Art Gentrification Trenches
Sylvie, where are we?
“We’re still here.”
Where is here?
“It’s just my first and only workshop, that started primarily as a workshop with the knit wear that I was making. I was creating and selling handmade knitwear, to specialty boutiques.”
That’s how you started out in this space in Hell’s Kitchen, and then?
“And then, since it was made into a beautiful front, it made sense to bring in the retail business. I mean this was ’83 it took months from ’82, when I started renting. I put in the
wiring, the plumbing, everything, you remember.”
You’re packing up around me, what’s happening?
“Oh, I’m being, how you say, evicted. I think that’s the right word.”
A car pulls up and the question arises- do we need to get up and surrender our chairs? Sylvie is concerned about my comfort. A reflection of her warm, old world charm. I am moved across the room and husband, Jean-Pierre, needs to reach behind me to remove the golden mannequin that has always so proudly worn Sylvie’s hats and other creations. I am sad and as if my mind is being read, friend in need, Barbara tells Sylvie, “It’s just that I’m so sad” as she reaches for a hug. “Don’t cry, Sylvie tells her, As Cynthia says, we are artists and we just keep going.”
Jurgen, of Skoda Design, comes in. He is helping out, as he has been for years.
He tells me, “I built it, I designed it. I built one downtown, Jean Pierre saw it and he and Sylvie asked me to build one for them. I don’t like to repeat anything so I changed it and this is it.” That explains the unique storefront.
Sylvie has been saying good-bye to her brother in their native French after presenting him with a bottle of cologne from Cannes, that their mother used to sell from a little shop.
Sylvie, describe this unique and innovative Hell’s Kitchen storefront.
“I was looking at how to secure the front, and gates are so ugly. This is a gate and a front. Vertical bars with glass in between, slanted to the outside, so there is a little glass roof so that I can see the sky, and see down the street.”
As you called it, why this eviction and why now, aren’t you close to retirement?
“I am 63, should work until 66. But um, they didn’t want it. They didn’t want to allow me three more years in this space.”
This is difficult to ask and to hear. Who are they, are they new people to the hood?
“Oh, no, no, no, no. No one new. Just the same old neighbors and fellow tenants of our HDFC. That’s who they are. An HDFC is a program that the city created to help tenants take care of their own building. Even though commercial stores are just rentals.”
What was your primary role in this HDFC process.?
“Oh I have been on the board of directors on and off over a big stretch of fourteen years, as the secretary/treasurer. Finally, off the board in 2006.”
Did you leave on good terms?
“It was a general election and I was not elected back. I guess that’s when the animosity started.”
My dog has gone from chewing at a giant wood giraffe straw tail- Sylvie stops her, not because she is upset, but because she does not want Missy to choke- and on to a long scrape of sheep ski. Sylvie is delighted as Missy goes for natural fabrics, as she tells me, “This has been a home and my homework.” Sylvie and Jean-Pierre stop to photograph Missy.
Talk a little about why things have gone this way.
“Its’ about politics. The way things are behind the scenes of what was an old tenement building with low-income people.
We are ready. I think its very sad. Because, these neighbors have been here as long as we have, some even longer. Jean-Pierre came before me. He was my friend, not yet my husband, that was 1978.”
Sylvie deferred to Jean-Pierre to fill in the history.
“I found an ad in the paper in 1978 for an apartment. When I called to inquire, I asked about the rent and I was told it was fifty-two dollars. So I came. The man was French, he was returning to France after having made his money here. And he told me that for two hundred dollars I could have all the furniture. So I gave him two hundred in cash and tore a page from a book I was carrying to use as a receipt. Came back 2 weeks later to get the key and asked who do I send the rent to? He said Lafayette Street, which was an HPD address. So I moved into the building and eventually organized the tenant association.
There were twenty apartments. Thirteen gutted from fire, vacant, and seven more occupied. People were burning their garbage in the streets because there were no city services at the time. A classic example of abandoned buildings taken over by the city. At the time HPD was happy to turn the buildings over to community management. There were four commercial spaces in this building and Sylvie asked to rent one of them from the tenants association.” That’s when your interviewer moved in across Tenth Avenue.
That’s the history. Can you fast-forward us, Sylvie.
“I was lucky to come into this building to benefit from low rent that enabled me to sustain so many years in the same space. I put so much into the store. The front gave the street character and welcomed the developers.” Jean-Pierre interjects “Sylvie was a pioneer.”
This is the pattern of gentrification. This push to get you out came from old neighbors, which is the most painful.
Most recently, hasn’t it been a long legal struggle in a neighborhood with new luxury high-rises and escalating property values?
“Yes, because I received a notice of termination about a year before my lease was up, you know. It was a thirty-day notice of termination. That’s what it was. I mean at the same time they gave a seven-year renewal to my next-door neighbor. I knew then it was not a winning battle. I just did not know I was facing the end of my cottage industry in this shop.”
“The fact is that 20 years ago I drifted away from the knitwear to the hats, then 6 years ago added dolls and patchwork quilts for dolls and children. I was blessed with a benefactor of sample fabrics from Italy, with a vast selection of textiles.”
I know Sylvie’s charming watercolors and drawings. Tie it all in for me, Sylvie.
“This all relevant to what creative people do to survive. Literally, make ends meet. Until now.” And now Sylvie is just tired at the end of a long day of packing and waiting for the marshal to let her know how many days are left after twenty-seven years of dedicated devotion to art and community. Time to break for the winter holidays.
Sylvie, the holidays are over, it’s 2010, what’s happening?
“The last day in my workshop was Sunday, November 29, 2009. My work has not ended. There are new thoughts, ideas and directions. I am not ready to retire”…