By Julie Shapiro
Jim Teschner stood before 213 Pearl St., his home of 23 years, and looked up. He looked past the men wielding sledgehammers and chainsaws, past the shower of bricks and debris, up at the empty space where his apartment used to be.
“You look at a piece of air and go, ‘That was my home,’” Teschner said. “You realize that a home is just four walls and a ceiling.”
The four walls of Teschner’s home are gone, and the rest of the building is soon to follow — 213 Pearl St. is being demolished.
The fight to save the 1832 warehouse is all but over, and after years of legal action and battles with his landlord, all Teschner can do is watch the demolition.
“It was awful to watch,” Teschner said. “It was like going to a wake.”
The warehouse, which survived the great fire of 1835, was the last remnant of Pearl St.’s commercial heyday, a rare example of early Greek revival architecture.
The Lam Group bought the site this fall and is reportedly planning a 660-room Sheraton hotel. The Lam Group did not respond to a request for comment.
The building’s future has been shaky since developers excavating and pile driving nearby cracked the side of the facade. Last August, the Department of Buildings discovered that the building, between Maiden Ln. and Platt St., was tipping to the south, rendering it unsafe for occupancy.
“This is the last relic of Pearl St.,” said Alan Solomon, an amateur historian who has taken a keen interest in the street.
Pearl St. linked the South St. Seaport to Wall St. and became an early trade district.
“[213 Pearl St.] is part of the commercial and cultural heritage of city,” Solomon said. “It tells the story of how the city grew.”
There was more to the staid, five-story brick building than met the eye, as it was part of Pearl St.’s “horizontal skyscraper of warehouses,” Solomon said.
Solomon hoped that The Lam Group would preserve the facade of 213, just as the Rockrose Development Corp. preserved the facade of the adjacent 211 Pearl St. after the rest of the building was demolished in 2003. Rockrose, which is developing the rest of the block, originally wanted to buy 213 Pearl, but dropped the effort because of the legal complications.
The New York Landmarks Conservancy also advocated preserving the facade, but as Roger Lang, the group’s director, said, “The horse has left the barn.”
“Maintaining the facade in place is not going to be technically possible,” Lang said. “The facade itself is in pretty precarious condition.” The conservancy is now urging the developer to salvage the bricks and granite that comprise the facade, so the materials can be incorporated into the new building.
For Teschner, the latest episode in his struggle to remain in his home began as he was about to leave for work last Aug. 13. He got a frantic call from fellow tenant Colette Justine: The landlords, five policemen and two Department of Buildings employees were at the door demanding that they leave immediately.
In a regular inspection, the D.O.B. had found that the roof of the building was displaced seven-eighths of an inch to the south relative to the foundation. The building was still moving.
Teschner grabbed a few changes of clothing and left. The D.O.B. initially said it would be too dangerous for Teschner and Justine to return to the building to retrieve their belongings, but one month later, they got to go back briefly.
Teschner, an artist, removed 90 of his paintings, along with family heirlooms and whatever else he could carry. Many of his possessions — including his grandparents’ furniture — stayed behind for the demolition.
“It’s a very painful way to end one’s home,” Teschner said.
Teschner was paying $651 a month for the rent-stabilized loft, which had 17-foot ceilings, a small upstairs and a 5-by-6-foot skylight.
“It was a very, very special space,” Teschner said. “You felt like you were living outdoors.”
Now, Teschner is living with friends while he decides what to do next.
He and Justine reached a financial settlement with the landlord this fall, at the same time as the owner, Diane Karch, sold the property to The Lam Group, said Daniel Alterman, Teschner’s lawyer. Teschner and his attorney declined to say how much the settlement was worth.
“It’s difficult to preserve tenants rights in a building that’s becoming unsafe [from] the actions of a third party,” Alterman said. Once the building was cracked, “we couldn’t put Humpty-Dumpty back together again.”
Teschner’s landlord first evicted him in October 2006. When Teschner got back into the building several weeks later, Con Edison refused to restore steam to the building, so Teschner and Justine lived without heat and hot water until mid-December.
In June of 2007, Teschner took the landlord to court and won an order for the landlord to repair the building. Previously, the D.O.B. had cited the landlord for failing to make repairs.
Teschner’s case is settled, but legal action is still flying around 213 Pearl. The D.O.B. ordered Rockrose to make repairs to 213 Pearl St., after Rockrose’s construction on neighboring properties damaged the building. Rockrose complied, but then sued landlord Karch, hoping to be reimbursed, said David Rosenberg, Karch’s lawyer.
Meanwhile, Karch’s insurance company is bringing a suit against Rockrose for damages caused by the corporation’s construction, Rosenberg said.
Rockrose did not return calls for comment.
Alterman is satisfied with the outcome of the case, but thinks there is an important lesson to learn: “We have to think about how the development will affect the structure of existing housing around the development sites,” he said. “We have to make Manhattan available to not only rich people, but also artists and people who are not so rich.”
Julie@DowntownExpress.com
