What NYC Spot That Closed This Decade Will You Miss The Most?

You know That Place you're always dropping by? That Place that's always just been there, so you've never really considered what you'd do if it disappeared? That Dive Bar across the street with the deteriorating, peeled-pleather stools and great happy hour; That Bookstore on your walk to the subway after work; That Bodega on your corner that's open 24/7; That Independent Movie Theater that you'll take two subways to instead of hitting up the much closer AMC; That Great Neighborhood Place that puts a warm meal in front of you when you need one; or how about That Classic Spot steeped in history with the mediocre eggplant parm but fantastic people-watching and martinis?

In the new year, we'll be talking about That Place—the one you appreciate, even if no one else does. The one down the block that you rely on, or the one you'd travel out of your way for. The one you take for granted, or fear closing. The one that makes your corner of New York better. The one you're just glad exists. Email us (subject line: That Place) and tell us about yours.

As the decade closes, however, we're going to look back at That Place that closed in the 2010s — there were a lot, in Manhattan alone we lost everything from big, shiny names like the Four Seasons to mainstays like Cafe Edison to beloved, longtime fixtures like Angelica Kitchen, one-of-a-kind stores like Pearl Paint, unique locales like Boat Basin, inexpensive steakhouses like Tad's, and old Chinatown faves like Yee Li. City Bakery! Mars Bar! Cornelia Street Cafe! Roseland! Coffee Shop! Dean and Deluca!? Other Music! And these are just the ones that made headlines. So many mom and pops closed without fanfare. (Take a heartbreaking scroll through the Vanishing NY archives for more.) Below is just a very small sampling of some of the places we lost this decade that we'll miss; in the new decade, let's celebrate them before they're gone.

Glaser's

1670 1st Ave, Upper East Side

When I moved to Yorkville in 2013, Gracie Mansion and Glaser’s Bake Shop were the two landmarks I used to orient those unfamiliar with the neighborhood. It was the latter that would bring about that closed-eye expression of a delicious taste remembered. Prior to its closing in 2018, Glaser’s had been serving up sticky buns, cream puffs, danishes, cakes, pies, strudels, challah, and black & white cookies for 116 years. It was a fourth-generation family business, complete with pale green storefront and yellowed lace curtains. You sensed it immediately when you walked through the door and were greeted by a staff whose slow but purposeful gait suggested they no longer had anything to prove.

Once inside, you took stock of the wall of family photos and inhaled the shop's intoxicating aroma. For as many times as I went, I still always craned my neck to get a better view of the offerings so that I would be ready with my order. Because when one of the counter ladies finally sidled up and asked you what you wanted, the pressure felt immense. If you bought a cake or enough treats, you got to watch one of them deftly unspool the pink and white string and tie up your white (not pink!) box. Amazingly, they always did this slowly, as if it were a bow to some precious package.  

Even if the line was out the door, the counter ladies would lean over and ask your kids if they wanted to pick out a free cookie. The selection was immense and children are naturally indecisive. But it never seemed to matter. They never rushed anyone. 

The ages of the owners made you know it was doomed. Still, on the day my sons and I stopped and read the letter that announced they’d be retiring, we gasped. For weeks, we kept passing by, shaking our heads in disbelief. Where would we get our Thanksgiving pies? Our after-school eclairs? “It’s so sad, mommy,” my son said again and again. Out of the blue, he would sometimes tell me he was depressed about Glaser's. He was only seven and already he was experiencing his first loss of a New York City institution. 

We held out hope that another bakery would take the place of Glaser’s. After all, the building was owned by the family and that seemed like the most logical choice in the scheme of the neighborhood and our cravings. But who can make sense of the city's retail landscape? Months later, a new shop did finally open under a blazing yellow awning. But the storefront was so different, it took me weeks to realize what had taken the place of the old Glaser's—a barber shop that also buys gold and silver coins and jewelry. (Elizabeth Kim)

PT

331 Bedford Ave, Williamsburg, Brooklyn

In 2007 I moved to Williamsburg from the Lower East Side, to an apartment on South 4th Street and Bedford, where I stayed through 2010. During that time, there weren't that many bars and restaurants within the few block radius of my place, and the ones that did exist were significantly less busy than the ones on the north side of the neighborhood. It was the sleepier side of the now hyper-developed neighborhood, and I preferred it that way — it was also home to what ended up being the best kept secret in Williamsburg. Perhaps that was not a good thing, after all.

I had not heard of PT before moving there, but it was just a block away from me, on the corner of South 3rd and Bedford, so it was not long before I found myself at one of its sturdy, wooden tables with a bowl of pasta in front of me. My first dinner there was July 20th, 2007, which I know because I still have the glowing, day-after emails with my friend, Alex, about how incredible the experience was. From then on, we went whenever our paychecks allowed, unable to conceive of grabbing a bottle of wine or a meal anywhere else. What was the point? This was the platonic ideal, it could not be improved upon.

We truly couldn't believe a place like this existed — it was never too crowded, the food was excellent, it was shockingly affordable, the interior space was cool like a cellar in the summer, and cozy like a cave in the winter. But the real move here was to go outdoors for as long as the weather allowed. There was an elevated back patio that no one really seemed to know about, just up a narrow set of stairs past the kitchen. We'd often sit out there alone, for hours, as if it were our own private, twinkly-lit garden filled with plants. To one side was the wall of another building, and to the other was a perennially empty lot and South 3rd. Sure, sometimes I'd hear rustling and pick my feet up, pretty sure a mouse or rat had joined us, but hey, gotta expect some wildlife outdoors.

We'd get bowls of pasta, plates of roasted vegetables, bottles of wine, and on special occasions, when they had it, some Stracciatella di bufala. But every visit, without fail, we got the bread and butter, the latter of which featured different herbs and salts each time! Listen, this was like my first grown-up restaurant, so that butter was a revelation to me at the time.

The staff and owners were always kind, and never rushed us — they'd let us sit around talking in the garden until they were ready to close up for the night, always bringing us a complimentary, hand-crafted Limoncello first.

While I moved away from the neighborhood at the end of 2010, Alex and I would often return to PT, at least once a year... it became our place for friend dinners, and remained miraculously unchanged in one of the most rapidly changing areas. It was like stepping into a time capsule when we went back in more recent years. Until one day in 2017, without warning, they closed. Nothing has reopened in the space since. That empty lot next to it remains empty, as well, a surprising site on prime Bedford Ave these days, existing in contrast to the buildings that have sprouted from all of the other previously empty lots.

In January of this year, Alex emailed me listing off some of our old favorite spots in the area: "PT, Larry Lawrence, Dram, Lodge, Nita Nita, Miranda, and S 4th Bar are all gone," he wrote, asking, "What's left?" (Jen Carlson)

Hunan Balcony

2596 Broadway, Manhattan Valley/UWS

Basic Chinese takeout places are a dime-a-dozen in New York, and there isn't much to distinguish one from the other beyond a particular neighborhood preference or the speed with which they deliver to your door. Or at least that's what I thought before I fell in love with my sweet, precious Hunan Balcony.

For over 30 years, this restaurant located at the corner of Broadway and 98th Street served the best American Chinese food in... maybe the entire city. Their menu's best dish was Lover In The Stars: tender shredded beef sautéed with snow peas in a special hot brown sauce, served with Chinese scallion pancakes in the shape of a star. It was the perfect grammatically incorrect dish to share with a real lover (or friend). Anyone who came over to my place in the first half of the decade heard my spiel about how great Hunan Balcony was, and more often than not, they too fell in love with it and expected us to order it whenever they came by.

That all came crashing down in spring 2014, when it closed down "for renovations" with a note on the door promising to reopen soon. After a few weeks, and after seeing the insides of the restaurant seemingly torn apart, I started to panic. When I got in touch with a manager there, they insisted this was temporary. About six months later, it reopened under a different name with an altered menu and a slightly different layout, but otherwise the same decor. Someone who worked there told me the owners of Hunan just didn't want to do it anymore, and had left the country; someone else said it had to do with rent increases that forced them out. That place has since closed down as well.

For the last three years or so, the space has remained a vacant building among dozens of other vacant storefronts on Broadway in the neighborhood. After being one of the most successful and stable restaurants on the UWS for decades, it has become emblematic of a city-wide crisis. All that remains of it are a few takeout menus I stashed away, and the faint outline of "Hunan Balcony" which can still be seen on its awning—and which, at my most sentimental, leaves me hoping maybe it'll reopen yet. (Ben Yakas)

Elvis Guesthouse and Sidewalk Cafe

85 Avenue A and 94 Avenue A, East Village

For a few years after college, armed with little money but a burning desire to party as though we did, my friends and I found everything we could want at the intersection of 6th Street and Avenue A. The routine was simple: meet at Sidewalk Cafe for happy hour, hop across the street for several hours of dancing at Elvis Guesthouse, then round out the evening with a grease-soaked $1 slice at BD Star Pizza next door. In the turbo-luxifying Manhattan of 2015-2017, spending $25 or less for an entertaining night on the town felt like a small miracle.

None of these individual elements, it can be acknowledged, were particularly miraculous. Elvis Guesthouse was a dank basement, boasting a faux-bathhouse and a crowd that skewed NYU. But the music was always good, and the scene somehow managed to avoid the holier-than-thou pretension that infects so many similar Brooklyn spots. It closed in 2017, around the same time as the nearby and equally charming Cake Shop, leaving a gaping hole in the borough's dwindling supply of homey, dance-friendly underground spaces.

Sidewalk Cafe hung around a bit longer. Once the epicenter of the anti-folk movement, the back-room venue remained a stomping ground for the neighborhood's delightful weirdos until it was purchased and transformed into a bistro at the end of last year. Gone are the $4 whiskeys, the smoke-filled patio, and long-running, reliably-rowdy open mic. There's a chic brunch menu now, which is supposedly not bad, though it looks sterile and empty whenever I walk past.

Of course, for all the laments about the East Village, there's still an abundance of cheap drinking holes, and no shortage of fresh-faced graduates. Most likely they've taken to a different corner, where they marvel at a city that provides everything they could ask for in such close proximity. Before stumbling home, I hope they stop for a cheap slice from 6th and A, and not the new frat-monsters up the block. (Jake Offenhartz)

Soutine

104 West 70th St, Upper West Side

When people talk about wanting to move to the suburbs for that "small town feel," I scoff because there's nothing "small town feel" about driving your car to the nearest shopping center to pick up some goods. But maybe I'm just lucky enough to live in a NYC neighborhood where I get that "small town feel"—I have a cobbler who can fix my boots for the umpteenth time, I have my favorite bodega cats running up to my feet when I enter the store, and I have my cake spots for every important occasion in my life—plus cupcakes and scones for any other day.

For a long time, Soutine was that cake spot for me, a sweet little sanctuary. A tiny bakery on West 70th Street, near Columbus Avenue, with a storefront window showcasing a lovely cake and a bench outside, perfect for plunking down on and eating that cookie you just bought. And there were other treats: Scones, croissants, baguettes, quiches, banana bread, danishes, cupcakes, decadent flourless chocolate cake, the famous Concord Cake, so many pies during Thanksgiving, even prepared food for New Yorkers too busy to cook.

The cakes were so delicate and delicious, not burdened by overly sweet buttercream, that it became my go-to for friend's birthdays, my birthdays, my wedding, a celebration, and my daughter's first birthday (her second birthday, too). The workers always made you feel like you were at home—"You want the Powerpuff Girls on that cake? Sure!"—and Soutine became part of my near daily routine—maybe I'd get home from work before they closed and see what was left, and you'd definitely find me there on weekend mornings, to stock up on scones for breakfast and other sweets for snacks. Scones are my very favorite, and, honestly speaking, baked goods are an important complement to my routines.

When owner Madge Rosenberg decided to close Soutine in 2012 (a rent increase was looming), I stood across the street and sobbed, while pushing my daughter's stroller. "Where will we get cakes for birthdays?" I asked my husband. "What about Thanksgiving pie?"

Of course, I found another place for birthday cakes and Thanksgiving pies. And we've been very lucky that the space has remained a bakery of some sort—it was the lovely Pain d'Epices for about six years until becoming the gluten-free Le Gourmande (they have scones!) this year. But I will always miss Soutine and its staff, who became threaded into my and my family's lives at happy, joyous times and the quiet moments in between. (Jen Chung)

Sunshine Cinema

143 E Houston St, Lower East Side

I try not to get too sentimental about the city's ever-evolving streetscape. Of course it sucks when anyone is forced to close their business, and lose their livelihood because of jacked-up rents, but constant change has always been one of New York's defining characteristics. So while almost no place is truly irreplaceable in this town—a beloved restaurant closes, and dozens of other eminently qualified spots are eager and able to fill the void—there are certain establishments that I wish had stuck around forever, or at least for my lifetime, mostly because they were pleasant and convenient for me.
The Landmark Sunshine on Houston was like that. When it opened in 2001 it felt extraordinary here, a movie house showing independent stuff that didn't treat its customers like crap. There were five theaters with actually comfortable seats, good sight lines throughout, and, for most its 16-year-run, the showtimes were spaced far enough apart to avoid a cattle-call shitshow in the lobby. Plus, and maybe just as important, it was also just a really cool, historic building to share a city with. 
I probably sat in the Sunshine a hundred times during the 2010s before it closed two year ago, and I still actively miss it about once a week, especially on those nights when I don't feel like dealing with the Angelika. That there's a glassy travesty of an office tower going up in its place (right now it's just a post-demolition hole in the ground, a construction site that promises to block the sidewalk/bike lane on Houston for quite some time) heightens the loss to the neighborhood most specifically, and to life in city as a whole. 

Earlier this year, when the Commercial Observer interviewed Gregory Kraut, a managing partner at K Property Group (the new owners), he had this to say about tearing down Sunshine:

CO: So no theater there.

GK: No theater. Zero. We’re demolishing it.

CO: You don’t feel bad?

GK: No, not at all.

(Scott Lynch)

You can tell us about That Place you'll miss in the comments.