HELLS KITCHEN — The Market Diner, a neighborhood hangout for Irish gangsters, cabbies and Frank Sinatra, will be shutting its doors for good this week after more than half a century of serving coffee and burgers.
The building will be razed in order to build a 13-story apartment building, according to the diner's owner and reports.
"We knew what we were getting into," said owner Jim Athanasopoulos, 48, who said that eight years ago when he gut renovated the building there was a demolition clause in the lease he signed with the Moinain Group. "It's sad. [The neighborhood] is definitely missing food, it's going to be missing a diner."
The Market Diner first opened in 1962 and for decades was a bustling, late-night hangout for the members of the Westies gang, cab and limo drivers and celebrities like Bette Midler, Frank Sinatra and Diane Keaton. It was featured in Seinfeld as a black market trading spot for black-market extra powerful shower heads.
It closed down in 2006, and was later taken over by Athanasopoulos, who renovated and reopened two years later, he said.
On Tuesday, regulars drifted in and out throughout the morning in a somber procession, sinking into orange leather booths to gulp down their last mugs of coffee and forkfuls of freshly-pressed waffles with syrup.
"[I was] hoping it was going to be like an Irish wake," said Rod Rodriguez, who first started coming to the diner when he drove a cab in the early 1970's, he said. "In reality, this turned out to be a death watch...They're dying and there's nothing you can do about it. It's just so sad."
Loyal patrons had heard the news of the diner's closure and gave their condolences. Some scrawled in cursive on greeting cards, other's posted signs in the entryway. Loosing the diner to more residential buildings was the latest example of the rapidly changing character of the neighborhood, they said.
"How many condos can you build?" wondered Dave Vukas, 46, a construction worker, who is working on Moinian's luxury residential building called SKY, across the street.
"They just keep building all these properties and they're not full yet," owner Athanasopoulos said.
Rodriguez, a writer in his mid-70s, who said he dined at Market at least three times a week, typed out frustrated notes on his cellphone.
"It's a great pity to lose an anchor of this community," he said. "This is commercial murder what's being done... It's the heart of this part of Hell's Kitchen and it's being ripped out."
The Moinian Group did respond to a request for comment immediately.
