Landmark the Lobster!

By on February 20, 2008 4:57 pm in Brooklyn Heights

If the reports are true as BHB commenter Since47 suggests then Armando’s on Montague is soon to be history:

Evidently Peter Byros, owner of Armando’s and the building that houses it, is retiring. With nobody interested in buying the building, Peter is renting the restaurant out to a ‘fancy sandwich shop.’ The last day for the restaurant is Palm Sunday. Don’t take down that lobster!

Is it time for the BHB community to stand up and say SAVE THE LOBSTER! The sign has been a Montague Street fixture for decades, since the restaurant opened in 1936. The Brooklyn Dodgers, Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller were said to be regulars of the eatery in the 1950s.

Does the Lobster deserve Landmark status? Comment below!

Flickr photo by shadowknows555

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  • anon

    Armando’s restaurant has seen its day. If it closes, good riddance. I think the last salad I ate there was prepared in the mid-1990’s and frozen for ten years. Let if go. Lets bring on the new. Something better and less geriatric.

  • Beavis

    Yawn.

  • bornhere

    Geriatric? Now see here, young ‘un!
    I think those of us who care about the end of Armando’s are not necessarily talking about food (although the soft shell crabs were good), and almost certainly not whining about missing the “ambience.” It might just be more about, “Well, that’s that,” from a nostalgic or historic point of view. I was disappointed when the spooky, dark Armando’s was transformed into its current incarnation; but I was also kind of happy that it wasn’t being turned into a Chuck E. Cheese. For those of us who are over the age of whatever and have lived here for the duration, losing yet another “landmark,” as tarnished as it may have been, is just felt as a loss. Maybe you had to be there, so to speak. And, yeah, save the sign.

  • T.K. Small

    I am not sure whether this is actually a great loss, but my connection with that restaurant goes back almost 50 years. My father proposed to my mother in Armando’s. Also, as a kid in the early 70s, I became quite skilled at stealing my father’s gin soaked olives from his martinis! Those were the days.

  • hildabooze

    Where will the Mary’s (Irish and Fashion) go now ?

  • nazimova

    Here here Bornhere!! It is the end of an era.. and your’e right you had to “be here..” And I also loved the old dark Armandos (as well as Foffe’s) and the Piano Bar and Dannys (all gone now) It’s baby carriages and Hagen Daz in the Heights now ..

  • bornhere

    I’m all for the baby carriages, having been pushed in one and having pushed my own not all that long ago; it’s just that it would be nice if something could last. And if that something could be unique and valuable. I feel like the current every-week-something-new trend began when the original “Silver’s” (what a treasure chest it was for a kid and for a mom of a kid) on Montague had to move farther West, before disappearing altogether. To think that Variety Mart might be the last holdout (and since there’s that forever connection between the VM owners and the real estate, they may just go on and on and on and …).

  • nabeguy

    Ah yes, I was waiting for someone to finally bring up Silver’s. If I had held on to even 10% of the baseball cards that I bought in that place, I’d be a very rich man now.

  • Chris

    I’m glad this place is closing. I went there once and frankly I had better food in my high school cafeteria. Save the sign though. It adds a little something to the blandness of Montague street.

    Not sure about this “high end sandwich shop” either. I don’t even know what that is exactly.

  • Since47

    Oh my – Silver’s, where we got Spaulding ball after Spaulding ball (and yes, gum with the baseball cards); Danny’s (was that the place with the fishing nets in the window?); Capulet’s (where everybody DID know your name). But we, with memories long enough, shouldn’t fret because now we have Sleepy’s. Zzzzzzzzzzzzz…

  • bascobill

    Wow.. Silver’s.. I spent a lot of time in there. Anyone remember Nettie’s? It was kind of a lunch counter place just down towards Clinton from Henry. It wasn’t a special place, but it was the last place you could get a nickel coke! Hamburger Stop was a hangout of minie too. When they opened, they had a model train running up and down the counter to deliver the food. They quickly found that more food ended up on the floor then with the customer, so they retired the train. Nazimova – Michael and Mathew Foffe were two of my best buds.. I used to hang in their house (above the restaurant.) We got all the fooed we wanted (and we could eat, as kids) :)

  • bornhere

    bascobill-
    I’m with you on Hamburger Stop, but Nettie’s was a women’s clothing store (I can still picture the sort of script sign with the name), just east of Hamburger Stop. And the demise of Foffe’s was the beginning of the end.

  • HELEN B

    I sure hope Peter does bring back ARMANDOS!! We all miss Peter and Kathy, and Fame, and Paul. Please, please, do come back to Montage Street. Looking forward to seeing you again. There is no place like ARMANDOS.