What a Bargain!
For a mere $575,000, you can get a studio apartment in the former Forward Building!
“Lower East Side Gets Ritzy; Hottest Conversion Is Forward” — The NY Observer
That Marx and Engels should overlook the façade of the next great luxury development of the Lower East Side seems less an anomaly than an apt metaphor for the peculiar and sought-after brand of luxury the neighborhood now represents.
[…] Promotional materials—which are typically more likely to dwell on ultramodern amenities—actually mention how “the building’s cultural significance parallels the important revolutionary, socialist-democratic values its Yiddish-language newspaper espoused.”
To others, the building’s cultural significance now parallels something else entirely: the move to turn the Lower East Side into a combination tourist trap and playground for the ultra-rich […] “The physical Lower East Side will be gone in three years,” said Simeon Bankoff, the executive director of the Historic Districts Council, who also attended the committee meeting at the museum’s request. “I think that the current zoning encourages the decimation of the area, [and] a historic district would help preserve its architectural character. If high-end apartment buyers are buying at the Forward because of the building’s cultural significance, at other buildings a sleek design and new construction are significance enough—to say nothing of the neighborhood’s endlessly proliferating nightlife options.
Marx and Engels…? Feh. I’d like to buy the building and replace them with David Ricardo and Milton Friedman. Now THERE’S some Jewish economists.
J,
The busts of Marx and Engels are testement to how the responsible Left grew to become a great bulwark against communism in the Unions etc. — stay tuned for a post about that this weekend — and the same will hopefully be said one day about Neocons who after witnessing the rampage and horror of reckless privatization and Wars for Democracy, a moderate fiscal right will emerge preaching Rule of Law and Fiscal Restraint instead of revolution and deficits.
DK-
No fair, putting up those juicy fightin’ words late on Friday afternoon. Back on Monday.
Jeebus! $575,000? That’s a friggin bargain! Does the promotional literature mention close proximity to Bar 169 just 2 doors down? How about the scary projects a block away? It is a gorgeous building though – thanks for the mini-history lesson last week. I didn’t know Jewish socialists could be so uh… fascinating.
Kol haKavod to the people moving in and bring economic development and jobs to the delapitaded area. Capitalism at its best because only capitalism provides economic growth and jobs.
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the market works.