Torch & Crown Beer Garden is back for its third season in the Union Square Park Pavilion, serving up locally brewed beers and fan favorites like the Lou Burger, pizza, and pretzels.
From now through early November, enjoy:
Here on 13th St., ten-year-old Korean restaurant DoSirak has closed, while across the street in our building, BAK has opened. As it turns out, the BAK folks are the DoSirak folks, so all is well. Kimchi for all.
From the Times:
The countdown has begun to the closing of the 16th Street space that this influential restaurant has occupied for 30 years. The cafe, which was the first piece of Danny Meyer’s culinary empire, has been a favorite of New York’s publishing world and jump-started the renaissance of the Union Square area. But it will not renew its lease at a higher rent, and in the spring will relocate to nearby 235 Park Avenue South, at East 19th Street.
To mark the final days at its current spot, from Dec. 1 to 12, the last day of service, the restaurant will switch to a three-course dinner menu called the 12 Nights of Union Square Cafe, highlighting some of its best-known seasonal dishes, including garganelli with white truffles, beef tartare, lamb braciole and Berkshire rack of pork. There are optional wine pairings from some of the restaurant’s favorite producers. Lunches will feature the regular à la carte menu:
Dinner reservations Dec. 1 to 12 by phone only, $85 prepaid; lunch reservations up to 28 days ahead, opentable.com;
Union Square Cafe, 21 East 16th Street, 212-243-4020,
unionsquarecafe.com.
You may have noticed construction work speeding along at the corner of 13th St. and 4th Ave. This is to be an 11-story, 162-room hotel in the medium price range. It’s being built by Sam Chang, the king of New York hotel development. He’s famous for finding ways to squeeze hotels onto tiny lots. In this case he’s keeping the facade of the former building as a kind of pedestal. Unusually sensitive for a developer who is usually accused of having no architectural taste whatsoever.
The former TGI Fridays on Union Square East will become a standalone site for Spacious, the co-working space that already operates within Corkbuzz from 8-4 every day. Details here.
We now know that the 13th St. parking garage will be converted into eight multimillion-condos, the priciest of which will be $20 million.
The buildings feature various architectural styles and were home to garment manufacturers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. On September 25, 2018, the Landmarks Preservation Commission unanimously voted to add seven buildings to its calendar for consideration as individual landmarks. The buildings are located at 817 Broadway, 826 Broadway, 830 Broadway, 832 Broadway, 836 Broadway, 840 Broadway, and 841 Broadway. All of the buildings are south of Union Square in Manhattan.
The Landmarks Research Commission studied the area south of Union Square between 5th Avenue and 3rd Avenue, including where Broadway intersects the area, for historical preservation opportunities. The Landmarks Research Commission selected the seven buildings for their distinctive, intact architectural features and the importance of the buildings in Broadway’s history. The buildings were built between 1876 and 1902, a period where this area south of Union Square experienced rapid commercial development from a growing garment industry. Many of these buildings highlight innovative construction methods for this time, including the use of steel frames, electricity, and elevators. Of the seven buildings, five were built in the Renaissance Revival style.