materialicious
corn-gratz justin on your new materials blog
Thanks, Bill. But it's materialicious. Gonna have to change the title, as it's creating too much confusion.
Once I get some personal stuff squared away, I'll be posting like crazy.
sorry its fixed now. good luck and have fun with the blog.
btw, hey world, check out where justin grew up!
Thanks. Yeah, every time I see that Abbot photo, I get a real pain in my heart..... I LOVED growing up there.
That's a glorious building to grow up in. It also reminds me of an old building in Montreal that's reminiscent of that beautiful stone carved curviness, except it was made from molded concrete. (kind of weird and cool, Franco-Soviet? I'll look for images)
Alwyn Court was great - all kinds of cool folks lived there when I was growing up: fading movie, Broadway and dance stars, Louis Nizer, the lawyer, Darrin McGavin, and Carole Bayer Sager grew up there, too.
Not only was there a basement where the (huge) laundry room was, we had a gigantic sub-basement with wine cellars (really creepy), and several huge storerooms crammed with antiques & musical instruments (grand pianos and concert harps), as well as dozens of old steamer trunks stuffed with incredible goodies. Back in the late 70's the fire department changed the rules on storage in buildings (that's why the sidewalks were littered with incredible finds).... When the building owner realized that most of the stuff in our storage areas was abandoned, he let me have my pick of the lot. I was down there every night after school and on weekends picking through everything, for a month. Um, yeah, I found some incredible stuff, some worth a lotta money........ paintings, furniture, posters, the trunks themselves, and because people like Kitty Carlisle lived there with her husband Moss Hart, I found box after box of all radio transcripts, records, books and magazines, travel memorabilia, war and USO stuff, all kinds of unbelievable stuff. I still have some of it....
If I hadn't salvaged all the good stuff, it would all have thrown in the trash. Seriously. I was just a kid, but I knew full well that all this stuff was worth saving.
Why am I imagining Polanski's interior apartment shots from "Rosemary's baby" in that description? (don't correct me! It's a great image whether its true or not)
I won't correct you, because your imagination serves you very well, indeed.
This is weird: if you look at my 'about' page you'll see that the very first renovation I ever worked on, when I was 16, was in the Dakota........... I'm getting a creepy feeling again [shivers]................
i got a dakota story : when i worked at bergdorf goodman (in the 80's) i knew someone from the fur dept who recounted that they had had to go to the dakota to pick up some of *someone's* (lets say a famous artist who had been married to a rather famous rockstar) fur coats to go into the fur-vault at the store. that person had bought an additional apartment in the building to hold her furs coats which included a large selection of fendis.
heres some alwyn court links :
NY architecture images
city realty
NYT
Woody loves it too
The NYT story is old - almost all the repairs are finished. Back in 1980, when the co-op conversion was taking place, the very first cleaning of the exterior was attempted, and let me tell you, the FILTH that came off that building!!!! OMG!!!! Unbelievable. The difference was astonishing - the building was almost *snow white*. Unreal. Didn't last long though........ By the way, the conversion was done by Two Trees Management, owned by David Walentas, one of the worst scumbuckets I've ever had the displeasure to meet. Google him if you're interested. I'm not.
Here's another tidbit: there were only four of us kids in the whole building, the most at any one time: me, Pam (the daughter of the portrait painter John Howard Sanden), and Jack and Ruth from downstairs, who remain two of my best friends to this day... Their parents, Bert and Laura Gold, were interesting folks - they owned Park South Gallery at Carnegie Hall ( www.parksouthgallery.com - the original gallery is gone now, and is now located in a studio upstairs), and the flood of famous artists that came through their place was amazing. Most notably Dali - they have photos of Dali's ocelot, which he brought with him everywhere, with Jack in his crib (!). Bert was a graphic artist and was the cue card guy on the original Saturday Night Live. Laura decided in the 80's to change the focus of the gallery to turn-of-the-century art posters (she's got thousands of them!), and is one of the top dealers in the world. She is also the foremost authority on Toulouse-Lautrec (and owns a lot of his stuff, too). Still lives in Alwyn Court.
One thing about being friends with the Golds.... us kids used to sneak into Carnegie Hall all the time (don't ask how - I ain't confiding), so we got to see Sinatra, Segovia, Casals, Eubie Blake on his 95th birthday, a bunch of jazz greats - it's a long list. The view was weird, though - we were up in the rafters above the stage. Never did get caught. =]
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corn-gratz justin on your new materials blog
- bill 4-13-2007 2:33 am
Thanks, Bill. But it's materialicious. Gonna have to change the title, as it's creating too much confusion.
Once I get some personal stuff squared away, I'll be posting like crazy.
- Justin (guest) 4-13-2007 5:41 am [add a comment]
sorry its fixed now. good luck and have fun with the blog.
btw, hey world, check out where justin grew up!
- bill 4-13-2007 10:46 am [add a comment]
Great blog, a resource I'll be using. One of my fave buildings too.
- steve 4-13-2007 9:55 pm [add a comment]
Thanks. Yeah, every time I see that Abbot photo, I get a real pain in my heart..... I LOVED growing up there.
- Justin (guest) 4-13-2007 7:21 pm [add a comment]
That's a glorious building to grow up in. It also reminds me of an old building in Montreal that's reminiscent of that beautiful stone carved curviness, except it was made from molded concrete. (kind of weird and cool, Franco-Soviet? I'll look for images)
- L.M. 4-13-2007 10:05 pm [add a comment]
Alwyn Court was great - all kinds of cool folks lived there when I was growing up: fading movie, Broadway and dance stars, Louis Nizer, the lawyer, Darrin McGavin, and Carole Bayer Sager grew up there, too.
Not only was there a basement where the (huge) laundry room was, we had a gigantic sub-basement with wine cellars (really creepy), and several huge storerooms crammed with antiques & musical instruments (grand pianos and concert harps), as well as dozens of old steamer trunks stuffed with incredible goodies. Back in the late 70's the fire department changed the rules on storage in buildings (that's why the sidewalks were littered with incredible finds).... When the building owner realized that most of the stuff in our storage areas was abandoned, he let me have my pick of the lot. I was down there every night after school and on weekends picking through everything, for a month. Um, yeah, I found some incredible stuff, some worth a lotta money........ paintings, furniture, posters, the trunks themselves, and because people like Kitty Carlisle lived there with her husband Moss Hart, I found box after box of all radio transcripts, records, books and magazines, travel memorabilia, war and USO stuff, all kinds of unbelievable stuff. I still have some of it....
If I hadn't salvaged all the good stuff, it would all have thrown in the trash. Seriously. I was just a kid, but I knew full well that all this stuff was worth saving.
- Justin (guest) 4-14-2007 5:17 am [add a comment]
Why am I imagining Polanski's interior apartment shots from "Rosemary's baby" in that description? (don't correct me! It's a great image whether its true or not)
- L.M. 4-14-2007 10:28 am [add a comment]
I won't correct you, because your imagination serves you very well, indeed.
This is weird: if you look at my 'about' page you'll see that the very first renovation I ever worked on, when I was 16, was in the Dakota........... I'm getting a creepy feeling again [shivers]................
- Justin (guest) 4-14-2007 11:16 am [add a comment]
i got a dakota story : when i worked at bergdorf goodman (in the 80's) i knew someone from the fur dept who recounted that they had had to go to the dakota to pick up some of *someone's* (lets say a famous artist who had been married to a rather famous rockstar) fur coats to go into the fur-vault at the store. that person had bought an additional apartment in the building to hold her furs coats which included a large selection of fendis.
- bill 4-14-2007 4:17 pm [add a comment]
heres some alwyn court links :
NY architecture images
city realty
NYT
- bill 4-14-2007 4:27 pm [add a comment]
imagine a chunk of that terra cott, complete with pigeon spikes, falling and...
- steve 4-14-2007 6:15 pm [add a comment]
Woody loves it too
- steve 4-14-2007 6:08 pm [add a comment]
The NYT story is old - almost all the repairs are finished. Back in 1980, when the co-op conversion was taking place, the very first cleaning of the exterior was attempted, and let me tell you, the FILTH that came off that building!!!! OMG!!!! Unbelievable. The difference was astonishing - the building was almost *snow white*. Unreal. Didn't last long though........ By the way, the conversion was done by Two Trees Management, owned by David Walentas, one of the worst scumbuckets I've ever had the displeasure to meet. Google him if you're interested. I'm not.
Here's another tidbit: there were only four of us kids in the whole building, the most at any one time: me, Pam (the daughter of the portrait painter John Howard Sanden), and Jack and Ruth from downstairs, who remain two of my best friends to this day... Their parents, Bert and Laura Gold, were interesting folks - they owned Park South Gallery at Carnegie Hall ( www.parksouthgallery.com - the original gallery is gone now, and is now located in a studio upstairs), and the flood of famous artists that came through their place was amazing. Most notably Dali - they have photos of Dali's ocelot, which he brought with him everywhere, with Jack in his crib (!). Bert was a graphic artist and was the cue card guy on the original Saturday Night Live. Laura decided in the 80's to change the focus of the gallery to turn-of-the-century art posters (she's got thousands of them!), and is one of the top dealers in the world. She is also the foremost authority on Toulouse-Lautrec (and owns a lot of his stuff, too). Still lives in Alwyn Court.
One thing about being friends with the Golds.... us kids used to sneak into Carnegie Hall all the time (don't ask how - I ain't confiding), so we got to see Sinatra, Segovia, Casals, Eubie Blake on his 95th birthday, a bunch of jazz greats - it's a long list. The view was weird, though - we were up in the rafters above the stage. Never did get caught. =]
- Justin (guest) 4-15-2007 10:22 am [add a comment]