| 57° | 
|
Gothamist is a website about New York. More
Editor: Jen Chung Publisher: Jake Dobkin
About Us & Advertising | Archives | Contact | Mobile | RSS | Staff
Most Recommended:
Jennie and Alexis, Blue Marble Ice Cream (12)
Trial Looms Over MTA's Negligence in Platform Rape (9)
Brooklyn Navy Yard Opens to the Public (6)
Week in Rock: Echoing Edition (5)
Calorie Info Now Following You Down Into the Subway (5)
Most Commented:
St. Louis Showdown: Biden and Palin Debate (99)
Dow Ends the Day Below 10,000 (43)
MTA Unveils First Ad-Wrapped Subway (42)
Banksygate 2008: The Natives Respond (37)
Details Emerge About East 14th Street Fatalities (33)
Latest tip:
The naked Tasered guy isn't really dead -- he's in Japan. <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new [more]
Latest link:
[from jenchungsboobs] Deal Journal - WSJ.com : Why The Biggest Banks Will Only Get Bigger
Latest Photo:
Trevor Little caught a crew power washing a building down on Suffolk and Houston. It's hard to believe that beautiful yellow brick is under all of that grime!
In a few years all of the buildings down in LES will probably be this clean-- and that's probably a good thing, but does it make anyone else feel wistful for the old LES?
|
Holy cow! That's astonshing.
I wonder what my apartment building would look like after a powerwashing.
I'm not sure if I would want the dirty old LES back. It has its own distinct charms, but the building weren't designed to be fithy.
wow, that's pretty awesome.
Holy cow! That's astonshing.
I wonder what my apartment building would look like after a powerwashing.
I'm not sure if I would want the dirty old LES back. It has its own distinct charms, but the building weren't designed to be fithy.
>>In a few years all of the buildings down in LES will probably be this clean
I wish, but how do you know all the buildings will be cleaned?
www.forgotten-ny.com
but does it make anyone else feel wistful for the old LES?
No way! Look at how the moulding above each window has a distinct color, giving the building much more beauty.
Don't worry Gothamist, it'll be dirty again by the time Bush is out of office.
Don't worry Gothamist, it'll be dirty again by the time Bush is out of office.
Not necessarily. Decades of exposure to motor vehicle exhaust is most likely what made the brick so dirty. Thanks to better emissions controls, cars are much cleaner today so with any luck the problem won't recur.
ah, just think that a good percentage of the grime on those walls is dreck you have inhaled in all the years you have lived in ny!
more bikes! less cars!
Coal was used to heat buildings in the past.
Don't worry Gothamist, it'll be dirty again by the time Bush is out of office.
Not necessarily. Decades of exposure to motor vehicle exhaust is most likely what made the brick so dirty. Thanks to better emissions controls, cars are much cleaner today so with any luck the problem won't recur.
um, nostalgic for the old LES? That (the clean brick facade) is the old LES, unless of course (and I doubt this), they smeared the grime onto the building during construction.
the yuppies must be delighted.
that is incredible!! i love the man slacking off. union workers...
Just a joke, Peter :)
I hope your right about emmissions control.
Those guys can’t be union, there would be at least 2 guys slacking off. I've done pressure washing before. In their defense, if you want to keep the machine working constantly you have to have one guy in reserve for when the guy washing gets fatigued. That kind of work makes me smile every time I tighten the tie around my neck. It is cold, wet, and miserable work.
My building is one of 4 connected together, each owned separately by this point, and all were grimy.
A couple of years ago the building directly next door went through a power washing, and it was astonishing, both at how clean next door became and how disgusting my building was (and still is today).
This may be the first time in the history of that building that it was cleaned in such a way. Eeks.
...but does it make anyone else feel wistful for the old LES?
No.
where does the water go ?!! ? ewwww
i live in the LES and was amazed when my building was painted on the inside. now seeing this makes me wonder just how beautiful my living situation can really be.
Remember when they cleaned the ceiling of Grand Central and it turned out the inches of grime were several decades of nicotine build up? Good times...
The LES was pretty filthy way back when, too - see Luc Sante's "Lowlife" for some eye-opening history. There's also a terrific chapter in that book about the decorative facades of the LES' buildings, how they were designed to look ornate and beautiful on the outside to hide the bleak squalor within.
yeah, I'm really nostalgic for the times of constant burning coal. yum.
I own a couple buildings like that and had them power washed recently. The before and after is incredible. Brick is a great material. One of my buildings is actually yellow, like this one, and we had no idea until after it was cleaned.
Amazing photo, really.
i miss the old les. those were the days. it is a shame that people who lived in the old les probably hated their lives as much as us and missed the old les themselves. and the people before that. and the people before that and eventually the monkeys, the amphibians, and one celled organisms, they all missed the old times. [epiphany of the word 'miss' that we keep forgetting, you miss what comes before you (what happens when you are not there) and you also miss in the sense that you long for it]
i guess the universe must have been the most awesome place when it didnt exist.
Just wondering, when they´re using that "powerwasher" so close those window, i hope that water doesn´t leak in to the apartments... Nobody knows how good those old frames hold?
I can't tell if my Allen Street building would look any different after a power washing - it seems to be painted in peeling grey paint.
In any case, it's not just the LES that's dirty -- it's the whole town, right? They've been powerwashing Grand Central for the last few years (well, they might be done now - haven't checked recently) and the before/after shots were just as unbelievable.
This picture reminds me again of how wonderful Trevor Little is. His work is amazing!
In 1963, my wife and I lived on the top floor rear of 172 Ludlow Street, a renovated 2-bedroom apartment, for $85 a month (yeah, it was cheap, but consider: I was making $65 a week, before taxes, as a clerk).
Once she got pregnant, all I could think of was how I was not raising my kids on the Lower East Side (I grew up in Chelsea; she in Harlem). We moved first to the West Bronx, then to Boerum Hill, then to Fort Greene, settling finally in a big old Victorian near the water in St. George, where the ferry docks on Staten Island.
There's only one thing I miss about the Lower East Side, and that is that it no longer exists as a place where it's possible to live cheaply in Manhattan.
Do we pine for the old heroin-addicted streets of the LES? Ah the good old days.
The grime covered part looks like the cover of Led Zepp's Physical Graffiti. Physical Graffiti.. removal! Heh. I'm so clever.
I'm glad they're keeping the old buildings. If it was 50 years ago, they'd just be torn down.
And to the guy who said that he's glad he puts on a tie instead of having that job.. doesn't seem like he understands the impact of making a physical difference in people's environments. I'd love to do work like that.
seriously, where does all the gross water go????
It depends on what's in the washer. Here's a good start.
Oooh, powerwashing. I often look around the city and imagine powerwashing things. It all started when I rented a powerwasher and did my deck.
pictures
What type of chemicals were they applying?
Damn! well a city without a good heroin scene just isn't a city at all. So, I'm ALL FOR the old Lower East Side. Hell, even in late 2000 I was still able to score on C street.
Last time I went there, end of 2003, I couldn't even find a fix on the streets. Not that I needed one - I had been two years clean by then and I am six years clean now, but STILL - it woulda been nice to at least say hello to the old hipsters.