Tribeca Grand Hotel.

[kidda]

Hi, What did the Tribeca Grand Hotel used to be before it was turned into a Hotel. Was the building demolished and then rebuilt or just renovated. We are coming to stay on Monday for a week so i want to impress/bore my wife with some useful titbits of info.
Thanks, Shaun

[lofter1]

That triangular plot where the Hotel now stands used to be the site of a garden center / nursery (2/3 of the lot), plus a small parking lot.

Once the nursery moved out my life became much more difficult in regards to my plants :(

The Tribeca Grand is a completely new building.

[ZippyTheChimp]

Here ya go:

http://img294.imageshack.us/img294/66/farmgarden01cag6.jpg

At the upper right, you can see the rubble from several small buildings that were taken down.

My memory is a little foggy...
The parking lot was bought by a developer and excavated. Damage was done to the buildings, and I remember braces being installed to shore them up. It didn't work, and the hole was filled in and the buildings demolished.

The Farm & Garden Nursery, shown here after it closed, was originally a gas station or a repair facility.

When I was a young idiot, I worked at the AT&T building across the street. The parking lot attendant had a shack at the upper left of the triangle. There was a phone booth next to it that he used. On boring days, we would torment him with phone tricks. It helped that we knew his name was Frank.

A classic: One morning a cop was walking by the phone booth and I called the number. The cop answered. I said,

"Frank, give me the 4 horse at Aqueduct 100 times."

"Who is this?"

"Uh...is this Frank?"

"Yeah."

CLICK

We watched as the cop went to the shack to talk to Frank. Frank began waving his arms and pointing to the AT&T building. The cop shook his head, but he appeared to be laughing.

[lofter1]

That ^^^ is a great classic NYC story. Thanks, Zip :cool:

[kidda]

Brilliant. Thanks very much. I love seeing old photos of New York. Its very interesting to see them as they used to be, especially in places like Soho and Tribeca.
Is there any old pictures of Puffys Tavern on Hudson St. around? We went there when it was a dive bar before it got modernised.

[ablarc]

This building should have been quite a bit taller.

As it is, it doesn't live up to its name or its setting.

Better than a parking lot, but mildly disappointing.

Did NIMBYs whittle it down?

[mumbles]

puffy's is modernized? coulda fooled me...

[antinimby]

This building should have been quite a bit taller.
As it is, it doesn't live up to its name or its setting.
Better than a parking lot, but mildly disappointing.
Did NIMBYs whittle it down?I agree that the hotel should have been taller.

That hulking AT&T building just to the north completely diminishes whatever grandness it might have wanted to exude.

The solution of course, would have been to make the hotel taller but this is Tribeca so that is moot... :(