Brushed off
The building’s owners, Diamond Lane LLC, did not return The Post’s request for comment. An attorney for the owners didn’t provide comment on their behalf.
At the very least, former residents have their memories.
During the Occupy Wall Street protests in 2011, the building — which is a block away from Zuccotti Park — became something of an “unofficial press room” for protesters who’d “drink my whiskey, use my outlets, take showers after they got out of jail,” Crabapple recalled.
Later on, there were parties where, “we would have every war journalist and porn star crowded onto the fire escape, smoking cigarettes till dawn.”
“I’ll always miss it,” former resident Crystal Thompson told The Post. “I just think I’m the luckiest person to have been in that building. The rest of it was a horror, but the art was so great.”
A film and TV tailor who does occasional work for the Metropolitan Opera, Thompson and her husband — a “lighting guy for corporate things” — have a side business doing pop-up events and would often throw themed soirées in their third-floor unit.
Those events frequently featured multi-story projections out their window, across the empty lot next door and onto the adjacent building.
Once a water pipe broke in the elevator shaft the morning of a party, “so all these people, including a French designer for the Met, they had to go up all these stairs and past this busted pipe” to get to her colorfully lit apartment. “They were like, ‘What is this amazing world?’ ”
Before they lost roof access, the residents had countless photo shoots with the water tower.
A German model at one point started a thriving skin care line out of her loft, and the brocade wallpaper in Crabapple’s bathroom became something of a meme, with a fan once creating an entire Tumblr account dedicated to it.
During the pandemic, residents sent cocktails up and down the elevator to each other. Through her window, a photographer filmed the second tower coming down on 9/11, and the cloud of ash that enveloped the neighborhood.
“I don’t think there’s been anything like it. We had art coming from different apartments — this floor, that floor — it was about how they combined,” said Thompson of their home’s special dynamic. “We were a bunch of artists in downtown Manhattan, which is kind of no-man’s land, but we had a big space and it was super DIY. I don’t think if we lived in another kind of building I could’ve become the artist that I did.”
One resident who was “too stressed” and sad to speak to The Post had been living in the building since soon after 9/11.
“I think of all of us, it was the worst for him. It was his home for a really long time, and I think he had an extraordinarily good price,” said Rose.
“It was hard to leave,” she added. “If we could’ve we would’ve stayed there indefinitely.”
Indeed, the eviction was a crushing blow to the remaining residents, who are concerned that the building, which isn’t landmarked, will soon be demolished. (To date, no demolition permit exists, according to city Department of Buildings records.)
“It’s the classic story of a developer buying the building and throwing everyone out. ‘OK, you paid your rent on time for 20 years’ and then in three months you have to pack up your life and go ’cause a speculator thinks he can squeeze more money out of the building,” said Crabapple. “This sort of thing shouldn’t be normal. It’s pure greed and it’s displacing people.”