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ONCE-MIGHTY TROY, N.Y., one of the nation’s wealthiest cities in the glory days of the Industrial Revolution (iron, steel, precision tools, shirts and collars), fell on hard times in the 20th century, but much of its impressive — in fact, gorgeous — architecture remains intact. Some of its brownstones are more stellar, even, than Brooklyn’s best, and its commercial buildings, in the uniformly antique downtown area, are great beauties.
There’s much for an architecture aficionada to explore, and explore I did last Saturday, in the company of my travelin’ cousin Susan and Brownstoner columnist Suzanne Spellen (aka Montrose Morris), a new Troy resident and now expert on the buildings of that city. (Her recent New York Daily News article on the revitalization of Troy is here.)
Here we are at Lucas Confectionery, a hip new wine bar/ restaurant/grocery that retains the name of the original 1863 store in this space, toasting the wonders of the city named after the ancient Troy, whose motto is “Ilium fuit, Troja est (Latin for “Ilium was, Troy is”) — and, young entrepreneurs and real estate developers hope, will be.
Above, Suzanne with Lucas Confectionery owner Vic Christopher, formerly of…Brooklyn!
The obvious place to begin a walking tour of vintage Troy is Monument Square, where a towering column topped by a figure of Liberty commemorates Civil War dead, and around which are a few thriving boutiques like Truly Rhe and a phenomenally unspoiled Victorian bar/cafe, Illium Cafe (photos below of the building that houses it and its wholly original interior). Try the strawberry mimosa.
The elegant 1904 McCarthy building on Monument Square, of terra cotta with a proscenium-style arched window, below, just waiting for the right tenant.
Angling off Monument Square toward the Hudson River — narrower here than in New York City, but the original source of Troy’s commercial success — is River Street, below. The spectacular wedge-shaped Rice Building, an 1871 High Gothic landmark at the corner of River at First, replaced an earlier structure wiped out in an 1820 fire that destroyed all the businesses and warehouses along River Street, which had been a busy commercial district since the 1790s.
River Street is optimistically dubbed Antiques Row. More buildings are vacant than occupied at present, though the potential in its sturdy, attractive building stock, below, is evident. One of the best stores now open: Country Charm at #188, where painted cupboards and iron bedsteads similar to those found in Hudson, N.Y., shops are offered at a fraction of the price. Another goodie: Playing on the Furniture, a place to find cheerily repainted and refurbished secondhand pieces.
Off Monument Square in the other direction, on River and Third Streets, are livelier boutiques, vintage clothing stores and flower shops (The Botanic Studio specializes in terrariums), and more fine commercial buildings in need of tenants.
Above, Dang! That’s Cherry, a vintage clothing boutique that also sells mid-century kitsch and kitchenware.
Troy seems to have no shortage of fine public buildings. Below, the interior of the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall, an 1870s auditorium with original pipe organ, long famed for its acoustics, has a full calendar of important names in classical, jazz and popular music.
Below, the Troy Public Library, remnant of proud bygone days, with magnificent iron sconces.
Below, two early buildings at Russell Sage College, founded in 1916 in a public park in Downtown Troy.
There are numerous blocks of well-preserved row houses — a few early Federal clapboards and many later homes of brick or stone, in Italianate, Romanesque Revival, and other fanciful late 19th century styles. The best of them seem to be along 2nd Street, which we wandered, admiring bay windows, cupolas, friezes, ironwork, cornices, and other details.
Above: the Federal style Hart-Cluett House, built in 1827 with a marble facade, now the home of the Rensselaer County Historical Society.
Eventually we came to Washington Park, below, established in 1840 and one of only two private ornamental parks in the state, open by key to residents of surrounding buildings (the other such park is Gramercy Park in NYC). Some of the homes are freestanding mansions, below; others are row houses.
Above, one of the last remaining cobblestone streets in Troy.
We returned to Monument Square along 3rd Street, where the homes are more modest. There are two interesting houses of worship: the 1827 St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, below, whose 1890s interior is all Tiffany; stained glass windows, woodwork, metalwork and lighting. And a cute blue-painted 1870 synagogue, in continuous use for the past 144 years.
Wherever you roam, there’s interesting stuff to see, like the leaded glass storefront and rusting Art Deco hotel sign, below.
That’s Troy 101 for you. What do you make of it?
I’VE BEEN A FAN OF TEL AVIV’S BAUHAUS-STYLE ARCHITECTURE at least since 1984, when a show at New York’s Jewish Museum made me aware of the design importance of the so-called “White City.” German Jewish architects influenced by the Bauhaus and LeCorbusier emigrated to Tel Aviv in great numbers in the 1930s, fleeing the Nazi rise to power. Erich Mendelsohn is probably the best-known of them; he and others brought International Style ideas of modernity to the construction of mostly low-rise apartment buildings, adapting their design principles to a hot climate.
Now Israeli artist Avner Gicelter has launched a website featuring meticulous graphic illustrations of 11 (so far) outstanding buildings throughout his beloved city. It’s an attractive resource and a useful document.
I’ve written before about Tel Aviv’s stock of 4,000 such modernist buildings, including an outraged letter to the New York Times Travel section after a writer summed up the city’s architecture as “awful.” Remembering a walking tour conducted by Israeli friends, I described the city’s back streets as “uniform blocks of characteristically flat-roofed, cubic structures with ribbons of balconies, or with sleek curves and rounded corners that rival anything in Miami’s South Beach for streamlined modernity.”
The city’s collection is impressive. Three districts were declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2003, and Conde Nast Traveler magazine has called Tel Aviv one of the world’s best cities for architecture lovers. Some of the Bauhaus-style structures anchor broad boulevards, like the elegant Rothschild Boulevard, or encircle plazas like well-known Dizengoff Square. More line narrow side streets. Some have been carefully restored; others are still in an unfortunate state of disrepair. There’s an ongoing preservation battle.
All the above illustrations are from Gicelter’s website, where you can see more building images and subscribe to the continuing series.
THE TITLE OF MITCH BRODER’S new book is just what I’ve been doing lately: Discovering Vintage New York (Globe Pequot, $17) — or what’s left of it, anyway. While friends plan winter trips to Paris, Costa Rica, Burma, and other far-flung places, my own wanderlust is limited these days to the New York City of an earlier era. With Broder’s book as my guide, I’m discovering or re-discovering venerable Manhattan bars, restaurants, bookstores, hat shops, bakeries, etc. — some well-known, some not-so, some dives, some fancy — that have miraculously survived the relentless march of commerce.
I’m much happier at the Old Town Bar on East 18th Street, a dimly lit 1890s tavern with a 55-foot-long marble bar and a dumbwaiter bringing sandwiches up from the basement, than in some trendy new spot. Everything is original: tin ceiling, tile floor, stained glass windows, converted gas chandeliers. “We don’t want to be a hip place,” says an owner, and hurray for that. Broder, a seasoned newspaperman, wants us to have the whole back story; he gives us three pages of reportage on each of 50 places, plus sidebars with 25 more.
The book is a handy compendium of places I once frequented but had forgotten, always meant to get to but never did, and a few I’d never heard of at all. Wait too long, and some of these spots might not be there when you finally get around to it, Broder points out in the book’s introduction. “When places like these close, people who always meant to visit them start grieving. I wrote this book to save you some grief.”
Here’s a partial list of my winter itinerary, drawn from Discovering Vintage New York:
Barbetta, an old-school Italian restaurant on W. 46th Street, opened in 1906 in a brownstone parlor floor
El Quijote, a kitschy Spanish-themed restaurant on W. 23rd St., est. 1920
Right: Eisenberg’s Sandwich Shop
B&H Dairy, a Jewish lunch counter on Second Avenue dating from the 1940s. I remember the mushroom barley soup from my NYU days, but never dared to dream it was still in business.
Milano’s Bar on E. Houston, est. 1923 (new to me, though I’ve seen it in passing).
Nom Wah Tea Parlor on Doyers Street in Chinatown, on the street since 1920, though in a different storefront, and possibly the first to serve dim sum in New York.
Yonah Schimmel’s antique knish bakery I know, and Cafe Reggio on MacDougal, the last of the original Village cafes where you can still get cannolli and baba rum and cappuccino in a nicotine-stained 1920s interior, both included in the book. Mysteriously, the White Horse Tavern, Minetta Tavern, Walker’s and Raoul’s, all favorite downtown haunts of mine, are not. But I find it heartening that there are enough old places left that Broder couldn’t cover them all.
Let the new places continue to open (and close). I’m feeling some urgency about checking out the holdouts. If not now, when?
Below: Wo Hop
SUNDAY AFTERNOONS are made for places like the Sycamore Bar and Flowershop in Ditmas Park, Brooklyn, a section of detached Victorians that comes as a welcome relief from the relentless trendiness of the closer-in-to-Manhattan neighborhoods.
The Sycamore is kind of like an old-time speakeasy, hidden behind a storefront flower shop. The bar is dark and atmospheric, with 70 kinds of bourbon, below, and a pleasant garden behind, where raw oysters were being shucked yesterday by the traveling Brooklyn Oyster Party.
My sister and I found our way there (Q train to Cortelyou Road), sampled the bourbon, then headed across the street to Mimi’s Hummus for warm hummus with whole chick peas, Jerusalem-style; beet and cauliflower salads; and chocolate balls rolled in coconut, called Punchim.
We ended up at Mayfield in Crown Heights and ordered fried oysters at the bar, served with smoked salmon and horseradish sauce, washed down with a crisp white Rioja.
This could become a habit.
Right: One-of-a-kind $15 bouquets of roses, ranunculus and assorted greens by Stems, the flower shop that shares space with the Sycamore Bar.
Photos: Stacie Sinder
SEEMS TO ME THE FALL COLORS — peaking late after an unseasonably warm October — are more brilliant than usual this year. Here in Brownstone Brooklyn, there’s no sense one needs to go up to Vermont or the Hudson Valley to be fully satisfied on that score. Above, Underhill Avenue in Prospect Heights. Below, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden — my favorite urban refuge –in its autumnal glory.
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