In the Limelight

In 1844 the cornerstone for the Episcopal Church of the Holy Communion was laid at West 20th Street and Sixth Avenue, 127 years passed and (in 1971) I wandered in to take a look at the interior and especially the large stained-glass rose window but, although pretty good stuff, I wasn’t much impressed because of my ruined-for-anything-else trips to Europe and, especially, Paris.

In 1976, with parishioners dwindling, the building was taken over by a “commune” called the Lindisfarne Association (Google that if you want; I’m not bothering) who split after a couple of years and the Episcopal Church sold it to the Odyssey Institute, a drug-counseling organization, which seems fairly ironic because in 1983 Andy Warhol hosted the opening-night party at “Limelight,” a discothèque that, over the next 18 years or so, was regularly padlocked for drug-use and dealing. Limelight closed in 2001 and other entertainment entities gave it a go until 2007 and now, through a few years of failed mortgage payments and bankruptcies, it has become Limelight Marketplace.

LM opened last month and, 39 years after my first visit (and 166 after the laying of that cornerstone); I finally took another look last Sunday. The interior of the church has been given, well, a new interior…meaning that it looks like a new, well, interior that has been set down exclusively within the walls of the church; does that make sense? I mean not of it, but within it. Oh, well, anyway, the original stained glass windows show through here and there, mainly in the stairwells, but overall it’s a fairly ludicrous juxtaposition that doesn’t work for me architecturally.

As an urban mall it’s cute in a slick way but not my cup of pekoe. There are about 50 small-to-tiny shops on three levels with specialized inventories, mostly precious (not in the good sense of the word…it’s like saying “cup of pekoe, instead of “cup of tea”) and overpriced. The foodie goody shops have stuff that looks fresh and tasty and I’m always a sucker for anything new and chocolate-covered but overall there wasn’t much for me to purchase. Limelight Marketplace is sort-of like a modern museum of retail schmaltz and the only thing I was grateful for was the air conditioning and, oh yeah, excellent restrooms (always nice to know when one is out and about). As an example of customer service and product inventory/diversity I’m afraid I threw a scare into one poor girl in a shop that carries some nicely designed (and overpriced) tee-shirts and, although I saw her deer-in-the-headlights look, I asked the dreaded question anyway, “Do you have this in XL?”