What Goes Up, Must Get Torn Down
April 3, 2010
I haven’t been to SoHo in a long time, but a few days ago I walked by the building where I grew up. The facade is still there, but it is a shell of its former self. Like many of the surrounding structures, the five-story loft building has a new coat of paint and a “store for lease” sign above what used to be an active loading dock. The fire escape crawling up the front is gone, probably shifted to the alleys in the back, and nearly everything else has been replaced. And everything that has been replaced has a story…
There are shiny new intercoms where you once had to throw a sock filled with keys down to your guests. There are windows that shut all the way and no longer have that special tint from years of factory and studio dust. The garage door on the street level that opened to a freight elevator is now a marble lobby, and the hand-operated elevator that still worked after 100 years has been entirely removed. My parents used to tell me stories of little children who lost their hands by sticking them through the gate to try to touch the moving wall behind, and I remember being more excited at twelve when I was allowed to drive the elevator than when I learned to drive a car. We used to climb up the metal rungs at the corner as though the elevator were an amusement park ride, and look up at the shaft above as each floor went past. Driving the elevator required skill; you had to release the handle at just the right time to allow for the delay before the car stopped flush with the floor. As a teenager I could scare and wow my friends by stopping it mid-floor and still get the door open. To this day, I have nightmares that the elevator sags a little bit, threatening to send me crashing down to the basement. It was a beautiful piece of machinery, all of its parts exposed to reveal its simplicity.
Our neighbors ranged from a textile factory to a chocolate covered cherry factory, a handful of artists to a woman with twelve cats. In the early nineties, the city ripped up the asphalt to expose the underlying cobblestones and replaced the industrial metal lamp posts with those old-fashioned looking curly ones you see now. Graffiti was always a fixture, and always changing. There were lots of tags, but also lots of murals, like walls didn’t distinguish a gallery, they just provided another canvas.
When my parents finally moved out my mom said it felt like her skin was being ripped off. She raised three kids there, had an equal number of cars stolen from the parking lot on the corner, and got really good at scaring away men who tried to urinate on our front step. If I could have gone inside the newly renovated building, I’m sure the carved tin ceilings with elaborate patterns that I used to stare at so much wouldn’t be there, and the sprinkler pipes I used to hang upside down from (until I was reprimanded) would also be gone. (Despite all the warnings, they never broke and they never showered brown sooty water all over our belongings until the fire department came).
There are still many art galleries in SoHo, sprinkled between fancy clothing stores. Sure, I like to romanticize my old neighborhood. It was a place with creative energy because people lived on the fringe and no one else could understand why they wanted to risk it. Now, no one can understand how so much space was so affordable. It was where everyone came to buy cheap watches and sunglasses, now its where people come to buy over-priced sunglasses. It was a neighborhood where people made stuff, now when I walk by, I feel like I need to buy stuff.
There are other areas replacing the feel of SoHo, but mostly in the far reaches of Brooklyn. I know that what is special about New York is the rate at which it changes, and I’m certainly not the only person who has had to part with their childhood home. I’m lucky that I had the chance to capture footage of my building on film because, alas, what goes up must get torn down (even if it is really well-made).
Why do you feel so inclined to be in the public eye? Is it a psychological need for attention or validation? Obviously you like to write, so why not write a book? Is your need to be expressed personally greater than your need to correspond?
Eric
Well now, that was rather rude.
Anyone can have a blog and therefore be “in the public eye.”
I read because I’ve loved Julia since 10 Things. It’s nice to see that well known actresses are so down to earth and easy to relate to.
And on New York. I traded it two years ago for the South and I don’t think I’ll ever go back. The constant need to consume and buy, buy (baby) is overwhelming.
What a completely random criticism from the poster above. Regardless, I thought this was lovely. I’ve seen that I tend to imprint on the places I go and am almost always sad to see them change, and sometimes disappear. I could visualize everything you described and am jealous that i’ve never been in such an elevator. I’ll be sure to check out your film sometime soon to see if I pictured it right.
Wow, Eric, way to be judgmental. Actors act in public. Writers write to be read. That’s the whole idea. It has nothing to do with a need for attention or validation, necessarily. It’s the JOB. It’s about conveying some part of your view of the human condition to other people.
I could understand you posing this question to a reality show contestant or someone like that, but accusing someone of having psychological disorders for choosing acting and writing as creative outlets is just odd.
PS- I just rewatched “Hannah and Her Sisters” the other day and Soho is almost unrecognizable. Crazy how neighborhoods change the way they do.
Michael Cain’s glasses, however, remain the same.
Ma’am, you’re a great story teller so you keep on telling them. Having tried to write to prove to myself I could (number cruncher complex and all) what you make look so easy is anything but.
How “publicly” you live your life is certainly your affair…do hope to see you performing in the near future though.
I’m not even sure how I first learned about your blog, but I’m certainly appreciative that you write it. I’ve been a fan since ’10 Things’ and have always loved your work. I’ve really enjoyed reading the blog and feeling like I’m seeing your passions through your own voice. Not that you need a fan to run to the defense of this creative outlet, but I agree and love the fact that you aren’t in the public eye. I’ve always viewed you as a professional and respect that you’re opening an outlet to your fans that doesn’t include selling out to the celebrity/tabloid side of the business. Thank you and please keep the posts coming!
I have to wonder why ‘Eric’ is reading blogs if he questions why people write about their personal experiences in this format.
Mind you, writing a book (or e-book) about your old neighbourhood and hometown from your own perspective isn’t a bad idea. You could even get some friends, relatives and other artists to join in, and write about their favourite spots and memories. Why not? In fact, I think I’ll write the next posting on my blog about some of my old haunts (which are no longer around, of course). And if Eric or anyone else thinks I’m trying to get attention or validate my existence, so what! Don’t we all? Isn’t he?
It’s true that neighbourhoods change (especially in North America, where ‘old’ seems to be synonomous with ‘obsolete’ of ‘worthless’), but still it’s sad when something you’re familiar with disappears. Your memory is challenged. I travel by a construction site that used to be a small character house or funky old store, and it’s just not there anymore. What really frustrates is not so much the building being gone as the feeling that some part of yourself has been taken away from you, like the death of a distant relative.
Having your old home torn down is even worse – it’s like loosing close friend. I went back to photograph the rickety old house I spent my first 11 years growing up in, and it was GONE. Even the willow trees in the front yard had been pulled up. (The blackberry bush on the side yard is still there – yum! Tasty memories there.) No more beer-bottle stucco; no more draughty windows; no more plastered-covered hole in the dining room wall where a wood stove used to be (the house was built around 1910), no more back porch drain where a wolf spider crawled over my foot when I was 2 years old. Or was it 3? Damnit!
Your story about driving the elevator reminds me that I used to enjoy riding the elevators in the older department stores Downtown ’cause the operator would announce what was sold on each floor. Quaint, yes, but a great job for a people person.
Hanging from the sprinkler pipes and driving an elevator? I’m surprised your parents more kids!
Thanks for sharing your memories.
It is a shame that homes, towns and entire cities have to change over time. It is something we all have to adapt to, but there are a few things that always remain a constant.
Soho has changed over time, but you can still appreciate the authenticity of it with the street vendors, places like Fanelli’s Cafe, Milady’s (has the traditional locals pub feeling when I walk in for a quick pint), and the cast iron buildings.
I definitely know how you feel about your home changing over time. I grew up in an 18th century home that now sits vacant. It is sad to see her sitting there and rotting, but it always brings back memories. Places change over time, but the memories are always there. Nothing can take them away.
It is sad when the subject of fond memories are replaced with shiny new stuff, but so it goes… It must be strange to visit a place that’s become something inconsistent with the stories you’ve associated with it. Thanks for writing. You should do that book.
“We had people to make us things,
We had people to sell us those things,
Didn’t have enough room for those things,
We built lots of self-storage.
Calypso poet shortage.”
-JB
Thanks for that read. Its interesting to learn about what lives were like for Americans. We sometimes come from different backgrounds with different ideas of what is normal and what memories come to mind when people use certain words.
I now live in a country different from my own and so when my students discuss thier home life, I must actually consider what descriptions they provide, rather than what words they use.
The word house or home can mean many different things to many different people and communication is often more related to description or understanding of the place they are talking about than simply a word.
In this country the word bathroom needs to cover a lot more visual pictures than what people in the States may visualise when they hear the word. Though I must say that understanding your background a little does explain your more laid back attitude.
Hi Julia,
The bricks, the pipes, the sounds, the smells, they’re the framework of our fondest memories. And as they inevitably change or disappear over time, I think those memories fade just a little and we realise that life, like time, just keeps moving on. Andrew
Julia, alleluia,
I especially like that you were able to re-visit in detail the building you formerly lived in. I assume you saw all those details when you went back there to film the scene in your short film. Did you have to pay a location fee? Was it still the same landlord?
Having grown up in Manhattan as well I can totally relate to these feelings and memories. For me it’s the changes I see around the West Village. It’s so hard sometimes to remember what little mom and pop shop was where and when, all I now see are cafes, restaurants and boutiques that look like they belong in Europe not the New York I remember.
Even worse is the fact that my father had a small factory in Dumbo. A textile manufacturing plant. He shared that building with an umbrella maker, a rubber boot maker and a handbag maker. The streets were dark, scary and dirty, nobody walked around unless they belonged there as a worker or were going to some of the soup kitchens nearby. I remember going to the plant with my dad and was fascinated at how deserted the area was. It was not called Dumbo, it was called “Under the Manhattan Bridge”. Today a fancy restaurant is in the spot, I’ve never walked in but I have peeked through the window and noticed that where my dad’s desk used to be there’s a pool table.
Always pondering city kid.
This is one of the very few places in the West Village that hasn’t changed. SInce childhood I see and remember this corner as is each time I cross 7th avenue.
http://tinyurl.com/24pwjnn
sorry I think this is a better link to the above comment. This is a great blog about vanishing New York. Great photos.
http://greenwichvillagenydailyphoto.blogspot.com/2008/10/hess-oilvillage-cigars.html
I think you are a wonderful writer Julia. I was first struck by this when reading your piece on baseball for the Wall Street Journal (about which subject I know roughly zero). You have a wonderful feel for evocative detail and your thoughtfulness and active mind shine through everything you write.
On an unrelated matter, it has been interesting to observe the gradual lightening of your moderating hand on the blog comments.
Julia,
This was by far my favorite entry. Please don’t allow comments like Eric’s to stop you from writing about whatever it is that you feel like sharing with us.
I would find your stories interesting and entertaining even if you weren’t famous. You’re a very solid actress and a good writer but I really had no idea just how witty you were until this blog!
I think you’re a perfect example of what a young Hollywood actress should do with her career. Natalie Portman is another good example. Even though you girls started young you still bothered to get an education, you kept out of trouble, kept your private business private, and you continue to do great film. For as famous as you are you seem very low profile to me.
I think Eric is way off.
PS-
I love Zooey Deschanel
Hi Julia,
While I try to keep the fangirling to a minimum, having just discovered your blog…
…I was wondering if you could offer any insight on your Habitat experience(s). I’ve been invited to join a build in NZ later this year. I’d love to hear about your experience with/thoughts on the org, as it was you who turned me onto HFH in the first place — years and years ago when I was just a teenager watching 10 Things over and over until the VHS flat out refused to play anymore.
Thanks in advance for any feedback! Cheers!
Thank you for your story. But, I must admit, it saddened me a bit.
It reminded me of leaving Puerto Rico when I was 15. I went back to visit 5 years later and the place had become unrecognizable to me. Everything had changed. It felt like my sense of place, of belonging, of home, had been erased. I haven’t been back since.
PS. Shot this image yesterday. Seems apropos.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/op204/4497456386/
Hey, Julia:
Here are some rather appropo song lyrics from Barenaked Ladies:
Broke into the old apartment
Forty-two stairs from the street
Crooked landing, crooked landlord
Narrow laneway filled with crooks
This is where we used to live…
One more thought…
We’re down in Portland right now, and we’re looking around, impressed with the degree to which Portland retains a lot of its older buildings, and not just facades. We’re not so good at it up the coast in Vancouver (BC, not WA). A fellow geography student I’m travelling with suddenly said something funny and profound:
“We have to stop practicing must end facad-omy!”
“We must
Heather and I went for a walk through SOHO last time I was in NYC. It’s definitely changed but it is still recognizable at least to me. Then again, I’ve got a hazy memory and I’ve been removed for 23 years.
My old loft still has it’s fire escape, but some production company owns it now
Eric, seriously? Need attention much?
No matter what the emotions are here, I must jump to your defence Jools.
Obviously your man Eric doesnt know your promise to yourself to remain a low key celeb.
This is one of the things I totaly admire about Julia.
As for writing, Theres no seceret that I couldnt write to save my life.(Julia just amazes me how easy she make writing look.)Not to mention my spelling completly sucks!
So Jools you just keep on doing your thing, I may not always comment, But I’ll Always Read ya!
La Boheme – Charles Aznavour
expresses the same ideas…
Quand au hasard des jours / when by chance some days
Je m’en vais faire un tour / I go do a tour
A mon ancienne adresse / of my old address
Je ne reconnais plus / I recognized nothing
Ni les murs, ni les rues / not the walls, not the streets
Qui ont vu ma jeunesse / that saw my youth
En haut d’un escalier / at the top of a staircase
Je cherche l’atelier / I searched for the studio
Dont plus rien ne subsiste / of which nothing remains
Dans son nouveau decor / in its new decor
Montmartre semble triste / Montmartre seems sad
Et les lilas sont morts / and the lilacs are dead
This is beautifully written. I live in Brooklyn now, and I’m not sure anything remotely similar does or can exist here; costs are too high.
I recall the time of your childhood in SoHo. My favorite means of entry into a loft was that of a friend who became a very successful casting director in LA. You probably know her. She lived up the block across from Pearl Paint. Around the corner from that fabulous plastics store. To enter, she had to open the front door of a fabric wholesaler on the ground floor, climb around giant cloth bolts, pull down a stairway, and climb up to the second floor hallway which contained her loft.
Were you too young to recall that restaurant on West Broadway, the one with the mural of the artist founders of the SoHo art scene?
I first realized something horrible was happening when I was invited to see the loft renovation done by the art dealers Louis and Susan Meisel. I couldn’t believe my eyes. The kitchen area had three or four giant refrigerators with see-through doors. I’d never seen restaurant equipment before. In a home! It might have been on the corner where Ken and John’s still is. Also: a huge bathtub/spa, another thing I had never seen, elevated about two feet off the floor (I now realize to allow for the plumbing). It all was beyond ostentatious. It violated the neighborhood in every sense.
As you say, what goes up must come down. But in SoHo, the city’s intent was to take an out-of-use industrial area where artists like your parents were living in violation of the law, and remedy the law to create an artist’s colony. Instead what we got was an influx of the very wealthy who wanted to live in a hip area, and who forced the artists out.
What we have now is a billionaire’s city ruled by a billionaire. It’s all about overdevelopment. A zillion apartment buildings and hospitals closing.
How can artists live here? I read about people moving to places like Philadelphia.
Somebody needs to save New York City. How, I have no idea.
That was very pretty. I’d heard about the gentrification of SoHo, but it’s different to read about it first-hand. Please, keep writing!
Very nice… Everyone carries a story like this with them. Sometimes they just have to be reminded they are there. Love that you were more excited learning how to operate the elevator than learning how to drive. Those are the small victories that truly rock!
As for your film, I watched it again. It has been quite some time since my last viewing and it is strange what I saw then and now. I can’t blame it on the alcohol either. Candidly I have learned a great deal from your website, educating my naïve insight. What inspired you to use a widowed, middle aged man having a nervous breakdown and a misguided young woman as a way to depict how clothes can change your life is fascinating. There are so many other ways to have written it out but to have such breadth…… how did you get it to all come together I have to wonder. Better yet, how did you start (my inquisitive mind at work)? I still find it very moving and inspiring. I like clothes a great deal and having a grandmother as a seamstress / designer and knowing how too actually put a pattern together gives me some clue but still. At least I hope you were able to keep the dress. I do believe change is possible even with the smallest of actions. But for the record I like my eggs scrambled.
There are over 63,000 elevators, escalators, amusement rides and other related devices in New York City. The average elevator makes approximately 500 trips a day, totaling over 30 million elevator trips per day in New York City. The chance of an accident on an elevator is rare, making elevators one of the safest modes of transportation. Of course knowing this doesn’t change my heart palpitations either, but that is another issue.
Interesting article about elevators, stairs and sustainability: http://www.slate.com/id/2215513/?from=rss
On a personal note, my family owned a turn of a century building that was a main stay for local businesses and the like. Lots of story and heritage and even an old lift as well. A unique but sad story is that half of it was destroyed by an arsonist who burned it in retaliation due to my father sentencing him to prison for a similar crime. I remember the news on the radio about it being on fire and the DJ asking everyone to limit water consumption. Yes, it was that big of a deal. The jokes and comments were interesting for a while after that as well. I still get questions about it today and it has been more than 20 years ago. I guess I share this when you spoke about home and how things change. I still visit the ol’ building every once in a while but getting me to talk about urban development and the politics in refurbishing a building is difficult to say the least.
“Treat the earth well. It was not given to you by your parents. It was loaned to you by your children” -Kenyan Proverb
Happy Earth Day!
I hate to see old buildings fall. The buildings around Union Square are works of art compared to the glass boxes that get build today. God I hate modern architecture!!
http://nymag.com/realestate/vu/2008/09/50481/
Hi. I just discovered your blog and love it. I have to sit down and really dig into it soon. I have always enjoyed your movie roles and am interested in learning about your writing and directing. I also really enjoyed the short film.
Hi Julia! I just wanted to say that I look up to you. You are an amazing actress. You bring smiles to the world and my personal favorite of yours is the “10 Things I Hate About You”. You, honestly, made me cry when you read the poem. You even made me laugh, like in your short film. Thank you for being someone to look up to. Oh, by the way, I’m 13. So my dream is to be just like you.