lies the tent that once stretched across this now-barren red-pole frame, sheltering a motley collection of relics and oddities known as Billy's Antiques and Props. The tent met its demise back in March to make way for a new building on the site (under whose foundation the coffin will be buried, and within whose confines Billy's will be resurrected), but it looks as though the new structure is no closer to completion now than it was six months ago.
Moe is the last butcher left in Little Italy. He used to be in Little Italy, anyway, before all the Italians left and the upscale boutiques moved in. The neighborhood is now known as Nolita, as it is north of (what remains of) Little Italy.
Also, as you may have noticed, this meat market looks an awful lot like an art gallery. That's because it is an art gallery; Moe's shop is actually located across the street. The artist whose work is for sale here is no Johnny-come-lately, however; he's an elderly Hawaiian man who's owned this building since 1977.
You can see my shadow cast on the wooden frame, within which lies my reflection in the mirror, within which lies the reflection of the mirror's reflection in the window (located about where my reflected stomach is). Got that? Here's a closer look.
This is part of the Elizabeth Street Gallery, "an atmospheric mash-up of architectural and antique objects, including second-century Greek and Roman carved-stone vessels, sixteenth- to nineteenth-century architectural elements and statuary, and twentieth-century folk art and curiosities." Here's a look inside the gallery. The garden is available for all sorts of events, including the gag-worthy "sublime urban picnics", according to the gallery's website.
is what this building used to be. Now it's the Holy Trinity Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Let's take a look inside...
to the former Bowery Savings Bank, with some dragon fruit on sale in the foreground
Inside lies this escalator, which leads to this dining room. Welcome to Jing Fong.
Even for someone like me who has no use for 99.8% of the store's inventory, there's something really fun about climbing up the creaky old staircase and wandering around the five floors jam-packed with art supplies.
is what Charles Lane was known as in the mid-19th century, when it supposedly served as a staging area for hogs and other animals awaiting their demise at the nearby slaughterhouses on West Street. This narrow, block-long passage originally came into being with the construction of Newgate Prison; it ran outside the northern wall of that institution, which opened in 1797 as New York State's first penitentiary.
As planned, the tiles have been removed, but Jim Power's 9/11 planter is still hanging around.
The tiles may be gone, but there are still a handful of love locks clinging to the fence.
Occupying the former site of a food market and two different jails, this garden lies in the shadow of the Jefferson Market Courthouse, "a delicious fantasy of turrets, gables, lookouts and stone carving" that the NY Times called "a jewel in a swine’s snout" when it was built in 1877 amidst the otherwise shabby dwellings of Greenwich Village.
The courthouse was considered by many 19th-century architects to be one of the most beautiful buildings in the entire country (photos here), but by the mid-1900s it had been abandoned and in 1958 was slated to be auctioned off to a private developer. It became the focus of New York's first major battle for historic preservation, and its advocates were successful in saving the structure and putting it back into use, this time as a rather magnificent branch of the New York Public Library, a role it serves to this day.
One of the nation's most selective colleges, Cooper Union offers a full scholarship to every student it admits.
(That's a Jim Power lamppost in front of the building.)
The founder of Cooper Union, Peter Cooper was an extremely successful inventor (his creations ranged from America's first steam locomotive to an early version of Jell-O) and entrepreneur (we saw the site of one of his glue factories covered in snow back in January), a beloved philanthropist, and the cultivator of one of history's great beards.
