rivett608
Diamond
- Joined
- Oct 25, 2002
- Location
- Kansas City, Mo.
This is in today, 2-7-06, New York Times.......
There Goes the Neighborhood, the Machine District
(there was a photo here... check their web site to see it)
Some of Grand Machinery Exchange's remaining goods being loaded on Centre Street before being trucked to a new home on Long Island.
By ANDREW JACOBS
Published: February 7, 2006
Later this week, a group of men with callused hands and a set of 19th-century tools will drag a 2,600-pound grinder across Larry Goodman's grease-soaked floor, haul it onto the back of a flatbed truck and then sweep out an empty storefront that has dealt in industrial workhorses for 80 years.
The End of an Industrial Era
It is safe to say that there will be few tears shed when his company, Grand Machinery Exchange, leaves Lower Manhattan for Long Island, but its departure will mark the demise of New York's once robust machinery district and an end to one of the more tangible links to New York's industrial past.
Mr. Goodman, whose grandfather started selling second-hand metalworking machines on Centre Street in 1927, recalls a gritty world that buzzed with riggers, repairmen and buyers haggling over Volkswagen-size contraptions. "It was a riot down here," he said, watching one of his machines being trundled away. "All these guys, all these places, they're gone now."
Long before luxury lofts, the Apple store and the swarms of European tourists — decades before the words SoHo and TriBeCa were even a glimmer in the eyes of real estate opportunists — there were the bronze forgers, the book printers, the food canners and the garment makers. Until the 1950's, when the industrial lifeblood began to ebb away, vast stretches of Lower and Midtown Manhattan were given over to a vertical city of foundries and factories that employed hundreds of thousands.
And it was here, along the island's lower spine, that a tribe of used-machine dealers gathered, most of them former junk peddlers, and their refurbished presses, shapers and grinders kept the factories humming.
There were once 40 such dealers in the machinery district in the Canal Street area, and Henry Zeisel is grudgingly nostalgic for the rough and tumble pageant of gruff men, many of them East European Jews, who knew how to turn discarded band saws and crankshafts into saleable merchandise.
"They used to call us the 40 thieves," said Mr. Zeisel, 86, whose father opened Zeisel Machinery in 1925, which long ago moved to New Jersey. "There was a great deal of competition, but despite the reputation, most of us were honest businessmen who worked way too hard."
The end of the machinery district follows the evaporation of so many other mercantile zones that have given New York rich concentrations of, say, used books and restaurant supplies. Radio Row, the collection of electronic gadget dealers, was obliterated by the construction of the World Trade Center, and there are few New Yorkers old enough to recall the knot of church-goods dealers around Murray Street or the butter-and-egg district at Duane and Greenwich Streets. A few months ago the city's wholesale fishmongers moved en masse to Hunts Point, Queens, from their ancestral home at the Fulton Fish Market beside the East River, and the viability of other districts that specialize in textiles, flowers and meat packing looks increasingly grim.
The machinery district's death cannot be pinned solely on rising real estate values, the culprit for so much displacement in up-and-coming neighborhoods. The exodus of light manufacturing, which had filled all those lofts in SoHo, drained away some of the best customers, and as the machines grew bulkier and heavier, the dealers simply needed more showroom space. The final blows include the advent of cheap airfare, the fax machine and finally the Internet, which diminished the need for a centralized market.
"The buyers used to take the train in from New England or the South and go from one showroom to the next," said Murray Zeisel, 77, Henry Zeisel's younger brother. "When the dealers started to leave, so did the out-of-town walk-ins."
As the showrooms left, so too did the army of freelance riggers, the thick-necked deliverymen who could carry a massive lathe across town or country. Because many smaller loft buildings lacked freight elevators, new purchases would have to be lifted up the outside of the building and passed through a window. Larger machines might be disassembled and then reassembled after their move.
"In the early days, you'd even see men carrying machines up the stairs on their back," said Harry Mison, 70, a former president of the Machine Dealers National Association whose family dealership, Noble Machinery, closed four years ago after moving to Long Island. "There were plenty of characters."
By the mid-80's, there were just a half-dozen showrooms left, and without the riggers, the salesmen and their customers, it was only a matter of time before lunchtime haunts like Harry's delicatessen, Flanagan's steakhouse and Moran's luncheonette went out of business.
Grand Machinery Exchange, the district's sole survivor, would have pulled out sooner had Mr. Goodman's family not owned the Centre Street building and an even larger warehouse nearby on Baxter Street. (The final years of delay were prompted by the federal tax code, which would have made the sale of the properties financially imprudent.) Mr. Goodman, 44, who started working for his father a day after graduating from college, is eager to move to the company's new airplane hangar of a building on Long Island, which at 50,000 square feet will double the amount of space.
"We're ready to enter the 21st century," he said, sitting at his desk below the portrait of his grandmother, Bertha Goodman, who demanded that her image be affixed to the wall upon her death. "This is not a funeral but a very necessary change."
Even with most of its merchandise gone, the Centre Street showroom felt like a time capsule of Manhattan's industrial past, filled with ancient hardware that once powered factories and piles of yellowed manuals that explain the inner workings of machinery long turned to scrap.
Puttering around the basement, Mr. Goodman noted the thick steel girders that his grandfather, Jacob, an immigrant from Poland who never learned to read or write, installed in 1947 at a cost of $64,000. "Without these, the floors would have collapsed," he said. Scattered about were wooden carts and hand trucks that would look at home in a museum of the Industrial Revolution. Mr. Goodman said everything would probably end up in a Dumpster.
And the portrait of his grandmother? "I think she's had a long enough run," he said with a shrug.
As he packed up his files, a longtime customer, Hale Gurland, stopped by to say goodbye and reminisce about the old days, when the sidewalks were often made impassable by machinery. Mr. Gurland, 53, a metal sculptor who grew up around the corner, used to earn pocket money as a teenager by helping to move equipment. As an adult, he often bought cutting and grinding devices that helped produce his art.
"Nothing I ever bought from your father worked," Mr. Gurland said half in jest. "The guys down here had a saying: 'If it doesn't work, just bring it back.' "
Still, unlike Mr. Goodman, Mr. Gurland was deeply wistful about the end of the machinery district and slightly resentful about its replacement by the chic and the overpriced.
"You used to be able to buy anything down here, even rocket engines," he said. "Now it's all yuppies and boutiques. You can't even find a screwdriver in this neighborhood."
There Goes the Neighborhood, the Machine District
(there was a photo here... check their web site to see it)
Some of Grand Machinery Exchange's remaining goods being loaded on Centre Street before being trucked to a new home on Long Island.
By ANDREW JACOBS
Published: February 7, 2006
Later this week, a group of men with callused hands and a set of 19th-century tools will drag a 2,600-pound grinder across Larry Goodman's grease-soaked floor, haul it onto the back of a flatbed truck and then sweep out an empty storefront that has dealt in industrial workhorses for 80 years.
The End of an Industrial Era
It is safe to say that there will be few tears shed when his company, Grand Machinery Exchange, leaves Lower Manhattan for Long Island, but its departure will mark the demise of New York's once robust machinery district and an end to one of the more tangible links to New York's industrial past.
Mr. Goodman, whose grandfather started selling second-hand metalworking machines on Centre Street in 1927, recalls a gritty world that buzzed with riggers, repairmen and buyers haggling over Volkswagen-size contraptions. "It was a riot down here," he said, watching one of his machines being trundled away. "All these guys, all these places, they're gone now."
Long before luxury lofts, the Apple store and the swarms of European tourists — decades before the words SoHo and TriBeCa were even a glimmer in the eyes of real estate opportunists — there were the bronze forgers, the book printers, the food canners and the garment makers. Until the 1950's, when the industrial lifeblood began to ebb away, vast stretches of Lower and Midtown Manhattan were given over to a vertical city of foundries and factories that employed hundreds of thousands.
And it was here, along the island's lower spine, that a tribe of used-machine dealers gathered, most of them former junk peddlers, and their refurbished presses, shapers and grinders kept the factories humming.
There were once 40 such dealers in the machinery district in the Canal Street area, and Henry Zeisel is grudgingly nostalgic for the rough and tumble pageant of gruff men, many of them East European Jews, who knew how to turn discarded band saws and crankshafts into saleable merchandise.
"They used to call us the 40 thieves," said Mr. Zeisel, 86, whose father opened Zeisel Machinery in 1925, which long ago moved to New Jersey. "There was a great deal of competition, but despite the reputation, most of us were honest businessmen who worked way too hard."
The end of the machinery district follows the evaporation of so many other mercantile zones that have given New York rich concentrations of, say, used books and restaurant supplies. Radio Row, the collection of electronic gadget dealers, was obliterated by the construction of the World Trade Center, and there are few New Yorkers old enough to recall the knot of church-goods dealers around Murray Street or the butter-and-egg district at Duane and Greenwich Streets. A few months ago the city's wholesale fishmongers moved en masse to Hunts Point, Queens, from their ancestral home at the Fulton Fish Market beside the East River, and the viability of other districts that specialize in textiles, flowers and meat packing looks increasingly grim.
The machinery district's death cannot be pinned solely on rising real estate values, the culprit for so much displacement in up-and-coming neighborhoods. The exodus of light manufacturing, which had filled all those lofts in SoHo, drained away some of the best customers, and as the machines grew bulkier and heavier, the dealers simply needed more showroom space. The final blows include the advent of cheap airfare, the fax machine and finally the Internet, which diminished the need for a centralized market.
"The buyers used to take the train in from New England or the South and go from one showroom to the next," said Murray Zeisel, 77, Henry Zeisel's younger brother. "When the dealers started to leave, so did the out-of-town walk-ins."
As the showrooms left, so too did the army of freelance riggers, the thick-necked deliverymen who could carry a massive lathe across town or country. Because many smaller loft buildings lacked freight elevators, new purchases would have to be lifted up the outside of the building and passed through a window. Larger machines might be disassembled and then reassembled after their move.
"In the early days, you'd even see men carrying machines up the stairs on their back," said Harry Mison, 70, a former president of the Machine Dealers National Association whose family dealership, Noble Machinery, closed four years ago after moving to Long Island. "There were plenty of characters."
By the mid-80's, there were just a half-dozen showrooms left, and without the riggers, the salesmen and their customers, it was only a matter of time before lunchtime haunts like Harry's delicatessen, Flanagan's steakhouse and Moran's luncheonette went out of business.
Grand Machinery Exchange, the district's sole survivor, would have pulled out sooner had Mr. Goodman's family not owned the Centre Street building and an even larger warehouse nearby on Baxter Street. (The final years of delay were prompted by the federal tax code, which would have made the sale of the properties financially imprudent.) Mr. Goodman, 44, who started working for his father a day after graduating from college, is eager to move to the company's new airplane hangar of a building on Long Island, which at 50,000 square feet will double the amount of space.
"We're ready to enter the 21st century," he said, sitting at his desk below the portrait of his grandmother, Bertha Goodman, who demanded that her image be affixed to the wall upon her death. "This is not a funeral but a very necessary change."
Even with most of its merchandise gone, the Centre Street showroom felt like a time capsule of Manhattan's industrial past, filled with ancient hardware that once powered factories and piles of yellowed manuals that explain the inner workings of machinery long turned to scrap.
Puttering around the basement, Mr. Goodman noted the thick steel girders that his grandfather, Jacob, an immigrant from Poland who never learned to read or write, installed in 1947 at a cost of $64,000. "Without these, the floors would have collapsed," he said. Scattered about were wooden carts and hand trucks that would look at home in a museum of the Industrial Revolution. Mr. Goodman said everything would probably end up in a Dumpster.
And the portrait of his grandmother? "I think she's had a long enough run," he said with a shrug.
As he packed up his files, a longtime customer, Hale Gurland, stopped by to say goodbye and reminisce about the old days, when the sidewalks were often made impassable by machinery. Mr. Gurland, 53, a metal sculptor who grew up around the corner, used to earn pocket money as a teenager by helping to move equipment. As an adult, he often bought cutting and grinding devices that helped produce his art.
"Nothing I ever bought from your father worked," Mr. Gurland said half in jest. "The guys down here had a saying: 'If it doesn't work, just bring it back.' "
Still, unlike Mr. Goodman, Mr. Gurland was deeply wistful about the end of the machinery district and slightly resentful about its replacement by the chic and the overpriced.
"You used to be able to buy anything down here, even rocket engines," he said. "Now it's all yuppies and boutiques. You can't even find a screwdriver in this neighborhood."
I used to shop for tools etc. on Canal street about once a week.
