A new look at the old Lower Manhattan
BY GABE HERMAN
As rapid development has
swept through the East Village
and Lower East Side in
recent years, a photo exhibit explores
the one-story buildings in the neighborhoods,
a dying breed trying to hold
on amid all the new construction.
“Single-Story Project,” by photographer
Adam Friedberg, is showing
in Greenwich Village at the Center
for Architecture, at 536 LaGuardia
Place. It includes 54 prints by Friedberg,
a longtime East Village resident.
The images are divided into categories,
including storefronts, bars &
restaurants, garages & warehouses,
churches, and cultural & community
buildings.
Friedberg said the origin of the project
was visual. When he saw a collection
of low buildings at St. Marks
Place and Third Avenue, including the
Continental bar and a McDonald’s, he
thought it looked strange, “like a broken
tooth,” he said.
“Visually it was very interesting to
me,” he added. “The more I looked at
it, I thought, ‘I don’t know why, but I
should take a picture of this.’”
Those buildings have come down to
make way for an office building. The
disappearing small buildings would
be a recurring theme of the project,
with Friedberg noting that he lost the
chance to shoot about 15 buildings because
they were knocked down first.
After photographing that first corner
at St. Marks, Friedberg noticed all
The single-story building at 52 Avenue A.
the low buildings in the area. “It’s really
weird that all these towers are going
up because this area was always
quite low,” he said.
He was encouraged by people he
knew to keep working on the project.
“I didn’t realize quite how many there
were,” Friedberg said of the low buildings.
“I just kept finding more and more.”
Along with trying to photograph
buildings before they came down, another
challenge was his insistence on
taking photos with no people or cars
blocking the buildings. He said viewers
tend to look at people in photos,
and he didn’t want the buildings to
just become background.
He researched parking times,
checked weather and construction
and movie shoots, and even then there
were always unpredictable issues that
came up. He had to shoot some photos
at 5 a.m. to get his desired effect.
The project took nearly five years
and Friedberg photographed 97 buildings,
and it was often the empty space
above the structures that he found interesting.
“Most of them are pretty
bland,” he said of the buildings and
their architecture.
Friedberg, 53, is from Wisconsin
and first came to New York City
around age 18, after moving to Connecticut
for college. He first lived in
the city on the Upper West Side but
soon moved Downtown and has been
there ever since, saying he feels most
(PHOTOS BY ADAM FRIEDBERG
comfortable there.
He doesn’t think of himself as a
preservationist, and said he takes no
side on issues of development in the
area. “I’m not aligning myself to one
side or the other,” Friedberg said.
“Things are always changing.”
Friedberg said he often encountered
business owners who saw him outside
and hoped he was a developer looking
to buy them out. He said they often
told him they wanted to walk away,
and that the city was making it difficult
with tax laws. They were saying
they can’t afford to stay in business,
Friedberg noted.
Friedberg said reactions to his project
have been positive.
“I think in general people are happy
to see the pictures,” he said, and noted
that since iPhones came along, many
locals don’t look up too often anymore.
“I think people just don’t notice
these things.”
The exhibit runs until Feb. 29.
25 Third Ave. at St. Marks Place.
55 Pitt St. At 39 Kenmare St.
14 January 16, 2020 Schneps Media