West Village, 10th Street at West Street

Mary Sargent © 2010 ………….....……….…………… ………………….. click to enlarge

Although this building is on the north side of West 10th, it has been included in the Weehawken Street Historic District Designation Report, and so we can know just about everything there is to know about it.  You'll be happy to know I'm not going to tell you everything there is to know about it, but it's good to know it's there.

It was built in 1903-04 as a hotel, the Holland Hotel, and over the years it has been home to many businesses, including Peter Rabbit, a gay men's bar,* and, lately Uguale Restaurant, followed by the present tenant, Antica Venezia Ristorante.

I used to go here when it was Uguale, not that the food was more than pretty good, but the space was nice, with the big windows looking out over the sunset and the West Side Highway. 

Now for architecture talk.  The style is neo-Renaissance and the facade materials are buff brick which has been painted, terra cotta, and a pressed metal cornice.  It features a round corner oriel.  What the heck is an oriel, I wondered.  Naturally, I googled.  The definitions all came up "oriel window", and said it was a projecting window which does not extend to the ground.  To me, the oriels in this building do not look like windows; they look like rounded spaces projecting from the building that have windows.  BUT they do not extend to the gound.  Anyway, I think we get the idea, and in the future, we will be able to impress our friends by throwing the term around.  Try to be casual.

For an explanation of why the building was included in the historic district, here's a quote from the report:

Built during the third significant phase of the historic district’s development, when it continued to be improved with residential, industrial, and commercial structures after the turn of the 20th century, this handsome 3-story, neo-Renaissance hotel, one of the last surviving hotels located along the Hudson River waterfront, contributes to the historically-mixed architectural character and varied uses – much of it maritime-related – of the Weehawken Street Historic District.

There will be more about the District itself when I photograph Weehawken Street.


*For a story about Peter Rabbit, go to Bent, "the place where disability and queerness meet head-on."