Luchow's Restaurant ca. 1975 Luchow’s was a German restaurant/beer garden. It opened in 1882 at 110 East 14th Street at a time when the East Village was known as “Little Germany”, or Kleindeutschland. The restaurant would expand over the years in size and prominence, eventually occupying a space eight times as large as the original venue. In its heydey, Luchow’s was the place to see and be seen if you were a part of the music, theater, or literary crowd. It imported 70,000 half-barrels of beer a year, a daily consumption of 24,000 liters. Famous diners include Theodore Roosevelt, Diamond Jim Brady, Oscar Hammerstein, John Barrymore, Arturo Caruso, Sigmund Romberg, Lillian Russell, O. Henry, Theodore Dreiser, Thomas Wolfe, and Edgar Lee Masters. Luchow’s was the first restaurant in the city to get its liquor license following Prohibition’s repeal in 1933. Union Square lost much of its luster and Luchow’s moved to midtown in the early 1980s. The Palace restaurant and disco opened in Luchow’s former space, followed by a gay bar. But a 1992 fire led to the building’s demolition in 1995, despite efforts to landmark the Victorian building. NYU bought the site and locals were hopeful when plans were announced to revive Luchow’s with a ground-floor “Gay 90’s”-themed restaurant with a (less warmly-received) 600-bed dorm atop it. In the end, the dorm was built, but the restaurant was never revived.

Storefront signage is a ubiquitous feature on New York City streets. Today, signs can barely seem worth noticing, the well-known fonts and logos blending into the scenery. But when the streets of New York were lined with mom and pop shops, the design of signs (through fonts, images, and use of space) often allowed these individual stores to stand out. The diversity of signage is especially eye-catching in historical photographs.

While most people think of chop suey as a specific dish, in reality, it is more of a style of cooking. It is an Americanized style, an often improvised stir fry of mixed ingredients, namely meat, vegetables, and a starchy gravy. First popularized in Chinatown around the turn of the 20th century, it spread throughout the city, becoming more Americanized (read-more bland) over the course of time. It is sometimes referred to as one of New York’s first fusion cuisines.

The New York Preservation Archive Project is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to documenting, preserving, and celebrating the history of historic preservation in New York City. The Archive Project is devoted to celebrating neglected narratives of New York historic preservation using the archives that hold these stories. This collection includes a selection of historic sites that became flashpoints of the city's preservation movement(s). For more information, visit: www.nypap.org/phd-category/places/

Luchow's Restaurant, October 26, 1938. Originally opened prior to 1882 as a small beer hall, August Luchow, a German immigrant and waiter at the beer hall, purchased the business, with a loan from the piano-maker William Steinway, whose office was across the street. The large German restaurant that Luchow created was a neighborhood landmark for 100 years. The popular dinning hall was in close proximity to the Academy of Music and Steinway Hall, which boosted its reputation as a pre or post-performance hot spot. The author Ludwig Bemelmans called Luchow's a goulash and Wiener schnitzel emporium. When Teddy Roosevelt dined there he had venison. By 1910 Luchow had purchased a number of neighboring lots and greatly expanded its footprint. Despite the depressions and wars of the first half of the 20th century (and the anti-German sentiment that accompanied those wars) the restaurant survived and largely thrived. Luchow's was the recipient of the first cafe liquor license in New York City following the repeal of Prohibition. The business would change hands a number of times post 1950, but despite a number of renovations, both the quality of the food and the quality of the surrounding neighborhood had declined measurably. The 14th street restaurant closed in 1982, 100 years after it had opened. The owners attempted to move a version of the place uptown closer to the theatre district, though this iteration only lasted a few years.

"When Prohibition was introduced, I hoped that it would be widely supported by public opinion... I have slowly and reluctantly come to believe that this has not been the result. Instead, drinking has generally increased; the speakeasy has replaced the saloon; a vast army of lawbreakers has appeared; many of our best citizens have openly ignored Prohibition." –– John D. Rockefeller

Hammacher, Schlemmer & Company ca. 1906 Hammacher & Schlemmer (say that ten times fast!) was the city’s first hardware store, opened in 1848, and is the country’s longest running catalog, first published in 1881. The store originally opened in 1848 at 221 Bowery at a time when high-quality hardware was hard to find. Then just 12 years old, William Schlemmer would sell tools in front of his uncle’s store. By 1867, he, along with newly acquired partner Alfred Hammacher (a fellow German immigrant), bought the business and renamed it Hammacher & Schlemmer. The two men turned this local shop into a national company, inventing numerous firsts: pop-up-toaster (1930), electric razor (1934), stem iron (1948), microwave oven (1968), cordless telephone (1975), among many others. In 1904, having outgrown its quaint Bowery location, Hammacher & Schlemmer moved to 133 Fourth Avenue (also known as 127-135 Fourth Avenue and 102-104 East 13th Street). Built in 1897 by Marsh, Israels & Harder, this building occupies an odd plot of land- picture a square corner lot with a little square cut out of the very corner. The AIA Guide refers to the building as the Hancock Building, but we haven’t been able to dig up any more information on the origins of that moniker (any tips?). The Fourth Avenue facade is more elaborate than its 13th Street counterpart, as it was the entrance to the store. The facade contains Romanesque elements like rounded arches on the top story and a subtle contrast of limestone texture. It also has Beaux-Arts elements, like the elegant cartouche above the doorway, Ionic pilasters flanking the middle stories, and the V-shaped decoration above the windows. This eclectic mash-up of styles makes this building extremely unique, not dissimilar from its hardware tenant that gained the motto, “if you can’t find it, try Hammacher & Schlemmer,” for its wide array of hard-to-find products. By 1926, the company had once again grown too large for its home and moved to 147 East 57th Street. 133 Fourth Avenue, however, remained in the family until 1936 under the ownership of William Schlemmer’s daughter Ida S. Bruch, who owned several other properties in the area.