The Lost Garden and NYC's Historic Blizzard of 1996
West Village: Once Attached to the Now-Lost Lost Diner and a World That Isn't Allowed to Exist in a Hyper-sanitized City
It was a wintry morning in 1996 when a snowstorm occurred unparalleled in recent years. A blizzard actually. I was living on Hudson Street in Manhattan's West Village. No cars could navigate the mounting 18 inches of snow that coated the city’s streets. No taxis could get by nor buses. It was an automobile-free winter wonderland. The streets belonged to those who aspired to navigate them. Walking over the large snow banks and mounds required your full attention. It was close to a zen experience. Each step felt like a triumph! It took three times as long to get to your destination - if you even had one - getting somewhere wasn’t really the point.
I brought my camera to document my walk from Hudson Street to the Hudson River; it was before ubiquitous cell phones. The “Lost Garden” existed along the West Side Highway near Christopher Street although it's considered West Street at that juncture. An arrow pointed down an alley outside of the picture’s view to The Lost Garden, adjacent to The Lost Diner. I don’t recall if the diner was open that day. I was a bit of a snob about diners - I didn't consider them healthy enough for formerly macrobiotic me - so I didn't venture in.
The alleyway was narrow in scope, bordered by the shiny, silvery frame of the Lost Diner at 357 West Street, surrounded at the time by auto body and repair shops. Imagery that wouldn’t be thought of as charming, but, in retrospect, it so was. It looked like the former Soho-based Moondance Diner which no longer exists in its original Soho location — due to an exorbitant rent increase, it was transported to LaBarge, Wyoming in 2007. This somehow feels right (that it was saved) and wrong (that it’s not in NYC) at the same time. Sadly, this far away version closed in 2012.
Why is New York City so cavalier about destroying what’s special? I suppose the obvious answer is money - yet that doesn’t seem to suffice.
I don’t recall seeing The Lost Garden on that day. Surely, if I had seen it, I would have taken pictures. Perhaps it was there, lost in a whole other way, obscured by the steep snow. Some distant memory recalls it as gated off due to the season. Yet the random and mysterious Alice-in-Wonderland feeling of the whole experience seemed more pertinent than actually finding it.
Where is The Lost Garden Today?
Is it yet one more piece of our city eaten up by one more mammoth, shiny, bland, forgettable glass building? I can’t help but wonder each time I've looked at this photo over the years. But, of course, it is. There is no escaping capitalism and over-development. Is there?
Now over twenty five years later, in hyper-real estate-obsessed New York City, will something like The Lost Garden be allowed to exist again? I’m not including a photo of what the space looks like now because it is too sad, New York City is just too … lost.
This photo - note the phone booth! - signals something intangible yet too real which corporate-dominated New York fails to appreciate decades later. The intrinsic value of these places and spaces; they represent ideas and ideals for us as people. A sense of mystery, a portal of authenticity, an opportunity to become aware of and experience a certain uniqueness and power and potency to feed us in ways that Duane Reade and Bank of America and Times Square never will.
A world where the appearance of an inexplicable arrow indicates the existence of a remote passageway holds the possibility of a “Lost Garden” alongside an isolated, shiny, aluminum “Lost” Diner, each contains the stories and histories of countless people who came before me; that is a world I’d like to inhabit. It’s why I love this photo – for all the promise it represents.
The Lost Diner held on for a really long time, then went downhill, perhaps inevitably, only to be subsumed by shiny, bland, glass building syndrome. Who initially created the Lost Diner and the Lost Garden? Will we ever know their story? What inspired them? Is that all just … lost ?
Beautifully written Cathryn. I remember that storm. I think it was the last day of March? People could not find their cars! The dogs loved it.
This was a few blocks south of Christopher Street and a couple of blocks north of Houston Street. I lived in the area for 40 years, and I use to frequent that place often. I love the old Art Deco Diners. It changed hands several times over the years, and once had the unfortunate name, "The Terminal Diner." One of the owners made created a video diner, where you could watch films at your table. The garden was open for Dining by the later owners.