Breakfast at Nordstrom's, Anyone?

Lee’s Art Shop has been a Midtown fixture for more than six decades. But now its address, at 220 West 57th Street between Broadway and Seventh Avenue, is in the heart of a massive real estate infarction known as Billionaire’s Row. And so Lee’s Art Shop – like Steinway & Sons and Rizzoli before it – must go.

The children of the art shop’s late founder, Gilbert Steinberg, have agreed to sell the charming, four-story building to Thor Equities and General Growth Properties for $85 million, the New York Times reports. Built in 1897 as the home of the American Society of Civil Engineers, the site has 126,000 buildable square feet. Which means the charming little building is doomed – and something very tall is inevitable.

So Lee’s Art Shop is having a going-out-of business sale. Rising across the street is the newest addition to Billionaire’s Row, which will have a Nordstrom department store as its ground-floor commercial tenant. Another supertall recently sprouted at Park Avenue. Yet another will soon rise near Sixth Avenue.

All this progress inspired a droll comment from Kate Simon, a photographer who has lived nearby for 38 years. “What’s going on here is destroying New York’s sense of place, particularly for an artist,” she said. “What would Truman Capote write now, ‘Breakfast at Nordstrom’s’?”