Ralph's Discount City, featured on the cover of "Store Front," which is currently getting developed into a luxury residential development. Photo courtesy of James and Karla Murray

By Spencer Bailey

Photographers James and Karla Murray started documenting New York City storefronts about 11 years ago, while traveling the city’s streets by foot and by car. It all began, Karla Murray said, when they noticed small shops, many run by families, disappearing throughout the five boroughs.

Since the 1980s, the Murrays, who are professional real estate and yacht photographers, have spent their leisure time taking photos of graffiti – a disappearing art form amongst today’s commercialized city blocks, with 429 Dunkin’ Donuts, 258 Starbucks coffeehouses and 229 Duane Reade pharmacies among them, according to the public policy organization Center for an Urban Future. In 1998, this hobby led to a second project: photographing bakeries, butcher shops, laundromats, diners, dive bars and other decades-old shops.

“It was really going to these outlaying neighborhoods, looking for graffiti murals, and then noticing, ‘Hey, what happened to that store? It used to be here when we were photographing that mural a couple of months ago,’” Karla Murray said.

Today, their project – more than 1,000 photographs of storefronts taken over a decade – has been published as an art book, “Store Front: The Disappearing Face of New York” (Ginko Press, $65), and exhibited in a summer-long show at Clic Bookstore & Gallery on Broome Street. “Historically, the show documents a rapidly changing look in New York, but more than that, an equally rapidly changing way of life,” said Polly Campbell, Clic’s gallery director.

Katy's Candy Store, in Bedford-Stuyvesant, which closed several years ago. Photo courtesy of James and Karla Murray

Beyond the “Store Front” project and its success, however, there is another underlying factor. Many of the shops, some of which have been around for over 50 years, have shuttered as landlords raise rent, urban development increases and storeowners retire from family-run businesses. Now, an ever-dwindling number of these multi-generational stores struggle to survive.

“Mom-and-pop stores, like all businesses, are very dependant upon having secure tenancy and affordable rents,” said Vicki Weiner, director of planning and preservation at the Pratt Center for Community Development. “When the real estate market escalates, as it did in the past decade, small businesses are hit hard as their leases expire and landlords adjust their rent to what they believe the market will bear.”

When the Murrays’ book was released about a year ago, a little less than half of the photographed stores had closed. Those included Ralph’s Discount City in Tribeca, featured on the book’s cover, Katy’s Candy Store in Bedford-Stuyvesant and Harlem’s M&G Diner.

Now that number is even higher, Karla Murray said, though she doesn’t know by how much. Ideal Dinettes, for example, a family-run dinette set shop in Bushwick – which opened in 1953 – closed in late 2008 when the owner retired. Cheyenne Diner, which opened 68 years ago on West 33rd Street and Ninth Avenue, shut down in April. And Jay Dee Bakery, a 60-year-old Art Deco staple in Queens, closed its doors in August.

Some age-old shops remain open, however, like Albanese Meats & Poultry on Elizabeth Street in Little Italy. Moe Albanese, 85, still runs his family store today, which his Italian immigrant father, Vincenzo, opened in 1923. The last old-time butcher shop in the area, not a thing about it has changed. Even the butcher block and the scales are the same. But business, it seems, is stark. “Who are you going sell the meat to? You got Whole Foods around the corner,” said Albanese, of the chain store on Houston Street, about one block away.

Still, according to Weiner, efforts are being made to curb the disappearance of such stores. Many community-based organizations, non-profits and elected officials are working to develop policy solutions, financial-assistance programs and marketing campaigns to assist and bolster these local retailers, she said.

Other shuttered stores, like Ralph’s Discount City, Cheyenne Diner and Jay Dee Bakery, have since become preservation projects. Jay Dee’s exterior façade and the entire Cheyenne Diner, for example, were recently shipped to Birmingham, Ala., where they will be restored, reconstructed and reopened by a local businessman who bought them.

Bushwick's Ideal Dinettes, a family-run dinette set shop that shut down in 2008. Photo courtesy of James and Karla Murray

As for Ralph’s, developers took the vintage sign down and are turning the building into a luxury residential development. And BKSK Architects, the firm planning the project, is doing its part to maintain, renovate and restore “the grittiness of the street front and the underlying architecture,” said partner Harry Kendall, during a panel discussion at Clic in mid-September.

“Hopefully there will be something really funky here, and it’ll develop its own character, and it won’t be a Duane Reade,” he said. “Although it might be. We might have to move to Bed-Stuy to appreciate the texture of real small-scale capitalism.”

The good news for some of these shops: the current recession. With fewer development projects and rent hikes, not as many will get pushed out of their spaces. “It’s long been said that an economic recession is the best preservationist,” Kendall said, “and that’s totally true. The ones that made it past this superheated era – the arms race of luxury condos – are now good to go for a little while as long as the proprietors, or their offspring, or someone is keeping the business going.”

In the future, Karla Murray said, the couple plans to continue documenting more of the city’s timeworn storefronts. “We have to keep finding all the ones that we haven’t found yet before they’re gone,” she said.

As for which storefront they’ll document next, she said she doesn’t know. Rather, they’ll simply walk down a street they’ve never been to before – most likely not in Manhattan – and start looking around.

Albanese Meats & Poultry's old-time storefront at 238 Elizabeth St., the last remaining butcher shop in Little Italy. Photo courtesy of James and Karla Murray

It’s 2:30 p.m. on a sunny Tuesday afternoon in Little Italy and Moe Albanese, 85, sits on a wooden chair outside his shop’s battered, red-painted storefront, wearing a bloodied butchers smock. Above his head, a white sign, its blue lettering faded with time, reads: “Albanese Meats & Poultry.”

In 1923, Vincenzo Albanese, Moe’s father, immigrated to America and opened up the family’s butcher shop here. When his father died in 1954, Moe Albanese then worked alongside his mother, Mary, running the place for the next 50 years. Today, he’s the last butcher left in Little Italy.

Moe Albanese’s job provides him with unending satisfaction, he says. But being the block’s lone butcher is tough work, especially in the face of Little Italy’s ongoing development. “I haven’t even served a customer yet,” he says, complaining that the area’s full of 20-somethings who don’t cook.

The block, which used to swarm with big Italian families – and the sidewalk with pushcarts of fruits and breads and vegetables that kept them fed – is nowadays full of trendy, high-end clothing stores like EMc2 and, across the street, Trust Fund Baby. “It’s all boutiques now,” he says. “You know what these stores pay for rent? I’d say $6,000 a month. It used to be $100.”

Moe Albanese hopes to keep his store open as long as possible, but rising rents might put an end to his family legacy. For now, though, he’ll be here, on Elizabeth Street, cutting the freshest meat he can find.

“I don’t want to close the store up,” Moe Albanese says. “It’s a monument.”

— Spencer Bailey

Eldert Street in Bushwick, home to a knitting factory that was converted into artist lofts a few years ago – and now, 550 Irving Plaza Lofts. Photo: Spencer Bailey

By Spencer Bailey

Ryan Slack, 23, packed his bags and left Austin, Texas, for New York City to pursue a photography career about a month ago. Around the same time, Drew Smartt, 26, an aspiring actor from Colorado, headed east to attend the New York Conservatory for Dramatic Arts. Now both live, with roommates, in the same 65-unit building: 550 Irving Plaza Lofts in Bushwick, on the corner of Irving Avenue and Eldert Street.

Slack said he chose his brand-new, 898 square foot apartment – which rents for $2,200 a month for two bedrooms and a loft-cum-bedroom space – because of its affordable price, but also its close proximity to public transportation, namely the L train, two blocks away. He was also drawn to the ample natural light, since he’s a photographer: each room offers floor-to-ceiling windows and 15-foot ceilings.

Smartt said it was merely dumb luck that landed him on the block. “My roommates and I were looking on Craigslist, and this is the only place I looked at,” he said. “I just made the decision, and we went with it.”

Slack and Smartt are part of a next-neighborhood movement of artists, musicians and young professionals coming to Bushwick. While the area continues to maintain its gritty vibe, there are, several local residents said, rapidly gentrifying pockets for those priced out of Manhattan and close-by Williamsburg. And though development has slowed with the recession – only three projects in Bushwick are awaiting approval, according to the Department of City Planning – people continue to move in to 550 Irving.

“It’s not Manhattan, but it’s up and coming if you want something quiet, with good amenities. You can find that in Bushwick, I think,” said Richie Maggio, a real estate salesperson with AptsandLofts.com, who has been showing the building for a couple of months.

Since it became open for tenants around Labor Day, the building is now home to nine residents living in four of the 65 units, many of which remain unfinished.

The construction, which started a couple of years ago, began atop an unused corner lot – a place where locals would hang out and throw rocks, occasionally bottles, into a dirt pit. It was the block’s own makeshift park. “We used to play handball in that empty lot when we were kids,” said Krystal Wilds, 27, who has lived down the street with her family since age 1.

Today, 550 Irving’s construction crew is in the final building stages, a process that includes painting all the interior walls; installing lighting fixtures and kitchen appliances in every apartment; completing, in the basement of the building, the indoor pool area – the first of its kind in Bushwick, aside from an outdoor pool at a public housing facility about two miles away; setting up the game room – a plasma TV was installed a few weeks ago – and eventually a café; planting a backyard garden; and hooking up laundry machines.

The building appears complete and cleaned-up from the exterior, though, covered in sleek turquoise and gray siding. And unlike the row houses, warehouses and old brick apartments that make up the adjacent streets, it’s contemporary – a four-story building with a roof deck.

Clockwise from top left, the living room, office, kitchen and bedroom in a showroom apartment at 550 Irving Plaza Lofts. Photos: Spencer Bailey

Then there are the artist-friendly loft apartments across Eldert Street, in a hulking brick building owned by Carnegie Properties, the same company that built up 550 Irving. Converted from a knitting factory several years ago, it rents for a little less than the new development. Tui Tekaaho, 23, who said he’s a skateboarder, splits his four-bedroom apartment there with three friends for $1,690 per month; however, he said, it went for $1,450 when he moved in four years ago.

Currently, the average apartment in Bushwick goes for $23 per square foot, according to StreetEasy.com. In Williamsburg, meanwhile, the average rent is $34 per square foot, and in Manhattan, it’s $51.

The most appealing part of Bushwick nowadays is the neighborhood’s safety. The area’s crime rate – which, in the past, has been notoriously high – decreased 10.67 percent in the past year, according to a New York City Police Department report. Many outsiders still have trouble getting beyond the area’s stereotype, though, as an emblem of the city’s mean streets in the 1970s. In some cases, it’s with good reason. On July 22, a double shooting occurred at Eldert Street and Knickerbocker Avenue, one block south of the new building. And Tekaaho, about three years ago, said he walked past the body of a dead man on a sidewalk when returning home from a late-night subway ride.

Many of these negative, sometimes unfounded stigmas are partly why Bushwick is often referred to, or advertised, as Kings or East Williamsburg.

“The place is ‘Kings’ now, not even Bushwick. It’s a selling point,” said Tekaaho, while walking his 7-month-old pit bull, Connor.

“Since I’ve been working in real estate in Williamsburg for about four years now, Bushwick has always been a question people ask: How’s Bushwick?” said Maggio. “We call it East Williamsburg.”

Slack and Smartt said they both feel safe and welcome here. And the other recent move-ins do as well, they said, despite any differences in skin color, culture or otherwise. “Some people look at me weird, but that’s because I’m different,” Slack said. “They’re like, ‘Who’s the white guy?’”

Slack, as with most of the other artists in the area, acknowledged that he is contributing to the ongoing gentrification of Bushwick, that he is an outsider. “This building is the gentrifying force. I am the gentrifying force. I feel a little guilty about it, yeah, but that’s life,” he said. “Gentrification happens.”

Bushwick's 550 Irving Plaza Lofts, where AptsandLofts.com's Richie Maggio held an open house in early September. Photo: Spencer Bailey

Richie Maggio says he’s learned to not only sell apartments but also gentrification. Maggio, a senior project manager for AptsandLofts.com’s rental division, has been a broker of Brooklyn units, many on a high-end scale, for four years. From his office on Driggs Avenue in Williamsburg, he spends his time marketing new, or renovated, apartments in the borough, some in Park Slope and Williamsburg, and others in developing neighborhoods – Bushwick, Greenpoint, Bedford-Stuyvesant.

At a recent open house for a near-finished development in Bushwick, Maggio was dressed deliberately casual – jeans, an untucked green button-down shirt and brown leather shoes. And though only three people showed up, more than 100 people have toured the place in the last month alone, Maggio says.

His pitch about the building, 550 Irving Plaza Lofts, made the building sound like a Manhattan high-rise. “Gym. Laundry. Jacuzzi on the rooftop. Swimming. They come home to relax,” he says. “It’s not just a place where they come to sleep, shower, eat and then go to work the next day.”

And it’s all in Bushwick – a neighborhood, Maggio says, that’s rapidly changing. “It’s only getting better, because Bushwick’s a very industrial area,” he says. “Back in the day, it was all just factories. Now they’re building them into lofts.”

That Bushwick is becoming gentrified is nothing new – Robert Sullivan, in 2006, wrote “Psst… Have You Heard About Bushwick?”, an article for The New York Times Magazine about just that – but buildings chockfull of amenities, for which Maggio is the broker, are certainly a more recent development amidst this gradual process.

The big reason for much of the gentrification, Maggio says, is the L train – first, it was the Lower East Side, then Williamsburg and now Bushwick. “The L train takes you to Union Square, which is an awesome, central meeting point,” he says.

As for the future, Maggio expects enormous growth in Bushwick, with more buildings just like this one. “It’s an industrial neighborhood that’s being gentrified,” he says. “Come out, walk around and kind of get a feel.”

— Spencer Bailey