De Lorenzo Pops Up

Last week we learned from Racked about The Warby Parker Holiday Spectacle Bazaar, "a several-months-long pop-up fair in an old garage space in Soho."

I don't know from Warby Parker (named after Jack Kerouac characters, they sell reasonably priced designer eyewear, including monocles and also $10,000 yurts). I do, however, know what that "old garage space" used to be.



Since 1968 this little brick building was home to the De Lorenzo metalworking shop, a business that went back to 1907. It survived and thrived through three generations of the same family. They sold the building in 2008 for a large, undisclosed sum to a "developer seeking to put up a luxury condominium building."


2009

Oddly enough, three years later the little brick building is still sitting there. Maybe the money for the luxury tower fell through. It's only a matter of time. For now, on the fading signage, you can still see the old phone number with its WA.5 exchange--the WA stood for Walker. And inside the pop-up shop, you can get a glimpse of what was.

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