The low-rise, rundown buildings on the south side of 14th Street at Eighth Avenue have slowly emptied out—the liquor store moved down the block a few years back, a restaurant closed and nothing reopened, and now a candy store and corner deli are gone as well.
What will become of this wonderful discount liquors sign—bumblebee yellow, two stories tall!—when the building it’s attached to inevitably falls to the developers?
Paint, glass, brick face—there are lots of ways to cover up the original facade of an old city building and give it a more modern spin.
But sometimes a piece of the old structure ends up peeking through, or it’s impossible to cover it up completely. That appears to be the case with 18 East 14th Street, between Fifth Avenue and University Place.
The second through fifth floors are covered in what looks like 20th century brick face. The sixth floor, though, has the facade of an older turn-of-the-century building, with oval windows similar to its neighbor on the right and 19th century-era decorative touches.
Was this structure really built in 1930, as Streeteasy states? Looks more like it belongs to the bustling 14th Street of streetcars, department stores, piano showrooms, and elevated train stations.
Old signs revealing an earlier layer of New York keep popping up these days, and the latest is on 14th Street just east of Eighth Avenue.
When the liquor store that occupied number 254 for at least a few decades closed its doors recently, they took their shop sign with them—uncovering the signage for a long-shuttered Greek restaurant.
Pappas got its start perhaps as early as the 1910s, as this thread from a genealogy site seems to indicate:
“In 1914, Christos Papagianakos’ Ellis Island manifest says he was going to his Aunt Athanasia (and Uncle Jimmy’s) at 254 W. 14th Street, New York City.”
Pappas operated at least until 1973 (the chef was shot one night—this was 1970s New York).
And it was enough of a dining destination that management printed postcards. Old phone exchange: WAtkins!
In 1936, artist Reginald Marsh, known as a social realist for his depictions of a bustling, sensual, grotesque city, painted this scene of the old clashing with the new on 14th Street.
“Painted during an era of labor unrest in Union Square, ‘End of 14th Street Crosstown Line’ juxtaposes construction workers tearing up old trolley car lines with picketers demonstrating against Ohrbach’s, a store that had refused to allow its workers to unionize,” writes the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, which owns the painting.
Ephemeral New York 