Le Parker Meridien on display.

For a short time, you can see Le Parker Meridien as it hasn’t been seen in years. Or to put it another way, the south side of West 57^th Street between Sixth and Seventh Avenues looks like a wide smile with a tooth missing.

The missing tooth is the sturdy, 12-story brick structure, long home to the Jewish Board of Family and Children’s Services, that occupied the spot next to the hotel’s arcade entrance for more than a century, far longer than the 30-year-old Parker Meridien. But 1903 buildings, even ones with updated street-level facades, tend to be too short for 21^st century tastes, and in 2007 it was sold.

Its demise elicited protests from preservationists, (more…)