A Mash-Up

Of two different down town adventures. A little while ago, my husband and I went to a play at the SoHo Playhouse. We got there early and walked around a bit before the play began.

 

I discovered this. A relic from when pattern publishers were  a big deal in the publishing world.

The lobby was mostly renovated, but I believe that the beautiful marble around the elevators is original.

 

An old image of the building.

Butterick Building

and a more contemporary view in this blog

 

As we continued our walk, I realized that I have another piece of history with the building. Many years ago while I was unemployed, my friend Steve, an architect, asked me to help measure the store at the front  wedged end of the building. He had the job of renovating the space into a Crate & Barrel.

The store was then being rented by a carpet warehouse. Steve and I spent two days climbing carpet rolls nearly to the ceiling to get the space measured. It was a weird and fun and dirty job. At that point the neighborhood was as real estate developers put it,” transitional”. Now it is fully chichi.

Yesterday, for reasons both too complicated and too boring to share, I had to take my youngest to Chinatown to get his cellphone fixed.

We had an hour to kill while we waited for the phone to get fixed.  We shopped at Kam Man, the Chinese grocery and department store. we also hung out at the park.

I didn’t take pictures of the old Chinese men who formed an impromptu band playing traditional Chinese music. The percussionist was in a motorized wheelchair.

We picked up the phone and went home by subway.

An express train going by.Above is the receding train.

This is the train rushing by. Then, you wait until your train shows up in the station.

Eventually, the local train showed up.