Thursday, December 02, 2004
East 17 Street reminiscences at Thanksgiving
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
This mood of reminiscences was prompted by the season as well as by a fortuitous sequence of events.
Thanksgiving 2004 was an upbeat celebration, with the happy tone set on Wednesday, when we saw a revival performance of The Foreigner, the most cheerful of plays of the past decades, Larry Shue’s 1984 comedy about a shy visitor to Georgia, who pretends to be a non-English-speaking foreigner, and consequently learns many secrets and exposes some wicked plots. Shue, an actor and playwright, was an Army mate of one of our theatre guests.
In line for the opening of the Met store on Thursday at 8 AM, I ran into a an artist/photographer neighbor, Mel Adelglass, who was waiting for friends to go to Cape Cod for a Thanksgiving celebration, 5 ½ hours away. Mel, who usually owns six or seven cars – someone just gave him a small one – is a master of the alternate side parking game, maneuvering at leas one car around, while the rest stay in Vermont, free of parking and insurance worries.
Mel who works with Sy, a neighborhood collection agency owner, husband of Arlene, a friend from years of attending upstate antique shows, was also the neighbor of Steve Brown, a Realpolitik philosopher and habitué of Max’s Kansas City, always to be found there, throughout the 1960s, at the bar with new stories. The Old Curmudgeon and I suspected him to be a remittance man or a small trust beneficiary, paid to stay away from his native Baltimore. He worked, on and off, for Ray Jacobs of the negative heel Earth Shoe shop, just east of the Guardian Life Annex, now Zurich Insurance building, and for 16th Street gallery owner Bern Crystal, who was a member of the same family as Billy Crystal the actor (he did a documentary about his uncle) and Hilly Crystal the entrepreneur, of CBGB/OMFUG fame, whose W. 9th street restaurant and improvisation theatre venue, named The Third Wall, was a hangout of my youth.
Mel was also part of the 17h Street Historic District effort, spearheaded by Jack Taylor, when the owners of the “Washington Irving” building on corner 17th and Irving, and destroyed the original historic window, replacing it with a modern one. I saw jack fleetingly whizzing by, undoubtedly on an errand of preservation mercy, too fast to offer him our Thanksgiving wishes. Please accept these public amends.
Jack is also the treasurer and chief preservationist of SPNA, the Stuyvesant Park Neighborhood Association, whose president, Carol Schachter, in September was elected chair of the Community Board #6. Congrats, Carol! The Landmarks and Preservation Committee of CB6, chaired by Gary Papusch, recently heard the architect of the National Arts Club, a NYC landmark, offering the club’s plans for restoration of their façade. Good news. Another good news is that the eight-year struggle between the club and the trustees of Gramercy Park may be over, with the settlement of the lawsuit involving the Washington Irving High School kids.
This means that the only major neighborhood controversy is the Union Square Partnership’s (formerly BID/LDC) reconstruction of the Union Square North end, the world-famous Greenmarket area, Barry Benepe’s brainchild. There will be a Union Square Community Coalition-sponsored meeting on Dec 7, 7 PM, at the Seafarers (Irving and 15th).
One of the new GP trustees is Arlene Harrison, leader of the Gramercy Park Block Association, where Jack Taylor serves as the chair of the local history and landmarks preservation group, when he is not protecting the interests of our historic buildings before the Landmarks Preservation Commission. One of the commissioners is our own Dr. Thomas Pike, rector of the Calvary/St. George’s parish.
Jack is also affiliated with the Gramercy Neighborhood Associates, whose former leader, James Dougherty, also misses the passing of Max’s Kansas City (GNA’s lead preservationist is Fred Gorree). Another MKC habitué was the late Fielding Dawson, writer and graduate of Black Mountain College, who in the 1990s became active in Louse Dankberg’s Tilden Democratic Club.
Arlene is working with the 13th Precinct on community security matters. Its community officer, Scott Crimmins who a few years ago replaced the 20-year veteran Owen Hughes, most recently director of security at the Cabrini Hospital, is now leaving himself, with a letter of thanks from the Mayor and proclamations form our local representatives. I should check the status there with Jeanne Treague, head of the 13th Precinct Council, a longtime member of the SPNA and activist in the battle for the restoration of the park’s historic fence, led in the 1980s by Rosalee Isaly, then the group’s president, with the late Joe Roberto and Rex Wassermann.
These are the names that flowed through my mind during the holiday, as we reminisced with our guests, no doubt missing some terrific football games. But these are the people – at least some of them, there will be more names when I remind us of the homeless shelter season – who make our neighborhood what it is, the pride of the city and the envy of the nation.
This mood of reminiscences was prompted by the season as well as by a fortuitous sequence of events.
Thanksgiving 2004 was an upbeat celebration, with the happy tone set on Wednesday, when we saw a revival performance of The Foreigner, the most cheerful of plays of the past decades, Larry Shue’s 1984 comedy about a shy visitor to Georgia, who pretends to be a non-English-speaking foreigner, and consequently learns many secrets and exposes some wicked plots. Shue, an actor and playwright, was an Army mate of one of our theatre guests.
In line for the opening of the Met store on Thursday at 8 AM, I ran into a an artist/photographer neighbor, Mel Adelglass, who was waiting for friends to go to Cape Cod for a Thanksgiving celebration, 5 ½ hours away. Mel, who usually owns six or seven cars – someone just gave him a small one – is a master of the alternate side parking game, maneuvering at leas one car around, while the rest stay in Vermont, free of parking and insurance worries.
Mel who works with Sy, a neighborhood collection agency owner, husband of Arlene, a friend from years of attending upstate antique shows, was also the neighbor of Steve Brown, a Realpolitik philosopher and habitué of Max’s Kansas City, always to be found there, throughout the 1960s, at the bar with new stories. The Old Curmudgeon and I suspected him to be a remittance man or a small trust beneficiary, paid to stay away from his native Baltimore. He worked, on and off, for Ray Jacobs of the negative heel Earth Shoe shop, just east of the Guardian Life Annex, now Zurich Insurance building, and for 16th Street gallery owner Bern Crystal, who was a member of the same family as Billy Crystal the actor (he did a documentary about his uncle) and Hilly Crystal the entrepreneur, of CBGB/OMFUG fame, whose W. 9th street restaurant and improvisation theatre venue, named The Third Wall, was a hangout of my youth.
Mel was also part of the 17h Street Historic District effort, spearheaded by Jack Taylor, when the owners of the “Washington Irving” building on corner 17th and Irving, and destroyed the original historic window, replacing it with a modern one. I saw jack fleetingly whizzing by, undoubtedly on an errand of preservation mercy, too fast to offer him our Thanksgiving wishes. Please accept these public amends.
Jack is also the treasurer and chief preservationist of SPNA, the Stuyvesant Park Neighborhood Association, whose president, Carol Schachter, in September was elected chair of the Community Board #6. Congrats, Carol! The Landmarks and Preservation Committee of CB6, chaired by Gary Papusch, recently heard the architect of the National Arts Club, a NYC landmark, offering the club’s plans for restoration of their façade. Good news. Another good news is that the eight-year struggle between the club and the trustees of Gramercy Park may be over, with the settlement of the lawsuit involving the Washington Irving High School kids.
This means that the only major neighborhood controversy is the Union Square Partnership’s (formerly BID/LDC) reconstruction of the Union Square North end, the world-famous Greenmarket area, Barry Benepe’s brainchild. There will be a Union Square Community Coalition-sponsored meeting on Dec 7, 7 PM, at the Seafarers (Irving and 15th).
One of the new GP trustees is Arlene Harrison, leader of the Gramercy Park Block Association, where Jack Taylor serves as the chair of the local history and landmarks preservation group, when he is not protecting the interests of our historic buildings before the Landmarks Preservation Commission. One of the commissioners is our own Dr. Thomas Pike, rector of the Calvary/St. George’s parish.
Jack is also affiliated with the Gramercy Neighborhood Associates, whose former leader, James Dougherty, also misses the passing of Max’s Kansas City (GNA’s lead preservationist is Fred Gorree). Another MKC habitué was the late Fielding Dawson, writer and graduate of Black Mountain College, who in the 1990s became active in Louse Dankberg’s Tilden Democratic Club.
Arlene is working with the 13th Precinct on community security matters. Its community officer, Scott Crimmins who a few years ago replaced the 20-year veteran Owen Hughes, most recently director of security at the Cabrini Hospital, is now leaving himself, with a letter of thanks from the Mayor and proclamations form our local representatives. I should check the status there with Jeanne Treague, head of the 13th Precinct Council, a longtime member of the SPNA and activist in the battle for the restoration of the park’s historic fence, led in the 1980s by Rosalee Isaly, then the group’s president, with the late Joe Roberto and Rex Wassermann.
These are the names that flowed through my mind during the holiday, as we reminisced with our guests, no doubt missing some terrific football games. But these are the people – at least some of them, there will be more names when I remind us of the homeless shelter season – who make our neighborhood what it is, the pride of the city and the envy of the nation.
# posted by Wally Dobelis @ 5:18 AM 
