A Tale of Two Landmarks
Today, the eastern terminus of Canal Street marks the nebulous border between older Chinatown establishments, and the newer Lower East Side. For example, there’s a Chinese funeral home next to an upscaleish mediterranean small plates restaurant; tattoo shops rubbing elbows with some longer-running electronics stores.
This block is extremely New York, in the sense that it’s continuously figuring itself out. It exemplifies the cacophony of gentrification, or the harmony of different types of people living together. How you view it may very well depend on your vantage point. (And how loud the teenage skater kids are being.)
I’ve long been fascinated by two different buildings on this stretch; buildings that exemplify the block’s older history in a more immediate way than usual. One of these buildings, pictured below, is the Jarmulowsky bank building.
Named for its founder Sender Jarmulowsky, the Jarmulowsky Bank was arguably the most successful financial institution on the Lower East Side. Sender, who was born in Russia (now present day Poland), immigrated to the United States and established the bank as a financial services center for Jewish immigrants. Here, Yiddish speaking customers could set up bank accounts, deposit money, and often most crucially, buy reasonably priced steerage tickets for relatives in the old country.
The bank prospered. Jarmulowsky, undoubtedly a “macher,” became a wealthy, well-respected member of the Jewish Lower East Side. This large beaux-arts structure, built to showcase the growing wealth and power of the bank, was completed in 1912. Sender sadly passed away a few months before it was completed, but the building still stands a testament to that time in LES history.
In fact, due to historical and architectural significance, The Landmark Preservation Commission deemed it an individual landmark in 2009.
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Walk about 60 seconds east of the Jarmulowsky bank building, and you’ll see a long closed, dilapidated electronic appliance store housed in a building that’s quite architecturally unique. This building, sometimes mistaken for an old church, was actually a relatively famous movie theater; the Loews Canal Street Theatre, which opened in 1927 as a 2,000+ seat motion picture theatre; at the time a jewel of the neighborhood, and really, the city.
After a few decades, the space yielded to retail, with the auditorium space being utilized as a warehouse. It’s since been, to my knowledge, completely abandoned for any practical use. Yet, given its distinctive nature, it was deemed an individual landmark in 2010.
Around this time, a feasibility study was conducted to potentially turn the space into a performing arts center—but it doesn’t appear as if anything has considerably progressed beyond that.
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These two structures fascinate me for a few reasons. For one, their heydays were both several layers beneath the current onion of eastern Canal Street. Yet, they’re also arguably equally indicative of the the neighborhood’s current iteration—which is in large part predicated on taking the history and infrastructure of the past, and repurposing it for the present in a way that is both relevant and profitable. The keyword here being, of course, profitable.
As you can somewhat see from the picture above, the decade-long restoration currently being applied to the Jarmulowsky building is nearly complete. In fact, it had been under scaffolding for seemingly forever, and came down right as the COVID lockdown began. And while I’m guessing COVID has thrown a medium-to-gigantic-sized wrench in the plan, the Jarmulowsky building is in the final stages of being converted into an upscale hotel; complete with destination-worthy restaurants and bars, perhaps representing the culmination of this area slowly morphing into a trendy, going-out destination over the past several years. And while neighboring residents are certainly divided as to whether the hotel will do more harm than good—and this hotel is certainly yet another example of the question of “who is New York for, its residents, or the national-and-international cadre of well-heeled and deep pocketed visitors?”—there’s no question the building is adapting to the demands of the 21st century.
On the other hand, the Loews Canal Street Theatre essentially stands in perpetual limbo. Since it’s been designated a landmark, it’s here to stay; yet, any conversion and update would require considerable expense, and likely a considerable loss of money. The way the interior stands, it can’t really be converted into luxury apartments, a la the nearby Jewish Daily Forward building. Nor is it large enough to boast offices (my mind is still thinking pre-covid, when offices were considered a use of space), retail, or really much else.
So unless the city is willing to put some money in to beautify, repair, and update the space—which, given the current state of the city, is quite a laughable proposition—the theatre will likely sit in its current state for the foreseeable future—a relic of what was, and a reminder that nothing gold can stay; unless of course, it can be converted into a present day gold mine.
Would it be better if the building was torn down? Its history erased, so that it can be replaced by a shared living space for 19 year-old Tik Tokers paying $3,000 a month for a 1/2 bedroom? My gut says no, but the state of the theatre poses an interesting question: what is the true purpose of a landmarked building, and what is its responsibility to the present? How do you balance history and humanistic beauty with straightforward practicality, and what do you do when they can't coexist?
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The curtains appear shut and decaying on the theater, but the bank is living on—mostly because it found another way to print money. And as we all know, that’s really the only way to survive in this city.