STANTON AND RIVINGTON

My mission was simple in March 2022: walk east on Stanton from the Bowery until it reaches Pitt, then south a block, then west on Rivington back to the Bowery. I have actually taken this walk before, back in 2010 and it was duly recorded in FNY, but no doubt things have changed a bit since then and plenty of other things have remained stolid and unchanged. I find myself in the LES relatively often as it’s infrastructurally interesting with signage, etc. I have to confess, I’m not really a nature lover, enjoying only sunny days. Birdwatrching, or birding, as aficionados call it? Would be better if the birds were bigger and stayed in place instead of flying off at the first bit of noise.

Photos taken: March 27, 2022
Photos in batch: 125

Once again, I was saddled with a cloudy afternoon that is advantageous in some ways, and maddening in others. I did apply levels controls in Photoshop on some of these, as things are still rather celestially dark in March.

Stanton Street follows a parallel path with its partner, Rivington Street, from the Bowery east to Chrystie, Forsyth east to Pitt. There are various pieces of it leftover as walkways in the Gompers and Baruch Houses, constructed in the 1940s. Many streets in this neighborhood are named for associates of colonial-era James de Lancey, who owned most of the property here before the American Revolution and for whom Delancey Street is named. My various sources on this subject such as Henry Moscow’s Street Book (Hagstrom, 1978) and Sanna Feirstein’s Naming New York, (NYU Press, 2000), variously describe George Stanton as James de Lancey, Jr.’s agent or a foreman on his property.

#245 Bowery, at the west end of Stanton, was originally an office for the New York and Harlem Rail Company in the 1830s and then home to the saloons Sultan Divin and Fleabag. In the 1920s it briefly became a pickle factory until Frank Mazzara converted it into the Sunshine Hotel in 1922 and it lasted throughout the entire “Bowery bum” era into the 1990s, when cubicles cost $10 per night. Today, lodgings occupy part of the building, but it is accepting no new occupants. In 2001, Michael Dominic produced a documentary about the Sunshine and its residents.

I keep meaning to walk Chrystie and Forsyth Streets, which have for decades bordered Sara D. Roosevelt Park, but inertia has stopped me. It’s an idea. Anyway, the venerable building at #205 Chrystie, bordering Stanton and adjacent to a new glass and metal monstrosity, is home to Rochelle’s, a bar known originally as Leave Rochelle Out of It; the painting of the legs and boots is, I imagine, Rochelle herself, a former girlfriend of each of the owners. Me being me, I was more interested in the metal signs with the street names, including the misspelled Chrystie. The signs aren’t evident in Municipal Archives photos from the 1940s and 1980s (though both are pretty fuzzy). I wonder when these signs first appeared.

Often, building facades present small histories of buildings’ pasts. The painted airplane on the facade of #57 Stanton dates back to from 2007-2011 when this was a gallery called the Fusion Art Museum, founded by Shalom Neuman, a Czech-born American “multisensory” multimedia artist. Today, “Bowery Showroom is a New York-based concept store and cultural hub focused on independent designers, local artists, and vintage clothing. Through creative activations, we enable our members to express themselves in an inclusive, accessible, future-facing atmosphere.”

A pair of interesting murals can be found facing a parking lot at Stanton and Eldridge Streets. The older of the two is lengthwise across the bottom of its “mural” is by Antonio Garcia:

The mural in front of us features a watercolor-like row of smiling faces, an effect achieved by mixing aerosol spray paint with water. “There are three types of graffiti writers: graffiti criminals, graffiti vandals, and graffiti artists,” explains local graffiti artist Antonio “Chico” Garcia, who has been painting the neighborhood for 30 years and is helping lead our tour. “We focus on showing the art part.” This particular mural is part of an outreach program that shows kids how street art can be constructive, not destructive. [Inked Magazine]

The large “Stop Guns” mural is by Brazilian artist Eduardo Kobra, who has become NYC’s unofficial official muralist. His works depict 20th Century modern artists Andy Warhol, Frida Kahlo, Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat; the Ziggy Stardust-era David Bowie, on a housing project in north Jersey City, and Michael Jackson at 1st Avenue and East 11th Street. Kobra depicted Bob Dylan in Minneapolis, MN and Salvador Dali in Murcia, Spain. To date Kobra has painted 19 murals in NYC, some of which have already been obliterated.

Speaking of murals, I thought the Love Beyond Borders mural at Stanton and Allen was a Keith Haring imitation or homage. Instead, it is based on the designs of fashion’s Nicola Formichetti.

The New Allen, in the brick building behind the one-way sign, is a collective of local artists and muralists, similar to the Bushwick Collective in Brooklyn (through which I recently traveled and may do an item on soon).

Allen Street has undergone numerous transformations: it was widened and then the stretch of the 2nd Avenue El that covered it was razed. Its center median is in various states of repair from Division Street to East Houston, where its northbound traffic flows onto 1st Avenue.

In the past FNY has shown you NYS Senator Jacob Javits‘ gravesite in Linden Hill Cemetery in Ridgewood, so I may as well show you his birthplace, in this tenement at #85 Stanton west of Allen, a cold water flat in 1904 when he was born here. The senator sold pots, pans and other kitchenware to help his mother on Lower East Side streets in his youth, and then worked as a debt collector while studying law at night school. He opened a practice with his brother Benjamin in the 1930s, won a seat as. Representative in the 1940s and was elected Senator in 1956. Javits was that political dodo bird, a centrist to liberal Republican. He served until 1980 when worsening ALS caused him to lose to Al D’Amato in a primary. NYC’s premier exhibition hall was named for him in the late 1980s.

The ground floor occupant in 2022 at #85 Stanton, Street Lawyer Service, isn’t a law office. It’s a place you can buy legal weed.

At #95 Stanton between Orchard and Ludlow, before 1995, Arlene’s Grocery was an actual grocery, with a butcher next door; the old sign was retained after it became a nightclub/concert space. Big name acts such as REM, the late Jeff Buckley and the Violent Femmes have played here.

El Sombrero, also known as Hat Restaurant, #108 Stanton at Ludlow, has been here a long time. The neon sign has more of a fedora than a sombrero.

The former Silver Monuments, #125 Stanton, was founded in 1946 and was run by two generations of Silvers in what used to be a Lower East Side “monument district” for about 70 years, until about 2016. In a NYC tradition, a succeeding business, a yoga center, has kept the classic old signage.

Speaking of old signs it’s always fun to check out this classic at Stanton and Suffolk Streets. Over the years since I started FNY the LES has lost some of its infrastructural majesty, in the form of ancient painted ads and signs. There are a couple still left — one of them is the magnificent neon Louis Zuflacht sign at Stanton and Suffolk Streets; the “154” is the Stanton Street address. This sign has persisted despite Zuflacht going out of business several decades ago; tenant after tenant has moved in, and amazingly, kept the sign. In 2014 there was worry it had finally succumbed, as it was covered with a sign for an antiques store, but that was a prop for a TV show called Forever, about an unwilling immortal. (I’d be for immortality as long as someone picks up my meals, room and board and health care.) 

I haven’t gone into who Louis Zuflacht was yet. Even the Indispensable Walter Grutchfield does not mention him. However, the blogger called Brooks of Sheffield did, in his terrific Lost City, which he stopped writing in 2014. Zuflacht was a long-lived haberdasher (1883-1986) who operated the store beginning about 1940; the sign was commissioned in 1942. Zuflacht’s sons, Jack and Joe, ran the business for a time. Unfortunately, neither Brooks nor I know the precise date the store shut down.

The word “donnybrook” is derived from a public fair that was held in Donnybrook, Ireland beginning in the 1200s. By the 1800s, the Donnybrook Fair had a reputation of being a drunken, wild event that was finally ended in the mid-1800s. One wonders how many donnybrooks have occurred at The Donnybrook, at Stanton and Clinton Streets.

Though the chiseling says “Erected 1913” at #180 Stanton, between Clinton and Attorney Streets, the Congregation Sons of Jacob, People of Brzezan (or more simply the Stanton Street Shul) was converted that year from a 3-story woodframe house by a synagogue that had been founded in 1894. It is one of two local synagogues that possess mazoles, or renderings of Judaic zodiacal figures; the other is the Bialystoker Synagogue on Willett Street.

Its longtime leader Rabbi Joseph Singer, who served from 1964-2002, was a tireless advocate for the poor and elderly of the Lower East Side. Though he was never paid for his years of service, he was forced out after he tried to arrange for the building’s sale, with the synagogue’s board members, to a theater workshop. After that incident, however, the synagogue revived and is now the center of a healthy religious and cultural scene, hosting art exhibitions and jazz and klezmer music.

Speaking of donnybrooks, one almost broke out here when I was angling for a shot. A car pulled up and got in the shot. When I moved for a better shot the driver emerged and angrily accused me of avoiding him as he wanted to ask me something, presumably directions. After a few more curses, he fumed some more and got in his car and left, and I got my shot in peace.

This otherwise unprepossessing three story brick walkup at #179 Stanton has, at one time or another, been tenanted by Famed poet/musician Leonard Cohen and actor Marlon Brando. The mural on the adjacent building, “Starting Dreams,” was painted in 2013 by German artist Hendrik Beikirch.

Our Lady of Sorrows Roman Catholic Church, 105 Pitt Street between Rivington and Stanton, part of a very old complex administered by the Capuchins. This church building was dedicated in 1868; the congregation was founded 11 years earlier to serve immigrant German Catholics. Today it serves primarily Latino congregants. 

The Order arose in 1520 when Matteo da Bascio, an Observant Franciscan friar native to the Italian region of the Marches, said he had been inspired by God with the idea that the manner of life led by the friars of his day was not the one which their founder, St. Francis of Assisi, had envisaged. He sought to return to the primitive way of life of solitude and penance as practiced by the founder of their Order. wikipedia

The Order is named for the cappuccio, or hooded robe worn by members.

In 1890, the parish gained a spectacular Gothic Capuchin monastery at Pitt and Stanton, now the rectory (priests’ residence). On the building is mounted a bronze plaque with the many area residents who perished fighting in World War II.

I noticed a parish priest chatting with parishioners. Instead of the usual purple vestments worn during Lent, he was wearing pink, or as the Church terms it, rose. The 4th Sunday of Advent is tabbed “Laetare Sunday” or “Celebration Sunday.” It was conceived by the Church as a Sunday when congregants take a break from the rigorous penance practiced during Advent, and priests have the option of wearing rose vestments instead of pink on this particular Advent Sunday. Here, I seem to be straying into territory covered by Uni Watch!

Rivington also runs from the Bowery east to Pitt Street. In 2010 it exists in three separate pieces, a one-block stretch between Bowery and Chrystie, a main section from Forsyth east to Pitt, and a small piece remaining at Columbia. It was originally laid out as one continuous street from the Bowery to the East River, but over the decades, the construction of Sara Roosevelt Park, Samuel Gompers Houses and Baruch Houses have served to truncate it somewhat. In the colonial era, James Rivington (1724-1802) published a loyalist Tory journal from 1773-1775, the New York Gazetteer; nonetheless, he was an associate of James de Lancey, Jr., and a number of streets in the Lower East Side honor his allies in this neighborhood.

#203 Rivington fronts on the entire south side of the street between Pitt and Ridge Streets. Originally PS 4, it later became the The Lower East Side Community School and is now luxury housing. Rivington Street is no stranger to school buildings.

#202 Rivington, between Ridge and Pitt, is the girlhood home of  Genya Ravan, who has been rocking for over 50 years. Here she is with one of her first records with Goldie and the Gingerbreads, who really should have had hits, in 1964:

From a few years later: Genya Ravan, Back in My Arms Again

In an unusial situation, two public schools face off across Rivington at Ridge: the round PS 142, the Amelia Castro School, and PS 140, the Nathan Straus School. The only explanation I can conceive is that Rivington Street borders two school districts.

The entrance at #176 Rivington (at Attorney) is more interesting than the rest of the building, with odd heads above the second floor.

Normally I hate the COVID-era sidewalk dining sheds; most are eyesores, but some are imaginative. I don’t know what restaurant owns the bus-shaped example here, Joey Rose’s (sandwich shop) or Black Cat LES (a coffee shop).

#169 Rivington, which isn’t famed for anything…but just take a look at what architects were designing for middle-class housing in the 1890-1920 period, with those Ionic half-columns, or pilasters, at the entrance and windows; heavy pediments on each window; and look at that ironwork on the fire escapes. Thios sort of detail was de rigueur back then; today’s architects think all that is a waste of money. I keep waiting for the pendulum to start swinging back from the ultrastreamlined buildings of 2022, but will it ever?

The massive medieval-styled castle at the SE corner of Rivington and Suffolk is the former Public School 160, now the Clemente Soto Velez Cultural and Educational Center:

The Clemente Soto Velez Cultural & Educational Center Inc. is a Puerto Rican/Latino cultural institution that has demonstrated a broad-minded cultural vision and a collaborative philosophy. While CSV’s mission is focused on the cultivation, presentation, and preservation of Puerto Rican and Latino culture, it is equally determined to operate in a multi-cultural and inclusive manner, housing and promoting artists and performance events that fully reflect the cultural diversity of the Lower East Side and the city as a whole.

#116 Suffolk, across from the Clemente, was also home to the art-house Lighthouse Cinema and originally, as it says above the door, S. Rothkopf & Sons, a manufacturer of children’s pajamas. In 1896, Henry Rothkopf, a son of the founder, shot himself in his office. It is the current location of feminist bookstore Bluestockings, which recently relocated from its longtime Allen Street location.

150 Rivington Street at Suffolk is a new glassy condominium that replaced the old Streit Matzoh Factory.

In 1897 Aaron and Nettie Streit came to America from Austria. They went into business making matzohs by hand, following kosher methods of preparation, at nearby 65 Pitt Street. Aaron Streit was joined by his two sons and expanded operations to the building in 1925 and purchased three adjacent buildings. Streit’s remained the only family owned and operated matzoh bakery in the USA and it was operated by the grandchildren of Aaron and Nettie until it moved to New Jersey in 2015.

I considered #137 Rivington a LES microcosm, with shared space for residences above, a spa, hairdresser, psychic and Hungarian restaurant on the ground floor. Garbage bags and a fire hydrant complete the scene.

A painted mural, done in 1997 by famed LES muralist Chico, honoring Schapiro’s Wines can still be seen at #118 Rivington at Essex. The Schapiro family entered the wine business in 1899 by producing kosher mead, or honey wine. Sam Schapiro’s kosher wine empire later encompassed a city block and featured 9 different wine cellars and during Prohibition produced low-alcohol content ceremonial wines. Schapiro, famed for its sweet, syrupy wines, remained at #126 Rivington until 2000 and shuttered for good in 2007.

I’ve heard of The Magician, as it was a hangout for the NYC blogger scene in the 2000s.

All Economy Candy aficionados have their favorites; mine are the chocolate covered pretzels and fruit slices. Alas, my blood sugar keeps me away from the candy counter these days, though I won’t rule out another purchase. The candy store at #108 Rivington between Ludlow and Essex has been here since 1937 and has been owned and operated by the Cohen family since the beginning. The smallish, cramped store is a wonderworld for candy fans, with all the well known brands and others from around the globe you have never heard of. 

One must learn to not want what one cannot have.

#106 Rivington, next to Economy Candy, seems to hark back to the bad old days of the Lower East Side, but that fancy pediment also reminds us that a great amount of planning and care went into its construction over a century ago.

The Beastie Boys, once of NYC’s most long-lived hip hop and rap acts, were formed in 1981 by “Mike D” Diamond, the late Adam “MCA” Yauch and Adam “Ad-Rock” Horowitz. Their early gigs were at CBGB, Trude Heller’s and Max’s Kansas City, where they played its closing night. They have sold 40 million albums worldwide. The LP cover for Paul’s Boutique was shot in front of this building on the SW corner of Ludlow and Rivington.

Some more excellent LES architecture, at #100 Rivington and detail of #126 Ludlow.

Rabbi Yaakov Yitzchak Spiegel (1936-2001) a descendent of several Chasidic dynasties, was the long-time leader of Congregation Shaarai Shomoyim, also known as the Roumanisher Shul, at 89-93 Rivington Street. Rabbi Spiegel was a strong advocate of education for girls and was active in local civic groups. The synagogue building, erected as a church about 1857, collapsed in 2006 and was demolished the following year. [oldstreets]

The buildings next door were razed over a decade ago and have never been built upon, in a classic case of a landlord holding out for just the right price.

It’s an embarrassment of architectural riches in the LES and here’s two more examples at Rivington and Orchard. If you’re wondering there are very few landmarked items here.

However, we’ve got a landmarked building right here, at #149 Allen Street. It looks like a throwback from another time, located between Delancey and Rivington, and it ought to, since it was constructed in 1831. It’s the sole survivor of a group of five brick twin-dormered Federal-style buildings constructed on the same lot by George Sutton, captain of the commercial clipper ship Empress. In 1837, Sutton sold #143 to the Haley family, which rented it out to various and sundry colorful tenants for the next nine decades.

The 2nd Avenue El was constructed in front of the small building in 1880, where it would remain, belching smoke and then screeching elevated cars until 1942. In fact the line’s Rivington Street station was positioned directly above the building. In 1931, Allen Street had gained its present width and center median. One by one, #143’s fellow Federal houses would be razed, with the next door neighbor, #141, hanging on for dear life until it too succumbed in the 1980s. Both buildings can be seen in this 1980s tax photo.

That fate will not happen to #143 because it was granted NYC Landmarks designation in 2010.

More details about #143, and its colorful tenant history, at Daytonian in Manhattan.

That the Lower East Side is a former enclave for Jewish immigrants from eastern Europe is well-known. The western end of Rivington was, apparently, home to many Romanian Jewish immigrants, as this building at 58-60 between Eldridge and Allen, was formerly the Adath Jashurun synagogue built by immigrants from Iasi, Romania, designed in 1903 by architect Emery Roth, later famed for grand residential buildings. Since 1973 it has been a residential building itself, though thankfully the exterior is relatively unaltered. The tablets are inscribed with the Ten Commandments.

Picture the scene at the synagogue’s opening day in 1904. 30 horse drawn carriages bearing Torah scrolls; a sold gold key; over two thousand congregants and parade-goers; 300 cops; a spirited rendering by two bands of “The Star-Spangled Banner” and “Home, Sweet Home.”

University Settlement, Rivington and Eldridge, must be notable to get its own street sign. Quoting directly from NY Songlines:

Originally known as the Neighborhood Guild, this was the country’s first settlement house–an institution founded on the premise that the poor needed the college-educated to settle in their midst and set a good example. The house moved here in 1899, into a building designed by John Mead Howells, who later co-designed the winning entry in the Tribune Tower competition, and Isaac Newton Phelps Stokes, author of the New Tenement Law and the classic history Iconography of Manhattan Island.

At University Settlement, Stokes’ brother, James Graham Phelps Stokes, met radical journalist Rose Pastor. The millionaire Episcopalian socialist’s 1905 marriage to Pastor scandalized the press, which called her the “Red Yiddish Cinderella.”

Another Kobra mural at Rivington and Forsyth, “27 Club,” featuring Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix and Amy Winehouse, who all perished at 27, has been painted over and replaced by work from an art collective; I can’t say it’s an improvement.

I’ve done a detailed page on Freeman Alley back in 2015 and feel no need to repeat myself, but I remain fascinated with this obscure lane on Rivington west of Chrystie. I shot 20 photos on this occasion and could have shot dozens more; I see something new every time I’m here. Besides the upscale restaurant, Freeman’s, at the end of the alley, we now have a luxury high rise apartment building, of all things. The paste up art refers to the Russian invasion of Ukraine (2022) in many cases. The alley likely originated like nearby Extra Place as an unclaimed space between properties.

Wrapping things up on Rivington with #6, just east of the Bowery, whcih has one of those terrific what I call “address buttons” at the front entrance.

Had enough Lower East Side? Nobody can get enough. I walked all its north-south streets in one day in 2018.

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4/17/22