Carnegie Hall Tower's Last Tenant

The last resident moves out of the 116-year-old studio apartments in Carnegie Hall Tower. The commerical and residental studios are being demolished to create new spaces for Carnegie Hall.

New York Times photographer Bill Cunningham says goodbye [video].

 

Comments

[Coloratura Tempura]

They kicked out all those sweet little old ladies? Bad bad bad!

[vale]

Yes, all those little old ladies are out. How sad. Nothing is forever, I guess...

[alfredo albertone]

many thanks to Mr Cunningham ...
He's a wonderful story teller and a fantastic photographer !!!

[Sheri]

It is sad, but what I find even sadder is the way one lady became so "stuck" in her life. Here she spent more than half her life, progressing through two husbands and raising children, in an apartment which she herself said she found too small when she moved into it--long after the sense of artists' community had come and gone in the place. It makes me wonder: where were these people's families and friends when they grew to be so cloistered in their environment? Some people become so routinized and attached to their place, so emotionally stuck and fearful of change, that it's almost a psychosis akin to hoarding behavior. I find that more depressing than the fact that they are being moved out.

[Randy]

What a terrible story. Too bad they couldn't come to a better agreement. I understand what it's like to have a good home and then lose it. My heart goes out to those tenants.

[Tom Stetz]

The picture in your posting is not the "Carnegie Hall Towers" referred to but a much more recent mega-development. The Carnegie Hall studios refered to (881 7th Ave.) was a 25' wide slice of building built a few years after the main hall, a hold-out property on the corner of 56th Street, and at the time the hall aquired it there was talk that they might used it to extend the area back of the stage so that they could present operas (!) as well as concerts. A lot of wonderful studios were also built into the deep trusswork over the main hall. I worked there 60's and 70's, and it was quite an experience to be intermixed (we were architects) with performing arts people. On our floor were a half dozen ballet studios, whose floors looked like they had been rained on after a practice session in the summer. Bobby Short had a studio down the hall; and there was a Madame Del Terzo who lived there and taught piano for decades, who had at least a dozen pekinese which she walked two at a time (to make sure no one knew how many she actually had). -- And why do these institutions always seem to need more and more space?