A postcard showing the St. I am one of the last tenants of the St. Denis, a year-old building on the corner of Broadway and East 11th Street, just south of Union Square in New York City, that is in the process of being emptied and readied for gutting.
It is quiet in my office, early morning before my psychotherapy patients arrive. My four large windows overlook a courtyard and the angled back sides of three buildings, their walls a geometric patchwork of brick. Pigeons purr on a sill. In the NYU dormitory across the way, a student has decorated her window with paper snowflakes. It is winter and I hope to see a real snowfall one more time before I go.
The St. Denis is desolate. Only two dozen tenants are left. There used to be hundreds. For decades, the St. Denis has been a haven for psychotherapists of every sort: classical Freudian analysts and new-age Zen psychologists, existential counselors and gender specialists, therapists who use art, dance, and neurofeedback. In her office on the second floor, she worries about what the loss of the building means for the changing city.
Tearing it down is part of the death of the Village. There used to be diners around here. There also used to be more psychotherapists, clustered together in buildings on the streets around Union Square, but a seismic shift is taking place and the therapist buildings are getting squeezed. Affordable office space has become nearly impossible to find. Not long ago, the therapists of Manhattan stayed put for decades, secured to spaces where rents never spiked. Many are migrating north, up to the cluttered streets around Penn Station and the antiseptic corridors of Madison Avenue in the 30s.
Others are braving the Financial District. And some are giving up on Manhattan, opening offices in Brooklyn or Jersey City. Imagine a future Manhattan without shrinks.
