Scouting for new locations for upcoming urban fashion shoots on the Lower East Side, I walked on Orchard Street and discovered new spots, including murals and old style adverts painted on building facades.
Wikipedia tells us that "Orchard Street is often considered the center of the Lower East Side and is lined end to end almost entirely with low-rise tenement buildings with the iconic brick face and fire escapes. First part of Little Germany and later a Jewish enclave, the neighborhood has been home to immigrants from the mid-19th century to the present day. The street's past as the heart of the immigrant experience is captured at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum's centerpiece, the restored 97 Orchard Street tenement."
The photographs above are of the facade of 130 Orchard Street which is home to Perrotin Gallery and Beckenstein Fabrics.
Perrotin is a famous international art gallery which opened in April of 2017 in that location with 25,000 sq. ft. space, and includes a bookshop featuring unique editions and books published by the gallery.
Beckenstein Fabrics's history is a long one; from a push cart, Samuel Beckenstein laid its groundwork in 1919, on the same Lower East Side’s historic Orchard Street location, and would ultimately develop into one of the world’s most renowned fabric enterprises, Beckenstein Men’s Fabric, Inc. Nearly a century and four generations later, Beckenstein’s grandsons, Neal Boyarsky, President and CEO of the firm and his son Jonathan, have expanded and transformed the once modest, one room store, into a well known fabric enterprise, servicing the entertainment industry, celebrities, athletes and government officials worldwide.
It's remarkable and commendable that both enterprises retained the old style lettering and aesthetic on their joint facade, ignoring the temptation to modernize it.
