bar on the upper west side. Could both signs perhaps have been made by the same sign shop?
Fortunately, the internet offers us a few Penn Bar mementos. The signs are recorded in some nice photographs by Aonghais MacInnes, which cropped up a while back in a brief post over at the Lost City blog. The New York Times commemorated the bar's closing with a mournful write-up back in 1998. Though the Bloomberg era was still three years away, New York's mega clean-up was already well underway, and the Times write-up was a prelude to innumerable eulogies that came forth in the years that followed. "Think how you'd feel if you lived in the same house for 46 years," bar owner Larry Bagell told the Times as he fought back a tear: "If you suddenly had to leave, you'd know that the sound you were hearing was your own heart breaking."
There's still neon on this corner: a Brother Jimmy's BBQ franchise opened up here a few years after the Penn Bar closed. Maybe one day, Jimmy's will be to a younger generation what the Penn Bar was to me: a portal into a lost city that belonged to those who came before me. Hard to imagine. But maybe.
The former Penn Bar & Grill, now Brother Jimmy's BBQ, at 31st and 8th. (T. Rinaldi)
THIS POST was promised back in the early days of this blog, in a tribute to the Penn Bar's neighbor, the long vanished Railway Bar. See also:
• Aonghais MacInnes' Penn Bar photos, at his flickr site.
• The NYT's Penn Bar send-off.
• The Penn Bar's very quiet Facebook Community page.
• More Penn Station neighborhood neon at this post.
IN OTHER NEON NEWS:
• From out of the blue: RIP to midtown's Famous Oyster Bar, one of my favorite neon relics in NYC no more.
Owner Larry Bagell Opened 1952-1998 To all of the Penn Bar customers. "I miss you all and remember to stay safe"
Monday, January 20, 2014
Rite Aid Reliquary
There are certain signs around town that stand out, literally. Not because they're old, but because they physically project out farther than anything else around them. And while the signs themselves may not be old, the informed observer will know that such creatures are likely the spiritual descendants of prominent predecessors that predate restrictive zoning that has outlawed the installation of such stand-out signage in New York for the last few decades.
Rite Aid, 182 Smith Street, Brooklyn. (T. Rinaldi)
In other words, when you see a big projecting sign that stands out like a sore thumb because no other sign on the block approaches its size, you know you're looking at something that's grandfathered in, even if the sign may not look especially old. The zoning allows them to be altered or re-lettered, but once they're permanently removed, they can't be replaced. Thus, these signs are relics that recall a time when New York's commercial thoroughfares were lined with similarly prominent displays of outdoor advertising. Sometimes, their predecessors are actually cocooned within, as was revealed at the former Steinberg's Dairy on the Upper West Side in 2013.
One such sign has always caught my eye, on Smith Street in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn. This is the big Rite Aid drug store sign that presides over the intersection of Smith and Warren. Nothing else on the street approaches its size. So naturally, I wondered what came here before. Last week I finally got around to looking it up.
J. Michael's, 182 Smith Street, Brooklyn, c. 1980. (Municipal Archives)
Turns out Rite Aid used to be home to a J. Michael's furniture store. I learned this by referencing the city's handy early-80s tax photos, which were recently made available online by our friends over at the Municipal Archives. Michael's old neon sign survived here until relatively recently - the mid-90s, I believe. Long enough that it had started to earn some notoriety among admirers of such things by the time it disappeared. I recognized it from a photo taken by architectural historian Andrew Dolkart shortly before its demise.
J. Michael's of Smith Street. (Andrew S. Dolkart)
J. Michael's, the self-proclaimed "friend of the people," was a furniture chain that operated in Brooklyn for many decades until it folded in 1996. Signs of the Times magazine featured the neon marquee of its Fulton Street location in 1932. ST praised the Fulton Street sign for its "superb simplicity," having been designed by the Brooklyn architect Adolph Goldberg (later of Goldberg-Epstein Associates) in conjuction with the Brooklyn Edison Company, in hopes "that this installation will be an inspiration to merchants in Brooklyn, and that more architects will take an interest in sign designing."
Michaels & Co. of Fulton St. (Signs of the Times, July 1932 / ST Media Group, used with permission)
The Fulton Street and Smith Street signs both used the same streamlined lettering; could the Smith Street sign also have been the work of Mr. Goldberg? Something to think about when next we amble down old Smith Street.
Smith Street, c. late 1920s. Michaels apparently had a big sign here even before they went neon. Note several other projecting signs lording over Smith Street, now gone. (Photo found hanging in the Pot Belly Sandwich Shop at 345 Adams St., Brooklyn, by M.K. Metz / McBrooklyn Blog)
IN OTHER NEON NEWS:
• Not neon, but of interest: a sign controversy in South Florida.
• Via Rob Yasinsac, a nice write-up on the Walker Sign Co. of Detroit.
In other words, when you see a big projecting sign that stands out like a sore thumb because no other sign on the block approaches its size, you know you're looking at something that's grandfathered in, even if the sign may not look especially old. The zoning allows them to be altered or re-lettered, but once they're permanently removed, they can't be replaced. Thus, these signs are relics that recall a time when New York's commercial thoroughfares were lined with similarly prominent displays of outdoor advertising. Sometimes, their predecessors are actually cocooned within, as was revealed at the former Steinberg's Dairy on the Upper West Side in 2013.
One such sign has always caught my eye, on Smith Street in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn. This is the big Rite Aid drug store sign that presides over the intersection of Smith and Warren. Nothing else on the street approaches its size. So naturally, I wondered what came here before. Last week I finally got around to looking it up.
Turns out Rite Aid used to be home to a J. Michael's furniture store. I learned this by referencing the city's handy early-80s tax photos, which were recently made available online by our friends over at the Municipal Archives. Michael's old neon sign survived here until relatively recently - the mid-90s, I believe. Long enough that it had started to earn some notoriety among admirers of such things by the time it disappeared. I recognized it from a photo taken by architectural historian Andrew Dolkart shortly before its demise.
J. Michael's, the self-proclaimed "friend of the people," was a furniture chain that operated in Brooklyn for many decades until it folded in 1996. Signs of the Times magazine featured the neon marquee of its Fulton Street location in 1932. ST praised the Fulton Street sign for its "superb simplicity," having been designed by the Brooklyn architect Adolph Goldberg (later of Goldberg-Epstein Associates) in conjuction with the Brooklyn Edison Company, in hopes "that this installation will be an inspiration to merchants in Brooklyn, and that more architects will take an interest in sign designing."
The Fulton Street and Smith Street signs both used the same streamlined lettering; could the Smith Street sign also have been the work of Mr. Goldberg? Something to think about when next we amble down old Smith Street.
IN OTHER NEON NEWS:
• Not neon, but of interest: a sign controversy in South Florida.
• Via Rob Yasinsac, a nice write-up on the Walker Sign Co. of Detroit.
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