A Transformation in Tribeca

Brush Stroke, David Bouley's new Japanese restaurant in Tribeca, will be a place where cultures converge. This is true not just in the kitchen, but deep within the stones and timbers of the 1860 Italianate building which will be the restaurant's home. For nearly 150 years, the five-story building at the corner of West Broadway and Reade Street has been accumulating rich layers of history from countries all over Europe, and from right here in New York City.

The building started life in a vibrant pre-Civil War Manhattan of railroads, canals, and clipper ships. Its arched windows, bracketed cornices, and cast-iron columns spoke the language of Italian architecture with an unmistakably American accent. Its walls were faced in the distinctive greenish cream-colored sandstone of New Brunswick, Canada. But its cast iron would have been strictly local, from one of the many foundries in Manhattan and Brooklyn. Early photographs show the building standing prominently on a wide, unpaved expanse of West Broadway, busy with horse-drawn traffic. The street scene was dotted with businesses as varied as carpenters, wholesale druggists, and a manufacturer of "Steam Refined Candy and Sugar Plums Cor."

By the time of the First World War, photos show fine etched-glass entry doors and a sweeping canopy sheltering Vogric's Café. Its Slovenian owner advertised the Knickerbocker beers and ales brewed in Manhattan by Colonel Jacob Ruppert, the colorful German-American entrepreneur and New York Yankees owner in the days of Babe Ruth. After lunch and a glance at Vogric's private Wall Street ticker tape, one could go upstairs to find shoes at Topper & Berger, and gas lamps at the White Light Company another flight up.
Photographs from the 1940s show the castiron and etched glass on the ground floor replaced by a two-story storefront of cast concrete. Vogric's had given way to a modest lunch counter with a Coca-Cola sign, and to another ground-floor tenant with stylish Art Moderne-style windows and neon signage. But the original Italianate windows, cornice, and New Brunswick stone were still intact above the second floor.
Things were again looking up for Tribeca by 1970, when the Delphi Restaurant began serving Greek food to the artists who had moved into the neighborhood, and to an increasing number of visitors attracted by Tribeca's shops, galleries, and architecture. The Delphi added arches and a glass-enclosed sidewalk café, but once again left the original features intact above.
As the building undergoes its transformation to Brush Stroke, yet another layer is about to be added to the cultural mix at West Broadway and Reade Street: superb and subtle Japanese cuisine unlike any that's appeared in New York before. Look up, and you'll see two distinctive signs--apparently quite old ones--painted on the weathered New Brunswick stone. Look more closely, and the story takes on a different dimension.
What exactly do these two signs mean? "Brush up Business with Paint Paste Paper and Push," says one; but there is no clue that any of these things, especially the "Push," were ever sold in the building. And the signs don't appear in any of the historic photos, even those from the 1940s. The painted signs represent something subtle, intriguing, even mysterious. Were they painted over before the photos were taken and now exposed again? Are they artworks from a much more recent time? The second sign is a beautifully weathered image of a hand holding a paint brush, almost Japanese in its delicate interplay of colors and its sense of passing time. Might this have anything to do with David's choice of the name for his new Japanese restaurant? Interesting thought.