Stephen Rex Brown The Bowery Hotel.The Department of Buildings hit the Bowery Hotel with a violation for an enclosed roof over a backyard terrace on Monday. According to Department of Buildings spokeswoman Ryan Fitzgibbon, the roof was contrary to the building’s approved plans. The hotel’s management will now face a formal hearing regarding the violation.
Interestingly, the complaint is nearly identical to one filed last year when the structure was being built. According to online records, workers were improperly storing construction equipment on the property of the New York Marble Cemetery, which abuts a portion of the hotel.
Caroline DuBois, the president of the cemetery, said she did not know why the violation was reopened (all complaints are filed with 311 anonymously). Rumors regarding a dispute between the hotel and the cemetery over the burial ground’s crumbling walls have swirled since an article in The New York Times in 2008.
Phillip Kalantzis-CopeGood morning, East Village.
While Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York offers up another post in support of St. Mark’s Bookshop, it looks like the troubled Heathers may be the latest neighborhood cause célèbre – L magazine’s blog, The Measure, thinks the bar’s liquor license should be renewed because “it is a bastion for a diverse mix of gay and straight creatives who are looking for a drink in an increasingly frat-like East Village bar scene.”
Voice critic Robert Sietsema eats cow tongue at Prune, but that’s hardly his most disconcerting dispatch today: After making light of the “ridiculous amounts of hoopla” over the 14th Street IHOP and pointing out that the place was half-empty around lunchtime, Mr. Sietsema stuffs some pancakes with sausages in an attempt to reproduce a childhood favorite. They’re “still superb.”
Still not sold on IHOP? Jimmy’s No. 43 will start serving brunch on Saturday. According to Zagat Buzz, items will include “‘black and tan’ griddle cakes (complete with ale batter, bananas, salted stout-caramel sauce, curry spiced pretzels, cocoa and powdered sugar).” Grub Street has still more East Village food news, including special meals at Hearth and JoeDoe. Read more…
Courtesy of Gene Kaufman Architect The Salvation Army building at the corner of Bowery and East Third Street. Right: A rendering of what the corner will look like when Gene Kaufman’s Bowery boutique hotel is completed.Much has been said about the design for the new boutique hotel and restaurant that is expected to take the place of the vacant Salvation Army building on the corner of the Bowery and East Third Street.
Several local blogosphere commentators have made it clear that this addition is not welcome in their neighborhood. Andrew Berman, executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, jokingly referred to the 11-story, 72-room hotel as the “red tumor building” in reference to a series of asymmetric balconies that will protrude from the building and glow red at night.
“It’s totally inappropriate and I think it will be another unfortunate, unwanted intrusion into the Bowery,” said Mr. Berman. “The scale is wrong, the design is wrong. It almost seems designed to offend.”
Gene Kaufman, the architect hired by the Paris-based Louzon Group to design the hotel and restaurant, is aware of the East Village’s reaction to the renderings published by The New York Observer last month, but is hoping it might not be permanent.
“The neighborhood sentiment in the beginning is the start of a process,” said Mr. Kaufman, who has designed other controversial hotels in New York. “It’s not necessarily reflective of what’s going to happen in the long term.”
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