Dashnor Tailoring 320 East 81st Street 212-861-1157 Established 1979 Living With Green 324 East 81st Street 646-559-2803 Established 2020
NOW (Dashnor Tailoring)
Growing up in the small Albanian town of Hekal, Dashnor Begaj had an early fondness for tailoring. Inspired by his mother, a skilled dressmaker, Dashnor followed his passion and was put in charge of the town’s tailor shop from the young age of sixteen. He later accepted a spot at a prestigious tailoring institute in the city of Tirana. There, he learned that tailoring is not merely an art, but also a precise science. In 1990, Dashnor left Hekal for the bigger city of Fier when the Soviet system collapsed. His tailor shop thrived, but soon he would have to flee because of political turmoil and the beginnings of a civil war.
Dashnor continued his training in Italy, and later in the US, where he was welcomed into the high-end New York fashion world. He started out as a tailor at Brooks Brothers, then transitioned to working with Giorgio Armani, and later Tom Ford. In 2009, Dashnor, once again, opened his own tailoring business. Though he still services the high-profile clients with whom he has been working for years, he now pours his heart and soul into his cozy shop on the Upper East Side.
“I’ve been successful since I was sixteen. Even when my country was in a huge crisis, I was doing great. So why should I be afraid here? I came to this country with the idea that I’m not going to work for somebody else.” More than his celebrity clientele, it is Dashnor’s unerring dedication, his humble pride in his immigrant journey, and his infinite love for his profession, that make him a world-class tailor.
NOW (Living With Green)
Although customers at Living With Green span a wide variety of ages and backgrounds, they all share something in common — the desire to bring a bit of green into their home. Brian Byrnes and Vanessa Jovel Byrnes met as sophomores while attending colleges in Manhattan. The duo bonded over their shared love of plants. Vanessa had grown up with tropical plants in her home — some of which are well over thirty years old, while Brian’s parents were passionate about outdoor gardening. When the Byrnes first moved in together, they both brought plants. Soon they would incorporate a greenhouse into their personal living space, and in 2020, only a short time before Covid closed everything down, they decided to give up their own careers and open a shop dedicated solely to plants.
Living with Green sells cacti, succulents, and a wide variety of indoor and outdoor tropical plants, but, perhaps most important is that they offer an incredible knowledge of everything green. When asked about plans for the future, Brian offered that he hopes to expand in a number of directions. "Our goal is to be able to go into homeowners’ apartments and roof tops, taking care of their plants and aiding people in creating their own personal greenhouses."
Art by Sandra White
THEN
Prominent Canadian born architect, George F. Pelham, designed the grandiose apartments at 320-326 East 81st Street. The four six-story brick buildings are unique tenements, for their raised entrance, evoking parlor floors of single-family row houses, and sunken storefronts. Each entrance is surrounded by a detailed stone-portico, as Pelham spared no ornament from these buildings. Today they stand much as the architect imagined them. The tenements were built in 1900 and commissioned by Moses K. Wallach, New York born real estate developer of German ancestry. Wallach died at the young age of 32, in 1907 at the Sanitarium for Nervous and Mental Disease. The cause of death listed was General Paresis, a severe neuropsychiatric disorder cause by cerebral atrophy from untreated syphilis.
