New Yorkers: Weigh in on the Swiftly Sprouting ASTOR PLACE "Luxury" High Rise

This happens all the time in NYC

I thought this was going to be a JBR thread. You just noticed this building? You forgot to mention the selling point of it being one block from 2! starbucks!

I didn't just notice it (I live a block away from it). I just haven't started a thread about it until now.

Same thing in Chicago. People think that being a block from a Starbuck's automatically means they can add $50 to the rent. It's like the ultimate amenity.

grumblegrumble McAmerica and all that

Nah, I know how futile it is to complain about these sorts of things. It doesn't stop them from existing.

http://home.nyc.rr.com/avnish/NYC/Astor.jpg

http://www.brasgalla.com/wtc/images/Astor_Place.jpg

http://www.artnet.com/magazine/news/ntm3/Images/ntm9-1-6.jpg

That's like the Statue of Zeus at Olympia as rendered by Christo.

http://www.nyu.edu/greyart/exhibits/rudy/images/32/32.jpg

I actually wouldn't mind the building if it wasn't so fucking tall.

http://pith.org/core/related-astor/

http://www.curbed.com/archives/2004/07/23/the_tower_of_bowery.php#more

I, like jbr, am addicted to Curbed.

http://homepage.mac.com/alexinnyc/.Pictures/Photo%20Album%20Pictures/2004-08-12%2011.35.12%20-0700/Image-96F9BD7CEC8D11D8.jpg

http://www.lockhartsteele.com/blog/archives/bowery.jpg

Your search - borg cube nyc - did not match any documents.

"SCULPTURE FOR LIVING: Undulating. Provocative. Abstract. Reflective."

Abstract??? Undulating???

...which explains the undulation theory. However, rather yawnsomely, it actually just ended up looking like this:

http://homepage.mac.com/alexinnyc/.Pictures/Photo%20Album%20Pictures/2005-03-30%2016.07.30%20-0800/Image-F3FEAEE6A17711D9.jpg

Now, granted, this picture doesn't really do it justice, but it quite clearly demonstrates that any architecturally sensuous undulation is quite out of the question. It basically looks like a giant tube of blue shampoo that divides the East Village from the Village.

http://homepage.mac.com/alexinnyc/.Pictures/Photo%20Album%20Pictures/2005-04-06%2006.31.21%20-0700/Image-0263BF52A6A011D9.jpg

http://homepage.mac.com/alexinnyc/.Pictures/Photo%20Album%20Pictures/2005-04-06%2006.31.21%20-0700/Image-0263E3B8A6A011D9.jpg

Further down the Bowery, CBGB's is getting squeezed like the proverbial zit.

http://homepage.mac.com/alexinnyc/.Pictures/Photo%20Album%20Pictures/2005-04-06%2006.31.21%20-0700/Image-0263F850A6A011D9.jpg

That eyesore of an NYU dorm occupies this old space...

http://www.globevisions.com/images/amato%20opera/bowery.jpg

In 1748, what is now Lafayette and Astor Place, was New York City's first botanical garden, established by a Swiss physician, Jacob Sperry, who farmed flowers and hothouse plants. A mile from what was then the edge of the city, Sperry's gardens became the destination of weekend strollers. In 1804 Sperry sold his gardens to John Jacob Astor, who then leased the property to a Frenchman named Delacroix, who transformed the property into the fashionable Vauxhall Garden, where New Yorkers could sniff flowers as well as eat, drink, listen to music (just like the buskers playing at the big black Cube in the 80s), and view fireworks and theatrical events.

By 1825, with real estate values skyrocketing on nearby Bond, Bleecker, and Great Jones streets, Astor cut the street, reducing the garden to half its size, which created Lafayette Place. Astor realized a great profit for the lots here, named LaGrange Terrace. Four of the original nine “mansions” remain as Colonnade Row - they're those Greek Revival townhouses housing Blue Man Group that you'd kill to live in. The other five were destroyed in 1902 to make way for an annex to Wanamaker’s Department Store.

In honor of Shakespeare's birthday, which is sometime around now, let's learn a little about one of the most infamous associations with Astor Place - the Astor Riot on May 10, 1849. Years after heated anti-English sentiment, NYC witnessed one of the most violent confrontations in the city's history - an angry mob of Irish and German workers and nativists (that's us folks!) descended upon the Astor Place Opera House during a staging of Macbeth, to protest the appearance of the English Shakespearean actor, William Charles Macready, a fancy aristocrat who was thought to look down upon Americans as "boorish and uncultured." Us? The protesters were there in support of Edwin Forrest, an American-born Shakespearean actor who was fiercely patriotic, epitomized the democratic ideals of America and did not want to be dominated by elite outsiders. Hmmm, sounds like the MAGIC GARDEN. Forrest was the first American-born actor to become an international celebrity and by the mid-nineteenth century was earning $2,000 a week. And he was idolized.

Here's how it started - the Astor Place Opera House was built in 1847 by a group of philanthropists at the juncture of Broadway and the Bowery. Broadway was a playground for the wealthy. The Bowery was lined with saloons and boarding houses. Remember a few years ago? Sigh. There was dress code at the Astor Place Opera, white gloves and silk vest, which offended the locals - in particular, the "Bowery B'hoys," a gang of Irish and German working class toughs who felt that such elitist standards violated the basic principles of the American democracy, and they pretty much hated the English and all things aristocratic. The Opera House served as a divisive emblem, which pitted the leisure class against the laboring class. One look at the Bowery today and this schism is still frighteningly apparent.

On May 7, 1849, the evening when the three leading theaters in the city presented Macbeth, the Astor Place Opera House was packed with Forrest supporters, who interrupted Macready the Brit's performance with yelling, throwing of rotten eggs, potatoes, and chairs, and all around misbehaving. After his performance, Macready announced that he would leave the city. But the upper class community of NYC was outraged and a petition decrying the antics of the Forrest supporters was signed by 48 prominent New Yorkers, including Washington Irving and Herman Melville (who is a distant relative of musician and vegan Moby, born Richard Melville Hall) and sent to Macready as well as local newspapers. Macready was promised protection and support and so he agreed to perform. Signs were posted around the city announcing his appearance in Macbeth on the night of May 10, 1849, but some of the rowdy Bowery B'hoys also posted notices, urging a protest during Macready's performance. In preparation, a police force of 250 was stationed in and around the Opera House. The doors and windows of the theater were closed and barricaded, and the National Guard was put on alert.

And so, on May 10, a volatile crowd of 10,000 and 15,000 people assembled in the streets outside the Astor Place Opera House. They began throwing stones and broken pieces of brick at the police outside, and as the police took refuge inside, the mob began hurling stones at the windows, destroying the flimsy barricades, and hitting the audience. The mob dispersed only when the National Guardsmen opened fire. It is said that 23 people died, and over 100 were wounded, including 50 to 70 police officers. It was the first time that American troops had ever fired on Americans. New York City and the nation were devastated. In the days following the Riot, rallies were held in Washington Square Park to protest the killings. The National Guard troops kept vigil at the Astor Place Opera House to prevent further violence. For three days after, the city remained under martial law (that's a state in which all civil laws, rights and liberties are suspended and the military has direct rule). Sort of like that comforting feeling we had during the RNC, when we were greeted on our daily commute by stern-faced, gigantic-gunned toting, camouflaged-clad youngsters on the subway and throughout the streets, all in the name of patriotism.

Remembered as the site of a massacre, the Astor Place Opera house never recovered. In 1854, the building was converted into the Mercantile Library Building, and then was home to the Chinese consulate in the 1920s. Later the District 65 Building, which housed the National Writer's Union for more than 50 years. I think it's now the highly respectable Kinkos and Starbucks. Starbuck was the name of the first mate in Melville's Moby Dick. Melville spent 19 years as a customs inspector on the New York docks. And this building, if it's not already, will soon be available if you want to spend 4 million dollars on a condo.

http://www.newyorker.com/critics/skyline/articles/050502crsk_skyline

um:

http://observer.cast.advomatic.com/files/imagecache/article/files/cooperunion2_1.jpg

ah, nostalgia for the naivete of '04...

OH FUCK

lol

I thought that was a skating rink for a minute!

coopafeller ice emporium

what is it, the Fortress of Solitude?

The folks involved with a new building at 51 Astor Place sent out a rendering of the proposed tower last night, and it seems architect Fumihiko Maki plans a building rather reminiscent of his planned Tower 4 at the World Trade Center (a.k.a. 150 Greenwich Street), with a corrugated facade and distinct angles. The site sits just across from the school’s signature 1859 Cooper Union Foundation Building.

Cooper Union has entered into a long-term lease for the site, currently an engineering building, with Edward J. Minskoff Equities, which will build and own the planned 440,000-square-foot mixed-use building. Studley’s Woody Heller represented Cooper Union on the deal.

This will look about a thousand times better than the Sculpture For Living.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2400/2264875399_92f7ee38b3.jpg

i'm still sort of bummed out that the shrouded, cloth-draped model of the sculpture for living as it appeared just before its unveiling wasn't the actual design of the building

People suck.

i had to work in the show/sales room for the new phillipe st4rck building in gramercy yesterday. that place is bonkers. i stared at a huge rhino head all day and had to wear all black.

waht the hell

I miss the old NY a bit and think the Astor Place thing is great.

i stared at a huge rhino head all day and had to wear all black.

this will soon be compulsory at every workplace below 14th st and above canal

people kept asking if the rhino was real, I had no clue and just said I didn't think rhino skin was that monochromatic. it was the most ridiculous temp job I think I have ever had. I got a ridiculous amount of money to sit at a desk with nothing on it and give people St4rck water when they showed up for their appts.

lol imperialism