13 Iconic New York City Places That Are Now Unrecognizable
Many iconic New York City clubs, restaurants, retail stores, and nightspots are unrecognizable today. Whether they underwent renovations, changed owners, relocated, or their buildings were demolished, these lost locations were once integral parts of the Big Apple.
If you haven’t visited New York City in years, it might shock you to learn that the legendary punk venue CBGB is now a John Varvatos store, the infamous Limelight nightclub is currently a fitness gym, Studio 54 morphed into a musical theater, and St. Mark’s Comics moved to a location that is nowhere near St. Mark’s Place.
How many of the following iconic New York City establishments have you visited? Would you still recognize them as they look today if you walked by them on the street?
The Limelight
The former Church of the Holy Communion on the corner of 20th Street and Sixth Avenue is most famous for housing the Limelight nightclub in the 1980s and 1990s. A hotspot to hear goth, industrial, and techno music, the influential nightclub crashed and burned after club kid Michael Alig murdered and dismembered Limelight drug dealer Angel Melendez — a crime covered in the movie Party Monster starring Macaulay Culkin as Alig.
After changing its name to Avalon and shutting down permanently as a club in 2007, the Limelight space transformed into an indoor shopping mall for a spell. Today, instead of dancing until dawn, you can lift some weights at the CompleteBody Limelight gym.
CBGB
The Bowery’s CBGB was an influential music club where punk and New Wave bands such as the Ramones, Talking Heads, Blondie, Television, the Cramps, and more got their start. Patti Smith performed the last concert at CBGB in 2006.
Today the space formerly occupied by CBGB is a John Varvatos clothing store. Although unrecognizable as the cutting-edge dive it once was, at least the retailer has honored CBGB’s legacy by displaying vintage playbills and rock-and-roll memorabilia inside.
Studio 54
The iconic disco club Studio 54 opened in 1977 and became known for its exclusivity, unapologetic drug use, and celebrity clientele, including Grace Jones, Andy Warhol, Bette Midler, David Bowie, Tina Turner, Jackie Kennedy Onassis, Al Pacino, and many more. The club — and disco itself — died in 1980 after Studio 54’s owners were convicted for tax evasion. The story of the infamous nightspot is explored in the movie 54.
The main room of the venue that Warhol and his superstars once haunted is now a musical theater with two sister cabarets, Upstairs at 54 and 54 Below, attached.
The Cotton Club
Harlem’s Cotton Club operated at 142nd Street and Lenox Avenue from 1923 to 1940. During those segregated times, iconic Black jazz and blues artists such as Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, and Cab Calloway performed for White patrons. Watch the 1984 Francis Ford Coppola movie The Cotton Club to learn more about the establishment’s storied history.
Today, a revamped version of the Cotton Club still stands at a different location at 656 West 125th Street, but it seems to have suspended “normal operations,” yet remains available for private parties and special events. The original Cotton Club building was demolished in 1989 to construct a hotel.
FAO Schwarz
Iconic toy retailer FAO Schwarz moved locations several times in New York City, but its most famous spot was at the General Motors Building at 767 Fifth Avenue, where it moved in 1986 and remained until 2015. Movies such as Big, Mighty Aphrodite, Baby Boom, and Big Business featured scenes shot at the FAO Schwarz location at the General Motors Building.
In 2018, FAO Schwarz opened in a new location at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, but the familiar location on Fifth Avenue people recognize from movies no longer sells giant stuffed animals or toys of any kind.
Woolworth Building
The Gothic Woolworth Building at 233 Broadway in Tribeca was the tallest building in the world until 1930 and once housed one of Woolworth’s trademark five-and-dime stores.
Although designated a National Historic Landmark in 1966, the retail store is ancient history and the mixed-used building now houses residential tenants and offices. The exterior of the building remains the same due to its landmark status, but the lobby is no longer accessible to the general public, and private tours have ceased.
Gimbels
Gimbels was a department store once considered a rival of Macy’s. The Gimbel brothers opened their flagship store in Midtown Manhattan in 1910. The building had numerous exits to the 34th Street–Herald Square subway station, which led to it suffering more shoplifting losses than any other retailer in the world by the time Gimbels closed for good in 1986.
Today, the generic-looking modern building houses the Manhattan Mall, which most retailers abandoned during the COVID-19 pandemic. As of this writing, a lonely LensCrafters is the only retailer left in the dead mall that once housed the Gimbels flagship store.
Pyramid Club
The Pyramid Club at 101 Avenue A in the East Village is where drag queens such as RuPaul and Lady Bunny got their start. Opening in 1979, the multilevel, cash-only nightclub became an integral part of the post-punk and gay music scenes of the 1980s. The annual drag festival Wigstock originated here, and bands such as Red Hot Chili Peppers and Nirvana played shows at Pyramid Club before they became famous and started playing arenas.
COVID-19 killed the party at Pyramid Club and forced its closure. Today, all Pyramid Club signage is gone and the space houses a generic rock venue known as Baker Falls.
Tunnel
Tunnel was an infamous nightclub located at the Terminal Warehouse Company Central Stores Building in Chelsea from 1986 to 2001. Vin Diesel once worked as a bouncer at Tunnel, which was a hotspot for the Club Kids of the late 1980s and 1990s. In Bret Easton Ellis’ novel American Psycho, Tunnel is someplace Wall Street serial killer Patrick Bateman frequented.
Today, the Terminal Warehouse Company Central Stores Building is a mixed-use retail and office space, not unlike the SodoSopa property that South Park hilariously skewers with fake commercials.
Gallagher’s Steakhouse
During Prohibition, Gallagher’s Steakhouse in Manhattan’s Theater District became one of the first popular speakeasies where gamblers, sports figures, and Broadway stars could imbibe.
Although Gallagher’s Steakhouse still exists at the same location at 228 West 52nd Street, the venue underwent a major renovation in 2014 that erased much of the restaurant’s admittedly dated charm. There are still photos of celebrities covering the walls, but the interior no longer looks like a speakeasy from the Prohibition era. Instead, it was renovated to look like a stereotypical old-school steakhouse with white tablecloths, dark leather seats, and mahogany paneling.
La Côte Basque
Originally located at 5 East 55th Street, the French restaurant La Côte Basque was a favorite of high-society ladies who lunched and gossiped. The hotspot is prominently featured on Feud: Capote vs. the Swans as the place where Truman Capote dined and mingled with New York’s elite women.
La Côte Basque moved a block to 60 West 55th Street in 1995, more than two decades after Capote threw his swans under a bus for a juicy story about their lives and affairs. That location closed in 2004 and is now home to Benoit New York, but the public’s interest in rich White ladies eating expensive watercress at posh French restaurants ended decades before that.
Village Gate
The Village Gate was a jazz nightclub located at the corner of Thompson and Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village that opened in 1958. Music legends such as John Coltrane, Duke Ellington, Jimi Hendrix, Nina Simone, Velvet Underground, and Aretha Franklin — in her New York City debut — performed there.
The iconic Greenwich Village location closed in 1994. Today, you won’t find any music superstars inside the building, but you can pick up some toothpaste and moisturizer at the CVS that currently occupies the ground floor.
St. Mark’s Comics
The first St. Mark’s Comics opened in 1983 at 11 St. Mark’s Place in Manhattan. In addition to selling rare comic books, the shop also sold collectible toys, action figures, trading cards, T-shirts, and other pop-culture memorabilia.
After unsuccessfully trying to raise enough money to save his store, owner Mitch Cutler closed St. Mark’s Comics in 2019. In 2021, St. Mark’s Comics reopened in a new location in Brooklyn — nowhere near the trendy St. Mark’s Place in the East Village.