Miracle on Main Street
Cities are being revitalized as bars, cafés and restaurants reclaim unused spaces, with food and drink playing a pivotal role in this urban renewal, even in the post-pandemic era, writes Edwin Heathcote
It wasn’t that long ago that if you ordered coffee, you would get coffee. Out of a jug with a little plastic tub of half-and-half. And that was it. Coffee today, though, is a cult. From the sickly concoctions of Starbucks to gourmet cold brew and sour, impeccably sourced ristrettos, coffee shops have transformed main streets and high streets across the US and much of Europe from hollowed-out, shell of a strip to slowly reviving community hubs. Work has moved from factories to café tables.
For beer something similar happened – from the frosty steppes of Bud Light and Coors to craft beers and the fruits of micro-breweries (some of which are now in the bar itself, huge stills lurking in the coppery light of bare Edison bulbs), local bars have become something different, places of pride in produce, hipster hangouts rather than dead-end darkness loomed over by big TVs. In an ideal Main Street these new, self-conscious hang-outs might coexist with classic diners serving basic burgers and that same old coffee and mom’n’pop delis and bodegas. They do not necessarily preclude each other – the ideal ecosystem is a balance of blue collar and urban bare brick.
What this beverage revival does though is to highlight how rapidly and effectively food and drink joints can transform the appearance, use, density and destiny of Main Street. Apart from the seemingly inexorable rise of coffee culture and the reinvention of beer as a luxury consumable, the Covid pandemic also played its unlikely part. What might have been a killer for communal culture, the culture of crowds and coffee shops, instead became its savior; first when people began working from home (in name at least) and giving a boost to local neighborhood stores and cafes in the suburbs and outer edges, and then again when people were driven mad by the solitude and fell lovingly back into the embrace of the third space.
But there was more. A new aesthetic, emerging in the wake of the globalized brandscapes of the coffee and fast-food chains with their identikit interiors and furnishing, began to emerge in the form of rooms reclaimed with pride, deliberately preserving the scars and traces of history and use. The bare brick walls, cast-iron columns, concrete and timber floors, the industrial fittings and the tin-plate ceilings, all became a trademark of a reclaimed retail. So popular did this look become that it was quickly taken up by the big beasts of catering making it difficult to distinguish what is a reclaimed space and what is a brand new room made over with the language of reclamation to look old and industrial.
What this moment demonstrated was that there was an appeal to authenticity, a craving for the real; the marks left by history and the spaces left in the hollowed-out main streets. So what might have begun as a seemingly superficial aesthetic trend has instead insinuated itself into a more optimistic view of the revival of Main Street’s appeal.
Szimpla Kert, Budapest’s original “ruin bar,” transformed a pre-war building in the Hungarian capitals former Jewish Quarter into a vibrant hub of eclectic decor, street art, and cultural events
REINVENTING SPACES
For a while, the focus was on food trucks and the rapid transformation of neglected urban edge lands – spaces beneath city freeways, sidewalks, and vacant lots on the edges of gentrification. But these pop-up moments are fleeting; they serve as launchpads for fledgling businesses experimenting with new food concepts but do little beyond generating lunchtime lines.
Far more lasting is the reappropriation of urban fabric. In the 1960s and 1970s, it was artists who moved into former industrial districts, inventing the loft space in the process and launching now hyper-gentrified neighborhoods like New York’s SoHo. Now it is food entrepreneurs who are reimagining the streetscape. Although it is notoriously easy to spend millions on interior fit-outs, it’s not necessary. A storefront might require relatively little front-of-house change – the shop window is already in place, and the space may work well with just a few tweaks and minimal furnishing.
Around the corner from my home is a defunct druggist turned, with the aid of a bar and a few candles, into a chi-chi new venue. Even the old sign has been left largely intact. In New York, it is the small, often immigrant-owned eateries in the outer boroughs that are reviving old, empty stores into thriving community hubs. The reinvention of the cocktail bar, along with the recent popularity of speakeasies and “secret” drinking dens, has also led to the colonization of seemingly ordinary spaces, with exotic or luxurious back rooms hidden behind them – the more banal the storefront, the more piquant the effect. Rents from drinking dens like New York’s Blind Barber, Keys & Heels, The Little Shop, or Please Don’t Tell subsidize the stores that conceal them, offering a thrill alongside the sense of discovery.
Then there are the surprising switches – the reimagining of grand spaces as something else. Among the best was a remarkable attempt to revive the grand Hotel Europejski in Poland’s capital Warsaw but by the back door. Restaurateur Adam Gessler didn’t place his new restaurant in the grand dining rooms, but rather in the industrial, communist-eras kitchens, with its diners sitting amid the white tiles and socialist-realist air of the back of house. Meanwhile, the now-defunct U Kucharzy is a perfect demonstration of what can be done, showing how unpromising spaces can be appropriated and revived with minimal invention but maximal wit.
Surviving better, however, are the “ruin bars” of Budapest in Hungary. These warren-like establishments have taken over entire apartment blocks (Szimpla Kert, although now super-touristy, remains the best example), room by room, with large bars and dance floors in the courtyards, and intimate retreat rooms in old domestic settings – often with the original wallpaper still adorning the walls. They have proved a stunning reimagination of often derelict and dilapidated buildings, bringing them back into the life of the city.
Finally, it might be worth remembering the odd interlude of the pandemic when bars and restaurants spilled onto the streets with booths and ad-hoc sheds and shelters, transforming the sidewalks and reanimating the still-dead streetscape. It was a radical and rapid transition, appropriating the city for pleasure. And even though its effects have been short-lived, it demonstrated how easily food and drink can transform the city.
The predictions of Main Street’s ongoing decline persist, and while online shopping continues to wreak havoc, the inexorable rise of the experience economy and the growing desire for authenticity in our everyday encounters present the ultimate challenge for restaurateurs and entrepreneurs. They are being rewarded for the most sustainable ventures: the least invasive appropriation of existing, often much-loved spaces in the city, or the rediscovery of neglected back rooms, holes-in-the-wall, and hidden gems – all designed to create anticipation and delight.
A trained architect and author of a number of books including most recently, “On the Street: In-Between Architecture,” Edwin Heathcote is a leading global voice in architecture and design criticism.
Terra, a wine bar in New York’s vibrant Tribeca
“In the 1960s and 1970s, it was artists who moved into former industrial districts, inventing the loft space in the process and launching now hyper-gentrified neighborhoods like New York’s SoHo. Now it is food entrepreneurs who are reimagining the streetscape”
Photography ©Fabio Michele Capelli for Getty Images, ©Frederick Jansolhn, Giorgio Rossi, Pedro Rufo, DW labs Incorporated for Shutterstock
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