The Shell Of The Clam (Bar)
What Do You Think You're Looking At? #154
This is an interesting building on the waterfront in Brooklyn, New York:
Seen from the back, it looks like there’s a small apartment building now surrounded by the rest of the building! That gives you a sense of how large it is:
It’s currently an assemblage of different shops and restaurants, including a high-end grocery store.
This is not a grand early indoor shopping center. The expansive two-story structure was once a single restaurant—one of several (though considered the grandest) massive seafood restaurants along the Brooklyn waterfront in the early 20th century. At its peak it had seating for over 2,000 people. This was the famous Lundy’s Restaurant. Lundy’s opened in 1926, but the building was demolished during a waterfront revitalization project, and the new building, with its grand design, opened in the mid-1930s.
I love this bit from a document on the building’s historic significance: “A contemporary newspaper recorded that the building was completed in time to synchronize ‘the shucking of the last clam in the old place with the unveiling of the first clam in the new.’”
Lundy’s was one of the largest restaurants in the United States, and did brisk business for decades. Family drama, changing tastes, and probably a decline in quality finally did them in by 1979. A second Lundy’s opened in the 1990s and survived until 2007—I actually ate in that one when I was a kid! I remember the huge dining room, high ceilings, and feeling that the place was kind of empty.
There’s a whole lot of intrigue and detailed history over the decades about the place, and you can look up the history if you’re interested. What’s interesting to me is how well the old building has survived despite many alterations, a period of abandonment, and modern renovations.
By the way, the apparent apartment building in the back is an old hotel, which was spared demolition and incorporated into the new building for use as offices and other ancillary uses. Read the Landmarks Preservation Commission writeup on the building for a pretty thorough history.
I do want to share this bit from the Wikipedia article on the restaurant, which is absurd but not at all unusual in the world of zoning and permitting:
The former space of the second Lundy’s was renovated and incorporated into Lundy’s Landing Shopping Plaza, hosting several restaurants and businesses. Neighborhood residents felt that the new occupants of the Lundy’s location, the Russian-themed Cherry Hill Gourmet Market, were radically altering the space. In particular, residents objected when David Isaev, who operated the market, removed lettering from the “Lundy’s” sign above the entrance. The city government ordered Isaev to stop renovating the space in late 2008 after finding that the market violated local zoning ordinances, since Lundy’s fell within a zoning district that prohibited non-maritime uses. Work resumed after Isaev submitted revised plans for the market, but city inspectors again issued a stop-work order in April 2009, since the market still violated the local zoning ordinance. In total, the city issued 46 stop-work orders for the project; Isaev said of the controversy: “I was in war in Israel and saw nothing like this.” The renovation of the market ultimately cost $7 million.
When Cherry Hill Gourmet Market opened in May 2009, city inspectors promptly fined Isaev for violating zoning ordinances. At the time, the remaining space was occupied by Turkish and Japanese restaurants. Despite the controversies over the renovations, the market was popular, and Crain’s New York Business said “the market has helped revive a local landmark”. After Isaev agreed to restore the sign above the building’s entrance, the LPC waived the zoning-code violations in August 2011.”
The idea that zoning is a body of law is laughable given the way it’s administered and negotiated, but it is. This is one of the problems with a rigid view of historic preservation as well. You can’t preserve a building in a prime commercial area by making it off-limits to the kind of businesses a critical mass of people actually want to open and patronize.
The age of the grand clam bars is over, but the shell of the greatest one lives on.
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