Wednesday, December 1, 2021

ARCHITECTURE: FOO DOGS IN MANHATTANVILLE IN 2009


Harlem Bespoke: We were going through our archival photos taken for the blog in the past decade and found the above images of the dramatic foo dog lions at 701 West 135th Street at 12th Avenue.  These are the mythical guardians that many saw come to life in this year's Shang-Chi movie from Marvel and probably were the only pair to found uptown.  So what did end up happening to these unusual architectural details? The pictured Latin-Thai restaurant did not last very long and the statues were quickly removed soon after closing.
Then there is also this photo possibly from the 90s that was floating around on the internet and shows that the commercial space used to be a motel at some point in time.  Someone once mention that the address was originally a train station in the 1800s which would make sense since the tracks are right there.  With all that said, maybe one day it will be converted back for transportation use if the planned commercial development does not end up happening at the now board-up intersection of West Harlem: LINK


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