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Rescuing History, Piece By Piece
But not before Craig Bero gets a piece of it. Standing on the balcony of the 31st floor, which some people believe was the private office of J.P. Morgan (the financier was the builder), the view is spectacular. But Bero was not distracted by the lacy spires of Trinity Church or the distant sparkle of the Hudson River. He was transfixed by a window’s hinge. “I’ve never seen a butterfly hinge like this before,” Bero said excitedly. “Absolutely custom made. Absolutely brilliant brass. You can move this lever after 100 years. Brilliant engineering!” Just inside, in the last room left on the floor that has not been gutted, Bero ran his fingers over the amber-colored wood paneling. “This is all birdseye maple. Whoever made this was an absolute master craftsman.” Within many turn-of-the-century building being torn down or gutted are scores of meticulously crafted—and irreplaceable—bits and pieces of the past, mere detritus to demolition crews who rip them apart with torches and sledge hammers. Bero spends his nights dreaming of those artifacts. He has spent hundreds of hours trolling Downtown for construction sites, padlocked warehouses and boarded up buildings, hoping to snatch a treasure before it lands in a dumpster.
“I’d use a little wagon, literally a little Radio Flyer wagon to get stuff from 14 Wall,” Bero says. Several hotel employees have helped him rescue larger pieces. “We got a solid black marble fireplace from 14 Wall that was truly 4,000 pounds. It was beautiful! We dismantled it section by section.” Despite his fascination with such antiques, Bero says he has never bought anything in an antique store. “Those are things that have been found by someone else,” he explained. “It’s the hunt that intrigues me.” Jay Wartski, a co-owner of the Cosmopolitan Hotel, and Bero’s landlord, has watched his tenant in wonder as he has hunted in Tribeca. “You look at the guy climbing in and out of dumpsters and you think this guy is crazy,” Wartski said. “Then you see what he brings back and what he creates and you can’t believe it. The guy’s a perfectionist.” Bero doesn’t just talk about his finds. He gushes. That fragment of a Dutch pipe he found in in the hole that workers made during a recent water main break on Chambers Street...? “Something you can die for!” The old silver burnishing machine he came across in an office in 14 Wall Street...? “Mind-boggling!” Nearly every object fires his imagination. Take the 1911 book of etchings of the yet-to-be-built Woolworth building he found behind the fireplace in J.P. Morgan’s office. “How did it get there?” Bero asks rhetorically. “One thousand copies were bound for Frank Woolworth. He positively gave one to J.P. Morgan. Two of the most powerful men of their day! What were their conversations?”
After studying acting at the University of Wisconsin, he came to New York City, with only a suitcase of books. He rented a cold water flat on McDougal Street, where he still lives. Bero believes in recycling what he finds. The walls of the Cosmopolitan Café come from Craig’s Shoe Store, which was once on the corner of Chambers and West Broadway. In the cafe’s kitchen is a ladder on wheels from the same store that salesmen climbed to reach high shelves. Bero uses it to get to a crawl space where he keeps such items as turn-of-the-century chandeliers from the bathrooms at 14 Wall Street. “The whole point to me of collecting,” says Bero, “is not to own or sell things for a profit. The idea of possessing bothers me. This stuff needs to be passed on, or integrated into another use.” Bero has found plenty of uses for his finds. He has been a restaurateur for 25 years, and each of his establishments evokes an era with uncanny authenticity. (He was owner of such Greenwich Village eateries as Grange Hall, Village Atelier and Anglers and Writers, and helped build the Soda Shop on Chambers Street for owner Linda Donahue.) “People sometimes come in here and think that this place has been here forever,” Bero says of the cafe. “That’s one of the greatest compliments for me.” Last month, Bero stood in the lobby of 14 Wall and gazed up at the row of art deco hanging lamps that would be thrown out within the next few months. “This will be a feat,” he said. “But it just has to be done.”
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