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Customers mourn Silver Moon Bakery on Upper West Side, closing soon over lease dispute
By
Catalina Gonella
Published Mar 11, 2025
Modified Mar 11, 2025
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Catalina Gonella / Gothamist
By
Catalina Gonella
Published Mar 11, 2025
Modified Mar 11, 2025
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The Silver Moon Bakery, a beloved Upper West Side institution for 24 years, is closing this month after nearly a quarter-century in business.
Silver Moon will serve bread and baked goods to the neighborhood for the last time on March 23, after the owners' decision to stop fighting a lease and eviction dispute with the business's landlord, they said in an email to Gothamist Tuesday.
“After 24 years, the owners, Judith Norell and Georgia Stamoulis, have decided not to fight the landlord’s refusal to extend the business’s lease,” they said in the email. “It is a sad day for Silver Moon and for the neighborhood, which welcomed the bakery’s opening on Nov. 8, 2000.”
In the email, Norell and Stamoulis called Silver Moon “a gathering place, particularly notable on Sept. 11, 2001, when customers crowded into the tiny space, comforted by the smell of baking bread. People had found a safe place in which to feel community.”
News of the closing, which was first reported by West Side Rag, spread quickly throughout the neighborhood, where the bakery at 2740 Broadway is part of locals’ routines. Longtime customers visiting the bakery said they were devastated to learn another one of their favorite spots would soon shutter.
One of those customers, Carey Alexander, said Silver Moon was one of the first places he discovered when he moved to the neighborhood 18 years ago.
“ And I've been coming here ever since. It's just a gem. It's one of the places that makes the neighborhood special,” he said. “This is exactly the type of place that city landlords should be working to protect and preserve because it makes the city and the neighborhood so special. And so, it's just a loss for all of us.”
The announcement comes two months after the bakery’s landlord, Broadside Realty, sued the bakery, accusing the owners of refusing to leave at the end of their most recent lease extension, and owing almost $200,000 for staying on, citing an elevated rent rate that would go into effect once the least expired. The owners say the landlord stopped accepting their rent payments last August. A person reached at at a law office representing Broadside Realty declined comment Tuesday.
Upper West Sider Warren Cohen said he’s been a regular since the bakery opened 24 years ago.
“This was a great boon to the neighborhood when it opened up,” he said. “When we moved in here, we had a young child and this was a regular stop that we had. We would come here, I don't know, three, four times a week, and it was always very high-quality stuff that you can't really always get in other places around town.
Cohen who picked up a Semilla bread, a cranberry scone and a California breakfast roll on Tuesday, called the coming closure a “tremendous loss.”
“I think there are a lot of people in this neighborhood who are very sad about it and perhaps angry about it,” he said.
Mark Dicpetris, who orders a decaf mocha and “a little scone or something” from the bakery daily, said Tuesday Silver Moon’s pending closure is part of a larger trend of small businesses being pushed out.
“ It's the destruction of the neighborhood. Anything that is good is taken from us. And it's not just this place. … First, it's Absolute Bagels, and then it's the Garden of Eden and then it's Nut Box, and then it's the Abbey Pub and now it's Silver Moon Bakery,” he said. “Anything that's good is taken because it's the greedy that control the city and run the city.”
Across the street, one of the locations of independent bookstore Shakespeare & Co. was advertising a closing sale on its windows Tuesday. It will close its doors at the end of April for financial reasons, the West Side Rag reported.
This story has been updated to correctly say a law office representing Broadside Realty declined comment.
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Catalina Gonella
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