Wallet Card at Alonzo's

The block of West 44th street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues contains some of the fanciest hotels in New York - the Algonquin, the Royalton, the Sofitel, the Iroquois. And yet nestled in between the Sofitel and the Iroquois is a small, abandoned building with the name Alonzo on the door. The building, originally stables, housed an actors club for several years, and by the 1960s was a Belgian crepe restaurant. In 1981 it became an Italian restaurant, Alonzo's, that closed sometime in the mid-1990s. In 2001 the property was bought by the Iroqouis with plans to expand it into a banquet and convention space. Somehow, fifteen years later, the renovations have not happened, and the building remains abandoned, with the faded sign of a restaurant that closed twenty years ago still gracing the door.