CHELSEA — Construction workers are tearing down historic seahorse carvings that wrap around the facade of a McDonald’s in Chelsea as part of a renovation the fast-food joint is undergoing.
The owner of the currently closed McDonald’s at 809 Sixth Ave., at West 28th Street, is renovating the restaurant to increase its capacity and relocate a set of stairs, a city Department of Buildings spokesman said Monday.
The owner’s permit allows changes to the building’s facade, the spokesman noted.
The seahorses and bear-like creatures on the facade are historic details leftover from the days when the building housed a Childs Restaurant, Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York reported, citing Ephemeral New York.
The chain, which dates back to the late 1800s, operated more than 100 restaurants throughout the U.S. and Canada by 1925, city records show.
Many of their buildings had ornate facades, including one in Astoria that is adorned with terracotta seahorses and shells.
The owner of that building promised to preserve the facade after locals rallied around the site earlier this year.
Two former Childs Restaurant locations in Coney Island, meanwhile, have been landmarked, records show.
A spokeswoman for McDonald's, a representative for the Chelsea building's owner and the architect involved with the renovation did not respond to requests for comment Monday.
Historian David Freeland, who leads tours around Manhattan for organizations like Save Chelsea and the Municipal Arts Society, said design elements like the seahorse carvings “give us… a chance to learn about the city that came before us.”
The features on the landmarked buildings in Coney Island are larger than the ones on the McDonald’s building and are “in a much better state of preservation,” he said.
“There’s really nothing, as far as I could tell… on the facade of this one that survived, beyond the seahorses,” Freeland said.
Nevertheless, he said he was sorry to see them disappear.
“Any opportunity we have to experience something rare from the city’s past is valuable. We always lose a little bit of the fabric of the city when we lose these kinds of things.”
