After 103 Years of Business, Dykes Lumberyard Bids Hell's Kitchen Farewell

April 3, 2015 — It's no news that New York is changing and fast. Luxury condos, soaring rents, New Yorkers getting priced out of their longtime homes, longtime businesses getting priced out gentrified neighborhoods… In recent weeks, we've read about the 85-year-old grandmother getting evicted from her home in Little Italy (where she's lived since the 1960s) by her landlord, the Italian American Museum — a painful reminder that Little Italy continues shrinking, and there's not much of it left. We've also read about how photographer Jay Maisel, who purchased the Germania Bank building, a gorgeous graffiti-covered Bowery holdout, finally caved after 40 years and sold it for a sizable profit. Hell's Kitchen is another neighborhood that is changing fast. After more than a century in business on West 44th Street, in its original 1912 building, Dykes Lumber Yard has packed up and relocated. Citing city documents, DNAinfo reported that the family who owned the property, and the lumberyard, sold the building to condo developer Charles Friedman for just under 11 million dollars in June. The lumberyard is moving to 124 E. 124th St. Dykes President Charles Kreyer told DNAinfo that "Hell's Kitchen had become inhospitable to the business' industrial needs. 'The city was coming around and making everything difficult,' he said. 'People can't make deliveries, you can't load up a truck.'"