Death of a Block 4

That little block of mom and pops, on 9th Avenue between 17th and 18th Streets, is being gutted.

Reader Brad sends in a couple of photos and writes, "They have removed all signage and even kicked the Subway out to create one massive vacant space ripe for a bank and a Duane Reade!"

We've been following this story since it began back in 2008. Here's a quick timeline (for more detail, click here):

2008: Morris Moinian buys the building and prepares to kick out all the small businesses, which included Tamara dry cleaning and tailor shop, The New Chelsea Barber shop, a couple of bodegas, Chelsea Liquors, and the Sweet Banana Candy store.

Weeks after that announcement, the community held a rally to save the businesses from eviction.

Months later, Chelsea Liquors was gone after 30 years in business, and the bodegas began to fall.

Then it got quiet.

2008

2012: Moinian sold the building to the Stonehenge Group, who promptly delivered eviction notices to all of the small business tenants that remained.

The New China take-out joint shuttered. The New Barber Shop shuttered. The tailor shop and Sweet Banana vanished. Places that mattered deeply to people, that helped connect them to each other and gave them safe places to land, were heartlessly wrenched from their neighborhood. They will be replaced by something cold, sterile, and inhuman.

The Stonehenge Group released a rendering of their dead vision, beige and bland, an image that belongs to the new city, the vanished city.