Since I have a work space at 93 Bedford, directly across from and overlooking 86 Bedford, on April 5, 2007 I was at my computer (finishing a novel about a Greenwich Village woman) when I glanced out my street window and witnessed half a dozen young workmen, yelling in terrified Spanish, come pouring out the front door of Chumley’s, followed by a dense cloud of century-old plaster dust. Seems the massive fireplace chimney had collapsed. (Speculation persists of how, or why after all the stolid decades, the structurally inviolate chimney suddenly chose that afternoon to become “detached from a wall”, but moving along…) You are reading the confession of the concerned citizen who, horrified, watched it unfold in real time and may have been responsible for the first 911 call. The proceedings left images safely beyond the mind’s power to erase.
The author of the very insightful WestView March piece on the subject mercifully did not linger on all of the surrounding “only-in-New York” legal drama. However, one colorful footnote is irresistible and not widely reported. Upon architectural examination it came to light that Chumley’s had nothing resembling a currently DOB-approved building foundation, if it ever even had one. How do you get around this unusual problem, what with Landmarks and all? Whereupon a Disneyesque resolution fit the bill. The City word came down that an exact replica had to re-appear on the site, only with the modern stipulation that it now be atop an up-to-Code foundation. So who says NY doesn’t have a little of everything.
