For Tribeca's Duane Park Patisserie, a Bittersweet Day of Goodbyes

Madeline Lanciani gets a goodbye hug from Tammy Meltzer, one of her many regular customers who came to see her on the last day. In the corner, Lanciani's son, Nicholas Rotondi, sits at the table where he did homework as a student at P.S. 234. Photo: Linda Buongermino/Tribeca Trib

Duane Park Patisserie, Madeline Lanciani’s warm and welcoming staple of the “old” Tribeca, is no more. Unlike the masterfully crafted pastries the chef has been offering over the past 34 years, the last day of business—filled with hugs and tears—was bittersweet.

From the time the doors opened at 8 a.m. on Sunday, June 14, dozens of longtime customers streamed in to pay respects and say their goodbyes—as emotional for Lanciani as for her patrons. “I don’t own enough Kleenex,” she told the Trib ahead of the closing. “I’ve been telling people to buy stock in Kimberly-Clark.”

Lanciani said closing the store was the only option. Her rent, she said, had jumped from $15,000 a month to, most recently, $23,000 a month after a new owner bought her space three years ago. During that time, she said in an interview, she lost two major longtime accounts from caterers, “not because they didn’t like my product,” she explained, “but because each particular entity got bought out by some other company, and those management teams buy from who they want.” In addition, she tried expanding the business into an after-dinner dessert destination, but it didn’t take off. 

“My idea was, oh, they’d go to the fancy restaurant and then come here for dessert,” she recalled. “But they didn’t. People just stayed at the fancy restaurant.”

Tired of struggling to make ends meet, Lanciani recalled, she tried to find a buyer for her business. But prospects backed away, she said, because of a lawsuit by the landlords for back rent—rent she said she attempted to pay and was refused. 

Though Lanciani admits there were times she was late with the rent, she always came through with it, late fees and all, she said. Still, the owners exercised a clause in the lease that they said allowed them to cancel it. Now, per another clause, the owners are suing her personally for the entirety of the lease: more than $2 million. “I’ve been taking money from my own little retirement account and paying the lawyers,” she said. A GoFundMe campaign has been established to help defray those expenses.

In early June, she finally gave up, publicly announcing she would have to close the beloved establishment. Neighborhood residents are heartbroken.

On that last day, Tammy Meltzer, a Battery Park City resident and chair of Community Board 1, was there with her husband, Michael Kaufman, to pick up one last batch of sweet treats. They’ve been bringing their kids to the patisserie since they were in strollers. “This is part of their lives, and it’s sad,” Kaufman said. Meltzer is already feeling the loss. “This is my bakery,” she said, her voice breaking. “It’s hard to not cry.”

Throughout the day, longtime customers reminisced over coffee and pastries. “It’s unbelievable that this place is going to be gone,” said Janet Goldner. “It’s a real loss for the neighborhood.” Her friend Teri Slotkin, who has lived in her loft on Vestry Street since 1976, said she will miss the cozy ambience and its small-town vibe. “It was delicious pastry, and a neighborhood place where we could congregate. I mean, there are very few neighborhood places left in Tribeca."

Jan Weiss and Anne Locke have been meeting at the bakery every Saturday for “seems like forever,” Weiss said. They met some 20 years ago. “You had the big table,” recalled Anne, “and you invited us to sit with you. That was a long time ago now.” Sitting on the floor next to Jan was her therapy dog, a black lab named Charlotte Brontë, who “brings me here every day for the peanut butter cookie.”

The loss for the neighborhood goes beyond the store itself. For years, Lanciani has donated treats to local fundraisers—Taste of Tribeca, Washington Market School block parties, school graduations, and more. Even on her last day in business, she was busy setting out her popular ring dings in Tribeca Park for The Longest Table, a neighborhood potluck sponsored by the Community First Development Coalition.

Three generations of customers turned out for the bakery’s last day. Among them were former P.S. 234 students, now in their 20s and 30s, who once accompanied their classes on field trips to the bakery. Some came with their parents. Others were carrying children of their own. 

Photographer Donna Ferrato, a longtime Leonard Street resident, has been a loyal customer for 30 years. “I always came here with my daughter, and now I come here with my grandson,” she said. “It’s sort of an old world feeling here. Like, we’re stepping into a time machine.”

Walker Brandt, now 26, worked behind the counter at the bakery when he was growing up. He was at the patisserie with his former P.S. 234 classmate, and best friend to this day, Julian Kaufman. “Madeline brought me in and taught me how to make the chocolate leaf cookies,” Brandt recalled fondly. “Julian occasionally would come in, and she would gladly overlook me slipping him a few cookies. It was just such a good community.” 

When Lanciani, now 77, opened in 1992, she was a 43-year-old divorced mother of a 3- and 6-year-old. Her son, Nicholas Rotondi, grew up in this bakery. Now 37, he spent much of the final day seated at the same corner table where he once did homework as a student at P.S. 234. He said his mother’s shop provided stability when he needed it most.

“We were always moving a lot. And I lived in a lot of different apartments,” he recalled, adding, “It’s the one steady thing that you could count on when everything else was sort of, you know, moving.”

“I’m sad because it’s not just her losing a thing,” Rotondi also noted. “It’s Tribeca and New York City losing a thing. But at the same time, I am supporting her in whatever way is best for her. And right now, that’s actually positivity. Thinking about what comes next.”

So what does come next? On the weekend of June 20 and 21, Lanciani will sell off anything that isn’t nailed down, except for the signed posters by Richard Serra, a longtime neighbor and loyal customer. And she’ll be holding onto the giant group photo of child ballerinas, which, contrary to popular belief, Madeline is not in.

Later on she hopes to restart her Ring Ding Bar, at first online and, sometime in the future, she hopes, in a new space. Santiago Hernandez, who has worked alongside Lanciani for 28 years and runs the kitchen, said he’s had offers from big restaurants and is taking a part-time job to help pay the bills. But he said he’ll be there for his boss’s next chapter, whatever it may be. “She treats me like a mom, you know, I’m part of the family. I’m gonna be with her, because we started this together, and we want to end together.”

Despite the sadness of the day, Lanciani looks back on those 34 years without regret. “I’ve been lucky to do what I like, which is feeding people,”  she said.

“Seems to have worked for the community. And nothing lasts forever,” she added. “So there you go.”