I’m very surprised that I can find nothing written online or offline about this exquisite little building at 176 MacDougal Street in the Village. It sits at the corner of MacDougal Street and MacDougal Alley (click here). It is unusual in that much of it is unattached on four sides, atypical of small buildings like this in Manhattan. Coupled with its white-painted exterior, the building has a very free feeling to it. The detailing and window boxes gives it a European, perhaps Parisian, flavor. The retail space has gone through a number of incarnations over the years; currently, it is a laundromat. At one time, there was a restaurant called Shakespeare’s here.

Along 8th Street, there were numerous bookstores; the one at the corner of MacDougal is where Bob Dylan was introduced to Allen Ginsberg in 1964. I was told that Robert Joffrey of the Joffrey Ballet lived atop the building in the photo, but today I have learned that it was next door at 180 MacDougal. Across the street was Capezio, a renowned maker of dance shoes. The Joffrey Ballet company was around the corner on 6th Avenue. The neighborhood had the type of places that gave the Village its Bohemian, artsy, iconoclastic character.

But all this nostalgia with remembrances, reveries, and reminiscing reminds me of a great article in the New York Times which had a profound impact on me. It was written in 2001 by Jill Eisenstadt, a Brooklynite who recounts her parent’s telling (ad nauseum) of how everything was better back when – seltzer, candy stores, cafeterias, stickball, stoopball, the trolley, mickeys, egg creams, Ebbets field, and the Dodgers. I will leave you with the final few sentences of that article:

“Years from now, I’ll probably tell my grandchildren about the old neighborhood. How merchants let me run up a tab if I was short on cash, how the pediatrician offered to make a house call in an emergency, how the baker made me promise to bring the babies in for their first cookies, how we all helped each other shovel the one snowfall of 1999. But when they ask what a shovel is, I hope I’ll tell them the truth. That a shovel is a heavy tool. That nostalgia is a heavy comfort. That I don’t really miss Brooklyn way back when. What I miss is being young. That everything is probably a lot better now.”

Related Postings: Left Bank, New York; MacDougal Alley; Re-Creation; Washington Mews

Front Street is part of the Historic Cobble Stone District in South Street Seaport. The area has been renovated, gentrified, and developed (by the Rouse company); I discuss the cloned look with other areas of the country in my posting on South Street Seaport. The original architecture, however, has been preserved, as you can see by the signage on the buildings in the photo above left. A walk down any of the streets is rewarding, and the area’s history can still be felt.

I like the quote from Moby Dick which is inscribed on a placard on Front Street. It captures the spirit of New York City at a time and in a place where its true nautical nature must have been preeminent:

“Circumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon. Go from Corlears Hook to Coenties Slip, and from thence, by Whitehall, northward. What do you see?- Posted like silent sentinels all around the town, stand thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean reveries. Some leaning against the spiles; some seated upon the pier-heads; some looking over the bulwarks of ships from China; some high aloft in the rigging, as if striving to get a still better seaward peep.”

I have done several postings on aspects of this neighborhood: Belle de Jour, Dead to the World, Fishbridge Garden, Spiegeltent

I have been virtually obsessed with this place and was looking forward to posting photos and the story behind one of the most amazing properties in the entire city. Here, we have a 200-year-old farmhouse on its own piece of land, with a yard and driveway, the six-room wood-frame house stuck against a neighboring brick building. Click here for more photos. The first time I encountered this tiny house at 121 Charles Street, I couldn’t believe it. An anomaly and a time warp in a bucolic setting. There is little information on this place, so I had to dig.

This house was originally on a rear lot at 71st and York Ave. The exact date of its origin is unknown. The house was occupied in the 1940s by Margaret Wise Brown,  author of ”Goodnight Moon.” In 1960, it was occupied by Swedish-born Mr. and Mrs. Sven Bernhard, who, after extensive renovations, won ownership in 1966. However, the land was owned by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, who intended to demolish the house for the building of a new Mary Manning Walsh Home for the Aged. Wanting to keep the home, the Bernhards decided to move the entire house intact. With the help of architect William C. Shopsin, they located a vacant 3600-square foot lot on Charles Street.

On March 5, 1967, the entire house was moved five miles (at a cost of $6500) from its Upper East Side location down Second Avenue and across 14th Street to its new home in the West Village, with the Bernhards following by car. In 1988, Suri Bieler and her husband Eliot Brodsky began a restoration of the property with architect George Boyle. A room for their 7-year-old, Jack Brodsky, was added. You won’t find anything like this in Manhattan, trust me. I understand that it’s not for sale…