A BUTCHER’S hook/look (Cockney rhyming slang)
building
Just sometimes a building site can be interesting. Riding across the Manhattan Bridge every day past this site, observing it from scratch to completion, provided some pretty incredible scenes - especially from such a great vantage spot. I’m glad I stopped to take photos of the progress over 3 years it took to build. The reflection in the glass skin is of the FDR Drive and East River (note solitary worker standing at the edge)
Now finished, 80 stories of ‘luxury’ (expensive) apartments stand on the site of the what was the only supermarket in the low income housing - totally overwheming, unnecessary and out of place!
(de) construction paper
when I walked into the Mel Bochner show at Peter Freeman Gallery, my first thought was that someone was pulling a fast one - then I started looking at the work and could relate - negative space and humor. These are previously unrealized pieces made of mass-produced non-art materials (brown kraft paper and Letraset) from 1969. The pieces were in editions of 3 - you buy the instruction/layout plan and certificate of authenticity (a la Sol Lewitt). Most were sold out.
in collage
another of my yearly New York postcard collages - this one from 2003, the last year I made them
what happened here?!
It’s a given that there is always construction going on in New York but this non stop assault didn’t arrive in the Lower East Side until the 00s. All through the 90s, it was just what it was - a functioning (in its own weird way) neighborhood. It was a great period - post crack and pre developers, hotels, NYU dorms, bros and tourists. There was a calm before the invading storm.
then
These 2 photos are from 1996. I know it appears older but I think that’s because the film and the exposure were all wrong, so it’s looking a bit grainy. Anyway, that’s besides the point - what is incredible is what happened to the neighborhood next.
Because of some suspect zoning changes, the next 10 years saw most of the single and two story buildings bought and demolished. A market crash or two meant many of the lots were just left, sold and re-sold or abandoned with speculative developers on hold. Then they started building……
and now
It’s hard to capture what it’s like now any closer, so here’s one from across the street at 1st & 1st. Yawn
scrambled sisk
mixed construction hoarding on E Houston St
I just love everything you put up on substack! And so prefer this format to instagram.
Megan
That construction layering photo…my favorite. Wonder what it feels like to be a solitary person in that huge, remote world.