When Angelina Jolie opened her first fashion boutique in a two-story building at 57 Great Jones Street in Lower Manhattan last month, she joined a long list of notable New Yorkers, including mobsters and artists, who lived or worked over there.
Atelier Jolie, which has an appointment-only fitting room on the second floor, sells clothing made from vintage and discontinued materials. “I hope to see you there and be one of the many creating with you within our new creative collective,” Jolie wrote in a founding statement.
The brand is linked to the artistic heritage of 57 Great Jones Street. Andy Warhol bought the building in the 1970s. Everyone from Keith Haring to Madonna visited. Jean-Michel Basquiat lived and painted in the upstairs studio loft, producing some of his most significant works, before dying there of a heroin overdose at age 27 in 1988. (After his death, the building became a mecca for street artists, and has since been marked with versions of its crown motif).
The brick building housed gangsters and bare-knuckle boxers. It was built in the 1860s, by an unknown architect, and its first known use was as a stable, says Village Preservation, a building protection group. Great Jones Street was home to the City's wealthy merchant class.
As residents moved north of the City, the neighborhood began to decline. At the east end of Great Jones Street was the Bowery, a once-reputable boulevard that had become an infamous street filled with brothels, beer gardens, flop houses, and pawn shops.
The building was converted into a bar and dance hall, the Brighton. He was sold to Paul Kelly, described by The New York Times in 1912 as “perhaps the most successful and influential gangster in the history of New York.” Kelly, born Paolo Antonio Vaccarelli, changed the bar's name to Little Naples.
He headed the Five Points Gang, one of the most feared street gangs of its time, and Little Naples was his headquarters.
In later decades, the building housed kitchen equipment companies.
Warhol's heirs sold the building in the early 1990s. In 2022, Meridian Capital Group put the building up for rent for $60,000 a month.
About a year ago, Jolie and her teenage daughter Zahara were looking for a retail space, and their wanderings led them to 57 Great Jones Street. They felt an immediate communion with the building, Jolie said in an interview with Vogue, so she quickly rented it.
By: Alex Vadukul
The New York Times
BBC-NEWS-SRC: http://www.nytsyn.com/subscribed/stories/7072625, IMPORTING DATE: 2024-01-16 19:52:04
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