The tenants (Gristedes, a theater, a McDonalds, a taco shop, a dry cleaners, and a medical equipment supplier, and the longstanding Midtown Tennis Club) are gone.
Snapped some “before demolition begins” pictures, today:
These are good news! The new building will be catty corner to this one:
A much needed upgrade for the area.
4 Likes
Very nice.
1 Like
Such a shame to loose such a beautiful building, I wonder if it had a checkered past? 
Sorry, I couldn’t help myself!
6 Likes
This will be an extremely stark (but welcomed) contrast with the Penn South housing.
Demo seems to be hung up by asbestos abatement (signs on the doors).
You were everywhere!
4 Likes
I hope all the social housing eyesore next to Hudson Yards gets redeveloped the next years with a much more pleasing architecture.
Just look at what London is doing on council estates and replicate the same. It’s crazy the contrast.
2 Likes
That will only happen if they start to fall apart, which could happen. These particular buildings are not government property.
Yeah, Penn South is not social housing, it’s a Mitchell-Lama cooperative, although Robert Moses and city/state governments definitely were in the kitchen from the start, and there were some icky machinations that annihilated six full city blocks of “slum” to make it happen. This is pretty high quality housing. The only real “eyesore” here is the parking garage.
The redevelopment of the Elliott-Chelsea houses across 9th Ave is covered here:
Whenever I read someone dismissing the homes of two thousand people as “an eyesore”, I get queasy. You’re dismissing the people along with the building. Sure, you can cherry pick examples of public housing redevelopments around the world that suit your tastes, but the uncomfortable truth is that an awful lot of these “redevelopments” ultimately go quite badly for the people that live in them.
2 Likes
That you can walk to hudson yards from here and this is only 9 stories is absurd…
1 Like
I was surprised by that, myself.
The Diocese has also recently decommissioned the Guardian Angel/St. Columbo church and school on 25th St. That’s one of the churches on a carve-out when Penn South was developed. Could make an excellent site for a high density tower.
I worked with an old timer that used to visit that area before it was redeveloped. He said the area literally stank from decay. Plus consider the time frame. When this development was new, these buildings were the tallest in the area. The interiors are still exceptionally well maintained.