Have A Knick

I find that the longer I live outside the city, the more nostalgic for it I become. The most obvious manifestation of that would certainly be my sudden fascination with the Jacob Ruppert Brewery, and it's product. Shortly before the holidays, I was browsing in an antique store in Stanfordville and I happened across a tin serving tray. Well, that discovery has led to exhaustive internet searches for any Ruppert Brewery-related memorabilia that I can lay my hands.

Now I do have some history with the Jacob Ruppert Brewery. For 25 years, my father lived at 1623 3rd Avenue, in the Yorkville Tower, of what is known as the Ruppert Yorkville Towers. He lived in that apartment from 1975-2000 and was one of the original tenants. I myself lived in that apartment on and off over that same span of time. The old Brewery stood on the site where the towers now loom and the developers were paying homage to that fact with the names that they gave to the buildings. There is also a third tower called Knickerbocker, but I believe that was set aside exclusively for the elderly.

The Brewery ceased operations in 1965 and the Ruppert Yorkville Towers rose on the site 10 years later. The impact that they had on the Yorkville Neighborhood cannot be overstated. I once worked with an hispanic woman who had grown up in the neighborhood, and she bluntly said to me that the buildings destroyed Yorkville. The project was a Mitchell-Lama job, and what that meant was that my father was able to move into a 2-bedroom, 2-bath apartment in a brand-new luxury building on the Upper East Side of Manhattan for under $500/month rent, and that included utilities. When he moved out a quarter of a century later, he was still paying under a thousand dollars a month for that same apartment.

My father left just before the clock struck midnight on the Mitchell-Lama subsidies. He would have been forced to pay whatever the market would bear at that point in time, probably something on the order of $2500/month. I realize that this sounds like a renter's dream, but there was no happy ending. The irony of my father living suspended in the air above what was once a brewery did not escape me as he relentlessly drank himself to death. I always wondered whether his behavior would have changed if his rent was more in line with what the unit was actually worth. Certainly, he would have had less money to drink with, but even with a ridiculously low monthly rent he was always behind with his payments.

I will continue collecting my beer trays and signs, although I am not sure why I am compelled to seek them out. They have a certain functional beauty and represent a much better time for American manufacturing. And, I am fascinated by New York City's history. I also happen to like beer. Maybe I'm being evasive, but as Freud said "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar". Did I mention that I like beer?