The Prince Is Right
The mood struck to re-walk Prince St., which I did in 2012 after emerging from an interview at Scholastic. Back then interviews were still mostly in-person and I had my interview suit and tie on. But I carry the camera everywhere, no matter the situation, and despite the oppressive humidity, down Prince I went and it was a satisfying walk. The street runs through the Sullivan-Thompson and Soho Cast-Iron Historic District and the buildings are well-documented and some landmarked.
Shown up top is #94 Prince at Mercer, Fanelli’s Cafe, and the neon Fanelli sign, which has seen generations of duty. 94 Prince, a five-story brick building, looks out of place next to its cast-iron front brethren—the building first appeared in 1857 when built by Herman Gerken, a German immigrant landowner. In the previous wood building to occupy the site and the brick structure after, groceries were sold from a shop on the ground floor. At the time, alcohol was sold in general stores of this type. The rest of the building was divided among living and manufacturing space.
The ground floor continued to be used as both a place to buy liquor and a tavern through a succession of owners beginning in 1863. Nicholas Gerdes operated the tavern from 1878-1902, and his name remains inscribed in the transom over the front door; his liquor licenses decorate Fanelli’s walls. Michael Fanelli arrived in 1922 with Prohibition in full thrall, operating the place as a speakeasy until repeal. (The “café” name was first used during Prohibition to fool the coppers.) The Fanelli family owned the bar until 1982 when it was sold to Hans Noe. I’ve been in Fanelli’s just once, in May 2006, and found the burger as good as advertised. The seating was cramped in the tight space, but the ambience made up for that slight inconvenience.
Both of the Manhattan “street books” in my possession by Sanna Feirstein and Henry Moscow claim that Prince St. is a leftover moniker from the British occupation of NYC that finally ended in 1783, but the above item that says otherwise is from the “Historic Homes and Institutions and Genealogical and Personal Memoirs of the Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania” by John Jordan of the Pennsylvania Historical Society, Edgar Green and George Ettinger (1905). Believe between 50 and 100 percent of what you read, anywhere.
#203 Prince St. is a three-story brick residence combining Federal and Greek Revival styling and has been preserved, or more likely restored, to look the way it did when it was completed in 1834 for leather inspector John Haff. Originally constructed with two stories, a third was added in 1888. In the colonial period, this land was owned by vice president and murderer Aaron Burr, whose estate in what’s now Soho and the West Village was called Richmond Hill; there are also regions of the same name in Queens and Staten Island (where Burr breathed his last in 1836).
The building was given NYC Landmarks designation in 1974, fairly early on because the Landmarks Preservation Commission was founded in 1965. According to Tom “Daytonian in Manhattan” Miller, the building has served as a parish house for the now-vanished Episcopal Church of Saint Ambrose and also as a funeral home; today it’s a quiet private residence.
The Vesuvio Bakery, #160 Prince St., was a Soho institution between 1920 and 2008, and presented the same face to the neighborhood for decades and still did, after its takeover by the City Bakery, which reopened it as Birdbath Bakery in 2009. I was a frequent City Bakery visitor when I worked in the Flatiron district in 2013 and 2014 and was saddened to hear about its demise in 2019. Vesuvio was reopened under its own name in 2020. I’m going “keto” after a rising glucose count, so no bread for me. The object in the window at left is a dough-dividing machine.
Owing to my brick factory and printing fascination I always check on this lengthy building between Wooster and Greene Sts., three addresses from #120 to 124. A long time ago, the building had apparently been a paper distributor. A pair of metal signs that are, perhaps, over a century old can still be found there. Manifold paper, in the days before Xerox and modern copy machines, was a lightweight paper used with carbon paper to make multiple copies. “Special forms,” as far as I gather, were used in tax preparation. Meanwhile, engraving is the practice of incising a design on to a hard, usually flat surface, by cutting grooves into it. The result may be a decorated object in itself, as when silver, gold, steel, or glass are engraved, or may provide an intaglio printing plate, of copper or another metal, for printing images on paper as prints or illustrations. Lithography inscribing limestone was used by publishers as an inexpensive alternative to engraving and avoided the expense of multiple presses by lithographing both illustration and text.
This building at #103-107 Prince, corner of Greene, was built in 1910 as Post Office Station A, but for me, it’s always been where magic happens—it was the first Apple Store in New York City. The Apple stores that have appeared since are high-concept glassy buildings, but for me this was the first and best. I still wander in and ogle the offerings, whether I’m in the market for a new machine or not, but I also frequent the ones on 9th and 14th and in Grand Central Terminal.
One memorable day at this location was when I gave a presentation as part of a group of what were known as “NYC photobloggers,” though I don’t describe myself as strictly that. I met many fans of my work and also people of whom I’m fans, notably ex-cab driver Matt Weber, the best street photographer in NYC. I showed some of my work and parried audience questions, some of which were skeptical, but I had a grand time.
#112-114 Prince St. is a relatively late cast iron front constructed in 1882. Walking down Prince and in Soho in general, it’s hard to believe that before the 1980s it was relatively rundown, with small manufacturers and businesses with just a few galleries, but later took off as a high rent area with expensive retail. The fact that many streets have kept their Belgian block pavement and there are still original cast iron building fronts—and a few early-1900s cast iron lampposts—suggests that this area was overlooked for upkeep in NYC in the budget crises of the mid- and late-1900s. Note the Richard Haas trompe l’oeil building front with two real windows (fading now, unfortunately) and the low building on the corner, built in 1966 before landmarking forbade any new construction.
Skipping a few streets east to Mulberry in Soho, there’s Old St. Patrick’s between Mulberry and Mott, one of NYC’s oldest churches. It’s called “old” to differentiate it from its “newer” cousin uptown, St. Patrick’s Cathedral at 5th Ave. and E. 50th, designed by James Renwick Jr., finished in 1888. Old St. Pat’s, NYC’s original Catholic cathedral, started construction in 1809 and completed in 1815, making it one of the oldest buildings in Chinatown/Little Italy. In March 2010 Pope Benedict XVI announced that it would become Manhattan’s first basilica, a church that’s accorded specific and ceremonial rites only the Pope can bestow.
“Dagger John” Hughes, the first Archbishop of the Diocese of New York, was originally interred in the Old St. Patrick’s churchyard. Though his remains were moved uptown to the “new” St. Patrick’s at 5th Ave., he’s memorialized here. “He became known as ‘Dagger John,’ both for his following the Catholic practice wherein a bishop precedes his signature with a cross, as well as for his aggressive personality.”
The New Museum of Contemporary Art, 235 Bowery opposite Prince St.. I’ve yet to visit the new museum, which opened in 2007. It’s been praised by architecture critics and its designers, Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, were chosen as 2010 laureates in the Pritzker competition, the biggest architecture prize. I’m a Philistine, and the building looks like six aluminum boxes stacked on top of the other, haphazardly. I’d have to go inside to really pass judgment. The New Museum was founded in 1977. The building, which spearheaded a new “stacked box” trend in architecture, reminds me of the old Monty Python sketch featuring The Society of Putting Things On Top Of Other Things.
—Kevin Walsh is the webmaster of the award-winning website Forgotten NY, and the author of the books Forgotten New York (HarperCollins, 2006) and also, with the Greater Astoria Historical Society, Forgotten Queens (Arcadia, 2013)