The Bowery has been included in the State Register of Historic Places, DNAinfo reported, giving support to neighborhood groups who seek the street’s inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places.

But unlike historic districts in the city, the designation carries no weight in protecting buildings from alteration.

“The Bowery nomination is unique — it not only recognizes the architecture and cultural history of the street, but it acknowledges the earliest planning history of New York,” historian Kerri Culhane, who wrote the Bowery’s 171-page nomination, said in a statement.

“By extension, the Bowery nomination should be used as a planning tool to help guide better planning, zoning… on this vibrant and dynamic thoroughfare, which continues to make history today.” [more]

Once known as the “lighting district,” the stretch of Bowery south of Houston Street is losing the shops that contibruted to that nickname. The Wall Street Journal reported that since 2000 the area has dropped one-third of its light fixture businesses — bringing the total to 20, and two more are set to close — while rents have more than doubled from between $30 to $50 per square foot to about $100 in 2011.

Like similar “districts” on the Lower East Side, including the restaurant supply businesses that lined the sidewalks between East Houston and Delancey streets, glassy new development has pushed out iconic shopping areas. And at the market’s peak many developers simply made offers to acquire real estate that lighting store owners couldn’t refuse. [more]

The new Wyndham Garden Hotel

The 18-story Wyndham Garden Hotel is approaching completion at the intersection of the Bowery and Hester Street in Chinatown. Though the structure is already topped out and much of the glazing is in place, the renderings give a clearer idea of how it would ideally look, and that is none too promising.

The base of the building, at 91-93 Bowery Street, glazed and framed with masonry, occupies its lot completely. But then the structure rises up as a series of modest setbacks away from the Bowery and culminate in a fairly unimaginative summit defined by two balconies on different levels, as well as a sequence of columns, all cast in a stridently modernist idiom. This summit in turn is capped by a masonry-clad mechanical core.
[more]

Paris-based Louzon Group has officially completed its purchase of the old Salvation Army Residence at 347-349 Bowery for $7.6 million, Eastern Consolidated announced. The Louzon Group will now go ahead with its plans to replace the vacant three-story building with a 72-room boutique hotel and restaurant, designed by architect Gene Kaufman, who just unveiled a rendering of the building. In 2009, the building was targeted for conversion into a high-end sushi restaurant and nightclub, but those plans got derailed over community complaints. [Curbed] Comments

• Tweet

The former site of a Salvation Army shelter at 347-349 Bowery is slated
to become a 65-room boutique hotel and restaurant. According to the
Post, the Paris-based Louzon Group has purchased the corner building at
East 4th Street for $6.7 million, tapping Gene Kaufman as the architect. The building, which is now vacant, was targeted for conversion into a
high-end sushi restaurant and nightclub in 2009, but those plans got
derailed over community complaints, Curbed reported. [more]

Residents of the Whitehouse hotel were slated to go to housing court yet again today, according to a Curbed tipster. Longtime tenants are taking buyouts, and the remaining residents are heading to court, and, in what seems to be a regular occurrence, meeting with representatives from the Cooper Square Committee and Manhattan Legal Services. Hotel developer Sam Chang has been eyeing the decrepit building, which used to be known as the Bowery. [Curbed]

Grammy-winning singer-songwriter John Legend is in contract to sell his two-bedroom East Village condo for $1 million, trading it in for a 1,300-square-foot apartment in a new 15-story tower at 52 East 4th Street on the corner of the Bowery, which he purchased for $1.9 million. The Bowery spot, which has 14-foot ceilings and views to the north, south and west, isn’t “cookie-cutter,” according to Legend, and was listed for $2.3 million when he signed the contract in August. Legend was asking $1.2 million for the two-bedroom condo, for which Jason Walker of Prudential Douglas Elliman had the listing. [WSJ, 2nd item] and [Curbed]