On a recent jaunt to Hunters Point, I was heartened to see an honorific street sign honoring Tony Mazzarella, who opened the Waterfront Crabhouse in 1978. It attracted famous visitors just as its predecessor at Borden Avenue and 2nd Street Tony Miller’s Hotel did in the old days: Bobby Hull, Paul Newman, Ed Asner and Maureen O’Hara, and many other sports and entertainment luminaries, have all visited over the years.
Hurricane Sandy dealt a blow to the Crabhouse, which in its glory days was an affordable seafood restaurant, with its walls festooned with NYC memorabilia like subway signs, board games, advertisements, bottles, framed pictures, and other donated artifacts. Mazzarella was a boxing buff and the bar area was crammed with pugilistic memorabilia. After Mazzarella’s death, his family sold it to a new operator, and all of the memorabilia went to the Mazzarella family; the menu was updated and made more expensive.
For a number of years, friends and I would meet each summer around my birthday for lunch at the Crabhouse, but the area has utterly changed the last few years, with pricey residential buildings going up across the street, and a large park built at the East River waterfront. The old Penn Station powerhouse, which was home to Schwartz Chemical for a number of years, was also converted to a condominium in the mid-2000s, with its four huge smokestacks dismantled and taken away. They can still be seen on abstract paintings by Georgia O’Keeffe. The Miller’s Hotel building, much altered, remains in place amid the new residential towers springing up in Hunters Point.
Check out the ForgottenBook. As always, “comment…as you see fit.” I earn a small payment when you click on any ad on the site.
8/17/26