DEEP SIXTH, VOLUME TWO

IT’S been two decades since I first walked 6th Avenue for FNY, and things have changed along the avenue in the center of Manhattan (in “The Ferrari in the Bedroom,” humorist Jean Shepherd went so far as to call it the “armpit” of Manhattan). Finally feeling free after months of not being able to walk much prior to hernia surgery, in mid-October I walked from the West 4th Street subway all the way up 6th Avenue to Central Park. I gathered 113 photos and depending on how much time I have I may decide to do a Part Two if time is tight this Sunday.

Our story, though, begins in Maspeth. While walking along 58th Avenue between 58th Place and 59th Street (in Maspeth the street numbering is all between 55 and 60) I spotted something unusual: what appeared to be an updated and modernized version of the metal medallions honoring members of the Organization of American States along 6th Avenue (the Avenue of the Americas). In 2017, my presumption was that someone living in the area liked the signs and installed a homemade version.

Fast forward to 2023 and came the news that the Department of Transportation was producing new versions of some of the signs and reinstalling them along 6th Avenue. And, a little investigation produced the news that the DOT has a sign shop nearby in Maspeth. Thus, what I saw here was a trial installation of one of the new signs. A check on Google Street View shows it wasn’t on this lamppost for very long at all so it was pure luck stumbling on it that day in April 2017.

I got the word that the new signs had been installed, and decided to head over and take a look at what I like to call the new Medallions of the Hemisphere. Though I did not venture south of West 4th, my suspicion is that the new medallions were installed for the length of 6th Avenue from Canal Street to Central Park. A pocket history: 6th Avenue was saddled with bestowed the moniker Avenue of the Americas in 1945 at the founding of the Organization of American States. Until the mid-1980s when Mayor Ed Koch gave in and allowed the Department of Transportation to install “6 AVE” signs, official references and letterheads, etc. “cancelled” 6th Avenue and Avenue of the Americas was the name of the street, no exceptions. New Yorkers went merrily on calling it the less unwieldy “6th Avenue.” When octagonal-shafted poles arrived on the scene in 1960 and A of A obtained a set, the Medallions of the Hemisphere were installed to representing participating countries, including ones we didn’t like, such as Cuba.

In 1992, 6th Avenue was given a makeover which involved removing block after block of the 1960s-era poles, medallions and all. Their number was greatly reduced to a few blocks between Canal and West 8th and a couple of blocks uptown, between West 57th and the park. That was it! And the medallions were getting rusted and more illegible as the years went by; see the above link.

I was hoping the city would leave the rusting ones in place and use a little Rustoleum or Noxon to clean them up; but down they came to make way for the shiny new ones. For the first time in 30 years, all countries in the OAS are represented. Also for the first time, the medallions have been installed on Bishop Crook retro poles that 6th Avenue received in 1992.

I was once admonished by the staff of C.O. Bigelow Pharmacy, established in 1838 and ensconced in the Bigelow Building between West 8th and 9th, built just after century’s turn, for the sin of photography within their premises. Nevertheless, I was able to sneak photos of one of their original gas fixtures, which has been retrofitted for electricity, but the gas can be turned on during blackouts (as they were in 1965). Clarence Otis Bigelow, whose benevolent painted mien has now been obscured on the store’s painted ad by the ravages of time, was the third owner of the apothecary and was the owner when Mark Twain was a customer. I haven’t yet mentioned the decades-old red neon sign, which also still works.

Showing the roofline of the Beaux-Arts Bigelow Building here, constructed in 1902 when the store was already 64 years old. I didn’t notice it when taking the picture: but during this era businesses placed digrams or trigrams of the company initials in carven medallions. At the bottom of the picture is one with what appears to be BC for Bigelow Company (at times the letters are so stylized it’s hard to make them out.)

Have I visited one NYC major intersection more than any other? I haven’t counted, but if I had, this one at 6th Avenue, West 8th Street and Greenwich Avenue might be in the top ten. I spent many hours in the Village as a youth and most IND 6th and 8th Avenue subway lines converge here. Presently, this intersection is nameless, but it has been called “Village Square” in the past.

Now severely damaged by rain and weathering, this ad for Emil Talamini, a real estate agent at 450 6th Avenue off West 10th, complete with old-style ALgonquin phone number, has been here for decades but finally is beginning to succumb to years of sun beating on it. Interestingly, the ad reveals itself to be a palimpsest with an older painted ad underneath it that went up first, though the older ad is still unintelligible. According to Ephemeral New York, Talamini passed away in 1970. I seem to recall an Uncle Emil, but I don’t think it’s him.

The Talamini ad sits on the Romanesque #450-454 6th Avenue, constructed in 1892 as lofts and stores, designed by architect Ralph Townsend. The site was formerly First Colored Presbyterian Church, founded in 1822, and later a stop on the Underground Railroad assisting escaped slaves. Before its conversion to luxury apartments, the building had been home to printing firms, shirtwaist factories (a women’s clothing article from over a century ago) silk merchants and dance academies. “Daytonian” Tom Miller has the complete story.

The Jefferson Market complex of food stores on 6th Avenue between West 10th and 11th Streets is now mostly defunct; the Balducci’s flasgship gourmet deli closed here in 2003. The original Jefferson Market, a complement to the old Washington Market, was across the street from 1833-1873. 448 6th Avenue, home of the old Village Vintner (and its antique-look sign) was part of the market complex.

Possibly the most-photographed building in Greenwich Village — I can’t resist it — the Jefferson Market Courthouse, which has done duty as a courthouse, women’s prison, and the Jefferson Market Library since its construction in 1873 (it replaced a wood fire tower, which was used to call firefighters in the era before centralized fire alarms) has succumbed to repair shrouding, as all NYC buildings of a certain age do eventually. Hopefully, the repairs will be completed soon as it is one of the Village’s most discernible landmarks.

As a library it contains a surprisingly good selection of NYC-themed books, which I discovered when I did a joint chat there with Roberta Brandes Gratz (“The Battle For Gotham: New York in the Shadow of Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs”) while promoting Forgotten New York the Book in 2006. Actually I was a bit intimidated with Roberta, a journalist who had already published numerous books and articles; at this remove I don’t recall if I held my own very well.

I haven’t been inside since, but I’ve been outside, as on occasional Open House New York events I was able to climb the tower and take in the Village views.

The sidewalk was shadowed by near-permanent scaffolding and as ever, the gate was locked; but once again it was not enough to stop me from poking the camera into Milligan Place, on the west side of 6th between West 10th and 11th, to have a gawp.

Like many of New York’s more exclusive enclaves, today a harbor for the moneyed elite, Milligan Place and Patchin Place, around the corner, began as enclaves for the hardworking middle to lower class. In the mid-1800s, businessmen and property owners thought of themselves as lords of their peculiar manors, and some benevolently (or not so benevolently) constructed housing close by their properties, either from a sense of obligation or the desire to force longer hours on their charges by having them live nearby. Many of these worker housing sites still exist, near the Steinway piano factory complex in the northern far reaches of Astoria, or in that part of Staten Island still known as Kreischerville, near the kilns of Balthazar Kreischer. (We have explored that section in ForgottenTours and whooped it up at Killmeyer’s afterward)

Milligan Place, built on land formerly owned by Samuel Milligan (purchased approximately 1799) was built in 1849 by the nearby Brevoort Hotel to house the Basque cooks and cleaners who worked there. The Brevoort was located at 5th Avenue and 8th Street and stood for approximately 100 years from the mid-19th to mid-20th Centuries. The Milligan Place townhouses went up in 1852. Unlike Patchin Place, the gate is locked, and with crime upticks since the pandemic it’s likely a wise move to keep it so.

The NW corner of West 11th Street and 6th Avenue, now a Szechuan restaurant, was once one of 1,347 Ray’s Pizza in NYC and one of the 486 “Original”Famous” Ray’s. From 2013-2014 it was called Roio’s Pizza. On December 1, 2023, a balmy 60-degree day in Soho, I passed Prince Street Pizza and noticed the line all the way down to Mulberry. I have received indications that that was the original Original Ray’s. Comments are open.

Next door, Barney’s Hardware claims to be in business since 1929, but in 1940 this address was home to Sheffield Farms. I don’t doubt they’re in business since 1929, but they moved here from another location.

A Forgotten NY first: I had not noticed this painted ad on the side of the New School, West 13th Street east of 6th Avenue previously. It’s obscured by the massive #510 6th Avenue, which fills the east side of the avenue between East 13th and 14th. My suspicion is that the painted ad had something to do with a dry goods emprium founded by a sailing ship captain in the mid-19th Century. It was built in 1902 for the 14th Street Store founded by Henry Siegel, co-creator of the Siegel-Cooper store five blocks north (see below).

A narrow tower on West 14th just off 6th was one of the last buildings constructed for Macy’s when the World’s Biggest Store occupied a complex of buildings on West 13th, 14th and 6th Avenue until its move to Herald Square in 1902. The word “Macy’s” was formerly visible above the front entrance. If you go around the corner to West 13th, in one of the former Macy’s buildings now owned by the New School (Arnhold Hall) you can make out some red stars, the longtime Macy’s symbol (founder R. Hussey Macy was at sea and had a red star tattoo). The New School has recently restored and repainted Arnhold Hall’s Macy’s stars.

I wanted to show you the stark contrast of architectural samples from 120 years apart on 6th Avenue and West 14th, where #101 West 14th is ready for occupancy; but by the time I passed here, the older building across 14th had already been demolished, so I used a Google Street view screencap. To be honest, I don’t mind chrome or white exteriors and large, squarish or rectangular windows you see in these new joints, but to me the uneven “stacked” surface gives it a pulsating look, like a mechanical version of Lovecraft’s shoggoth monsters from “At the Mountains of Madness.” Apartments in the new building average around $3M.

A ghost bicycle ad on the corner building, 6th Avenue and West 15th. Various bicycle shops had occupied the corner storefront for many years until 2019.

The angular, glassy 35 West 15th (known as 35XV (completed in 2016), has a way of sticking out. At 25 stories, it easily towers over this block west of Union Square.

Sol Moscot has branched out from its original Lower East Side to become a major optician franchise. It was founded on Rivington Street in 1915 after Hyman Moscot started selling eyeglasses from a pushcart in 1899. I like the store’s yellow and black color scheme on the signage and I noticed other opticians have begun to employ it. My bathroom, built in 1941, still has its yellow and black tiling color scheme.

Architect Simeon B. Eisendrath constructed the eclectic #574 6th Avenue for the Knickerbocker Jewelry Company at the what’s now the southern end of Ladies’ Mile in 1904. Tom Miller, once again:

Four stories tall, it featured rusticated brick piers on the avenue elevation that exaggerate the structure’s verticality.  At street level, projecting shop windows showed off silverplated hollow ware and jewelry.  The second story—at eye level to passing shoppers on the train—was an expanse of show windows.  Above it all Eisendrath’s design exploded in an over-blown Baroque cornice of molded sheet metal.  The ostentatious, self-confident little building vied for attention with the grand emporiums along the avenue.

The jeweler moved out in 1918 and the ground floor has served a variety of businesses including the current Hollywood Diner.

Ladies’ Mile

With Rowland Hussey Macy leading the way in the mid-1850s with a flagship store at Sixth and 14th, and A.T. Stewart’s Cast Iron Palace further south at 9th Street, Sixth Avenue from 9th north to 23rd was lined with big, buxom Beaux-Arts buildings that catered to ladies who lunched and then shopped. In Ladies’ Mile heyday, over a dozen huge emporia lined the avenue…but were thrown into shadow by the Sixth Avenue El until 1939, when the el was razed. After that, the great stores could be seen in all their glory. But the glory would fade rapidly as the years went by; the buildings slowly decayed, and most were in sad shape indeed until, gradually and slowly at first, they began to be restored in the late 1980s. Today, Sixth Avenue is as busy and bustling a shopping street as it ever was.

610 6^th Avenue, originally named the Price Building, built in 1912, is a Beaux-Arts inspired commercial building on the southeast corner of 6^th Avenue and West 18^th Street. It hosted a McCrory’s from 1911-1932 and Old Navy for nearly 20 years as of 2023.

One of my favorite buildings on 6th Avenue, originally Siegel-Cooper Dry Goods store, built in 1895, was the largest of the Ladies’ Mile emporia, containing 15.5 acres of floor space. It used to have a clock tower and a large fountain, since removed and placed in Forest Lawn Cemetery in Los Angeles. Note the large picture window on the 18th Street side: a ramp from the Sixth Avenue El allowed passengers to walk directly into the store from the platform. The SC digraph can be seen on 6th Avenue and on West 18th. A large painted ad, fading fast, for Siegel-Cooper can be seen at Main and Plymouth Street in DUMBO. The building will need another anchor tenant, as Bed, Bath and Beyond shuttered its “brick and mortar” locations.

At 48 West 18th near 6th, the painted ad says: Whole Floors, TO LET, Size 80 x 185, all Modern Improvements, Including Sprinkler System, Inquire on Premises, 10th Floor. “To let” is an old phrase meaning “to rent”; the words “let” and “lease” have the same root.

This 6-story building at #650 6th Avenue at East 20th was once Cammeyer’s, a large shoe store. Presumably the store occupied the ground floor with offices above. Alfred Cammeyer was a famed ladies’ shoe designer in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Today, the building hosts apartments and is known as The Cammeyer.

Many New Yorkers know the Episcopal Church of the Holy Communion on the NW corner of 6th Avenue and West 20th Street as the Limelight Disco, one of a flock of Limelights run by impresario Peter Gatien in the 1980s and 1990s; other Limelights had been opened in Hollywood, FL; Atlanta, Chicago; and London. The club was famed for presenting techno, industrial and glam rock, and for its drug drenched ‘club kid’ culture. It operated as a disco from 1983 to the late 1990s. (In the 80s your Webmaster preferred nearby Danceteria on 21st, which presented a lot of new wave acts).

The church is actually one of the oldest buildings on 6th Avenue, laying its cornerstone in 1844, with the great Richard Upjohn the architect. After over 130 years as a church, services gave way to an Odyssey House drug rehab center, but Odyssey then sold to Gatien in 1982, who recast it as the Limelight, and drugs soon followed. Gatien has had legal trouble over the years for flouting tax and immigration laws; murder and other crimes ever-present with drugs also were a part of the Limelight scene. Gatien sold to a developer in 2001, who ran the Limelight as The Avalon for 4 years.

Today the Limelight name continues as Grimaldi Pizza occupies much of the space, and operates it as a quasi-nightclub bearing the Limelight name; the Casamigos Cantina also rents space. I know it’s not a church anymore, but the signage is obtrusive and garish. The place was tricked out for Halloween as I passed it on October 15.

Update, 12/12: the latest plan for the Limelight is to turn it into a theater.

Who was Hugh O’Neill, and why is his name on this building high above 6th Ave. and West 20th Street? Circa 1900, Hugh O’Neill owned the building, and the store on the ground floor. Formerly it was part of the so-called Ladies Mile strip along 6th Avenue in the 20s, featuring department and dry-goods stores. O’Neill was known as “The Fighting Irishman of 6th Avenue.” Today, offices occupy the upper floors, with franchisees lining 6^th Avenue.

From the air, the building has a L-shape because it wraps around the Third Shearith Israel Cemetery on West 21st Street.

In the 1990s, Ladies Mile rebounded after this stretch of 6th Avenue had sunk into decrepitude in the 1970s, as new stores like Bed, Bath and Beyond occupied the older emporium buildings. The Hugh O’Neill building even regained its former gilded pair of domes.

Who was Charles Ruegger, and why is his name all over #666 6th between West 20th and 21st? A charming cluster of 4-story buildings can be found on the east side of 6th Avenue north of the Limelight between West 20th and 21st Streets. According to real estate records, they were built around 1850, in the years following the coming of the Episcopal Church to the area. In the middle is #666 6th, something of an ironic number considering the proximity of the old church.

A pair of pressed metal signs can be found on the pediment and above the second floor, noting the former Bazar Français and its owner, Charles R. Ruegger, which I imagine was pronounced “roo=ZHAY.” Though 1929 seems a little past the area for such signage, here’s a wonderfully preserved sample of the art.

According to Tom Miller, Daytonian in Manhattan, Ruegger had already been in business in NYC for 55 years, since 1874, by the time he moved his Bazar Français to 666 6th.

In March 1929 Ruegger purchased the building from Samuel and Nettie Lichtman. The Times reported that “It is to be extensively altered and occupied by Mr. Ruegger for his business of hotel, club and restaurant equipment.” Among the alterations was the removal of the unsightly fire escape to the rear of the building.

Around this time Ruegger opened a shop nearby on 19th Street for the manufacture industrial metal such as ducts and ventilators. The 78-year old Charles Ruegger died in 1931. He had not only created a successful business in the Bazar Francais but was mayor of Woodridge, New Jersey, for two consecutive terms. His son, Charles Jr., continued running the business.

After World War II the firm would produce its own line of copper and brass cookware. The Bazar Francais continued to offer imported kitchen ware as well as its own high-end goods, becoming the first gourmet outlet in the country. Along with small items like butter brushes, the firm offered decorative and hard-to-find articles like the 1956 nickel-plated wine rack “that completes the apartment dweller’s suburban-scorning life.”

Bazar Français closed in 1975 but the signs are still on the building, as well as a fading-fast painted ad on the north side of the building.

The entire blockfront of 6th Avenue between West 21st and 22nd Streets was taken up by Adams Dry Goods for a couple of decades beginning in 1900 (the ADG trigraph can be seen on the building front). While Trader Joe’s is a main tenant today, I spent considerable time here from 1994-2008 browsing in the Barnes and Noble “superstore” located in the building.

The northwest corner of 6th Avenue and East 21st, while in the landmarked Ladies’ Mile district chock full of large emporia, presents a stretch of Italianate buildings of varying heights built in the 1870s. On one is a painted ad for a former tenant, the Wolf Paper & Twine Company. Founded in 1916, the company was located here until 2003.

The Ehrich Building, west side of 6th Avenue between west 22nd and 23rd and home to Burlington Coat Factory, is notable for its collection of mosaic and terra-cotta K’s that you can see on 6th Avenue as well as West 22nd and 23rd Streets. Ehrich doesn’t begin with K, so what gives?  This dates to the era when the building was purchased by Chicago merchants J.L. Kesner Company in 1911, who hired architects Taylor and Levi to add all the letter K’s. You can see them on this FNY page.

In the late 1990s, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani managed to get porno book and video shops banned from the center of Times Square and from most busy neighborhood centers, but they hung on in outlying areas; how Video Video managewd to hang on until 2016 is surprising.

I revisit this building over and over: I like its signage and the bit of history it represents. The building on the southeast corner of Sixth and 24th Street features two tablets calling it, seemingly over-literally, as “The Corner.” But there’s more than meets the eye here. “The Corner” is also plainly visible on the cornice at the top of the building.

A classic blue and white liquor store sign can be found on the 24th Street side — as far back as my memory goes, there hasn’t been a liquor store here — but the real finds are entablatures on the sides of the building and the pediment on the roof, which advertise “The Corner” and list the names Koster & Bial.

As Walter Grutchfield explains at the excellent 14 to 42, John Koster and Albert Bial were German immigrants who ran a series of entertainment establishments and concert halls in the late 19th Century. They opened their first venue a block south of here, at 6th Avenue and 23rd Street, in 1879, a beer garden with occasional performances. Two years later Koster & Bial opened a second establishment at 115-117 West 23rd; this one was more of a theatre offering song and comedy, a precursor of sorts to vaudeville. K & B remained in the 23rd Street area until 1892, when they moved uptown, as much of NYC’s entertainment business then was doing, to West 34th, where they ran a larger theater under the aegis of Oscar Hammerstein, Senior until their deaths in 1895 and 1897 respectively. The uptown Koster & Bial’s property was purchased by R.H. Macy’s in 1901, and The World’s Biggest Store remains on the property today.

Thomas Edison presented what he called the first demonstration of a moving picture at K&B in 1896, though that accomplishment is claimed by others.

“The Corner” building at 6th Avenue and 24th was constructed from 1886-1887 and served as K&B’s offices, also containing a beer bottling business. Ironically it was part of the K&B empire for only a short time. The print at left, from the NYPL archives, shows it in 1892, and it looks remarkably the same today.

Exterior photo: Max Ferguson; interior, Alchetron; the dancers were not club employees but models hired for a photo shoot

Any discussion of “The Corner” building is incomplete without mentioning Billy’s Topless, which held down the storefront for nearly 3 decades before a change in zoning ultimately doomed it in 1999. I never got an opportunity to go in, but Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York did:

For over two decades, Billy’s was a neighborhood bar. They served a free sterno-heated buffet (that no one ever touched). The customers and the dancers knew each other, chatted together, and no one got hustled…Girls from the Coney Island Sideshow danced at Billy’s, tattoos and all. The stars of the new burlesque paid the rent and tried out new routines at Billy’s. Each girl was unique, some beautiful, some boring, while others looked like something straight out of Diane Arbus.

Even some girls from the Fashion Institute of Technology would dance at Billy’s on their lunch hour to help pay school bills, so I have been told. When Mayor Giuliani cracked down on midtown strip joints in the mid-1990s, Billy’s Topless, in “The Corner” building, devised a method to keep the cops away for awhile at least: while the girls were stripping off their clothes, owner Milton Anthony stripped off an apostrophe, making the sign read “Billy Stopless.” He also made the dancers keep their tops on. The joint went out of business around 2000, anyway, and these days the only thing topless there is a bagel without cream cheese.   

More on The Corner (Ephemeral New York)

As I suspected, I’ll have to pick up the rest of 6th Avenue at a later date… more to come.

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12/3/23