Lundy's Restaurant
Lundy's Restaurant, also known as Lundy Brothers Restaurant, was an American seafood restaurant in the Sheepshead Bay neighborhood of Brooklyn in New York City, along the bay of the same name. Lundy's was founded in 1926 by Irving Lundy as a restaurant on the waterfront of Sheepshead Bay; five years later, the original building was condemned to make way for a redevelopment of the bay. The present building opened in 1934 or 1935, and closed in 1979. Another restaurant operated in the Lundy's building from 1996 to early 2007, after which the building was converted into a shopping center.
Lundy's, the last of the many seafood restaurants that once lined Sheepshead Bay, was well known for its cuisine and was among the largest restaurants in the United States upon its completion, with between 2,400 and 2,800 seats. At its peak, Lundy's served a million patrons annually.
The building, designated by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission as an official city landmark, was designed by architects Bloch & Hesse in the Spanish Colonial Revival style. The building's distinguishing features include its multiple tiers of red-tile roofs, its leadlight windows, and decorative ironwork, a style of architecture that is used on few other buildings in the New York metropolitan area.
History
Founding
Lundy's was founded by Sheepshead Bay native Frederick William Irving Lundy. Irving Lundy was the oldest of seven; his father Fred was a prominent figure in the Brooklyn Democratic Party. Several of Irving's male relatives, including his father, operated the successful Lundy Brothers fish market, which by the early 1880s sold fish, clams, and oysters wholesale at their shops in Coney Island and Sheepshead Bay. According to a 1902 biography of the Lundys, they were also selling seafood in Manhattan Beach by then.At the turn of the 20th century, Irving Lundy started a business selling clams out of a pushcart. By 1907, he had opened a clam bar built on stilts over Sheepshead Bay. By the time he was 16, Lundy claimed to be employing several workers. Then, during World War I, he joined the United States Navy. Irving Lundy's brothers Clayton and Stanley died in January 1920 in a boating accident while tending the family's clam beds in Jamaica Bay.
In 1923 Irving would buy the pier for the original restaurant, located between East 21st Street and Ocean Avenue. The site had been previously operated by Henrietta Sheirr, who had operated the pier as a restaurant since 1906, initially operating with two tables; at the time, only one other seafood restaurant existed in the area. Sheirr's eatery had expanded to accommodate 235 patrons by the time Lundy purchased the pier. In 1926, Lundy closed the pier in lieu of operating the restaurant. The restaurant was decorated with the letters "F.W.I.L.," standing for "Frederick William Irving Lundy". Irving's surviving brother Allen and their three sisters would manage the restaurant. The same year, Irving Lundy was kidnapped and the restaurant was burglarized in an armed robbery, though Irving escaped relatively unharmed.
Relocation
Construction
With the development of the Sheepshead Bay community into a residential neighborhood, there were efforts to improve the facilities on the waterfront. The channel of the Sheepshead Bay waterway was dredged by 1916 to allow fishing boats to dock there, and in 1922 the New York City Dock Commission planned to dredge the bays further, build bulkheads on the shore, and widen Emmons Avenue on the waterfront from. As part of the project, 25 piers would be built on the south side of Emmons Avenue, while 26 buildings would be built on the north side. This would make Sheepshead Bay into what the Brooklyn Daily Eagle described as a "modern Venice". Since the Sheepshead Bay development would entail the destruction of the original Lundy's location, Irving Lundy decided to rebuild his restaurant at 1901 Emmons Avenue, on the road's northern sidewalk, at the site of the Bayside Hotel and Casino. Lundy commissioned architects Ben Bloch and Walter Hesse to design the new building. By March 1932, his attorney said that "Lundy's would establish a $600,000 restaurant on the north side of Emmons Avenue as soon as the razing of the waterfront structures gets underway."In 1931, the city condemned several buildings on the bay shore, including the original Lundy's, to widen Emmons Avenue. The Great Depression delayed further progress, as these buildings would not be destroyed until mid-1934, and construction started on new buildings on Emmons Avenue's northern sidewalk. To avoid excessive disruption to normal business, Lundy waited until the last minute to close his original restaurant. A contemporary account stated that the relocation was timed such that when the new building was opened just in time for "the shucking of the last clam in the old place." Demolition was underway by April 1934. Herb Shalat, who became a partner at Bloch & Hesse several decades later, said that "Bloch and Hesse and staff would work at all hours and bring complete or even incomplete design drawings and details to the site each morning during the building process supervised by Walter Hesse, Piero Ghiani and Irving Lundy." Lundy retained Bloch & Hesse for his other Sheepshead Bay projects through the 1970s.
1930s to 1960s
The new building opened in 1934 or 1935. In 1935, shortly after Lundy's opened, the federal government threatened to seize the restaurant because Irving Lundy had not paid taxes on liquor that he stored in the restaurant. After a federal raid and a brief closure in June 1935, a judge sympathetic to Lundy ordered an injunction against the federal government's proposal to dismantle the bar at Lundy's. That October, Lundy agreed to pay back taxes. In 1937, part of the ceiling collapsed, injuring five diners. Simultaneously, Frederick Lundy was seeking $853,000 in compensation from the New York City government for the acquisition of the original building. A state court ruled in 1939 that Lundy was only entitled to $253,000 in damages.With the success of Lundy's Restaurant, Irving Lundy was able to buy waterfront real estate along Sheepshead Bay. In some cases, he bought the enterprises of rival restaurateurs. At one point, his holdings included all of the 70 waterfront properties on Emmons Avenue from East 19th to East 29th Streets. Lundy never resold his properties, but he did lease them to businesspeople that he liked. As a result, much of the north side of Emmons Avenue remained undeveloped through the early 1960s, even as apartment houses were developed in the rest of Sheepshead Bay. Lundy never married and became a recluse in his later life. Because of his reclusive behavior and his wealth, Lundy became known as the "Howard Hughes of Brooklyn". Despite his infrequent public appearances, Irving Lundy managed the restaurant with what one author called "an iron hand", which may have contributed to the waiters' dour expressions.
Lundy constructed the one-story Teresa Brewer Room along Ocean Avenue was constructed in 1945, naming it after the pop singer whom his nephew had married. Lundy added air conditioning to the restaurant around this time. The first labor strike in Lundy's history occurred in July 1946 when waiters walked out due to union disagreements; the strike lasted for most of that month. In 1947, Walter Hesse enclosed the patios on the second floor.
A larger strike started in July 1957, when 75 employees walked out during a dispute over wages; another 200 employees walked out soon afterward. Irving Lundy said that he would permanently shutter the restaurant if the waiters did not stop striking, claiming that he had lost control over his waiters. At the time, the restaurant served 2,000 patrons on an average weekday, which increased to 10,000 on Sundays and 15,000 during holidays. A few days after the strike started, he officially announced that Lundy's would "never reopen" due to the strike. Despite a report in September 1957 that Lundy's would reopen imminently after personnel changes, much of the restaurant except for the clam bar remained closed until a labor agreement was reached that December. The restaurant was briefly closed again in 1968 due to a seafood shortage.
Decline and first closure
By the 1970s, Lundy's was facing numerous problems, including two armed robberies in 1972 and November 1974; after a third attempted robbery in December 1974, one of the restaurant's managers got into a shoot-out with policemen after assuming that they were robbers. The restaurant was temporarily closed following an unfavorable health-inspection report in 1973, and it suffered after two of the Lundy siblings were murdered in 1975. In the years before Irving Lundy's death in September 1977, he had become increasingly reclusive, refusing even to talk to the police about the killings of his siblings. A fire damaged Lundy's that same November.After Irving Lundy's death, his $25 million estate was distributed among a niece and three nephews. Under subsequent management, Lundy's Restaurant started to lose money, making it financially unsustainable. Changes were also occurring in the surrounding community; while Sheepshead Bay did not undergo the white flight and high crime that afflicted other New York City neighborhoods, the waterfront economy was dependent on the success of Lundy's. The last surviving Lundy siblings were unable to resolve their disputes, and officials discovered in 1979 that numerous people, including Irving Lundy's longtime chauffeur, had embezzled $11 million from the restaurant. Lundy's closed in October 1979, with a sign stating that Lundy's was "Closed for Renovations".
Abandonment
The Lundy's Restaurant building was sold to investment company Litas Group in 1981 for about $11 million. The new owners wished to build a high-rise residential development with condominiums, a nightclub, a hotel, and specialty shops on the nearly site. The building soon became dilapidated and filled with graffiti, and other stores in Sheepshead Bay had closed in turn due to a general decline in visitors. The New York Times wrote that, even though local officials did not consider the neighborhood to be blighted, "the deteriorating wooden docks and the vacancy of Lundy's Restaurant on Emmons Avenue, a local landmark, have kept the area from attracting the number of visitors it once did". The city government had proposed converting the site to a museum, stores, and 63 condominiums in 1987 but was unsuccessful.As early as 1986, there had been proposals to preserve the building's exterior as a city landmark, protecting it from demolition. The Sheepshead Bay Beautification Group's co-director Peter Romeo, who thought that Lundy' s abandonment affected economic development along Sheepshead Bay, started lobbying for Lundy's to be restored. Romeo began looking for developers to purchase, maintain, and restore the building. The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the building an official city landmark on March 3, 1992. The Seaside Restaurant Development Corporation, which owned the building, supported landmark designation. Immediately after the landmark designation, the owner started looking for $10 million to restore the building. At that point, the restaurant's reopening had been proposed unsuccessfully at least 12 times. With permission from the restaurant's owner, Romeo covered the graffiti on the facade with more than three dozen murals in 1993. The New York City Council approved the landmark designation that June.