Lily Annabelle is Turning NYC Storefronts into Lasting Memories
What if the most important pieces of New York City are not the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty, or Times Square, but the pizza shop on your block, the old neighborhood bar, the corner store where someone knew your name, or the theater you passed every day?
That is the New York City that artist Lily Annabelle is capturing, one storefront at a time.
Her work has been described as “modern nostalgia,” a phrase she says she “grew into rather than one I set out to embody.” When Lily first began drawing three years ago, her style was “noticeably softer — playful, a little loose in its interpretation of the facades, more impression than record. Over time, that looseness gave way to something far more exacting: ultra photorealism.”
Today, Lily wants every building she draws to appear “exactly as it stands today, true to its proportions, its signage, its wear.” But there is one thing that has remained constant throughout that evolution: color. “My work is vivid and saturated, almost defiantly alive,” she says. That is where her version of nostalgia becomes particularly interesting. Instead of the faded photographs and sepia tones we typically associate with memories of the past, Lily gives New York's history an intense, present-day vibrancy. “Nostalgia, as we usually encounter it, arrives faded: sepia-toned, softened by the distance of memory. Mine refuses that softness.”
Her storefronts are not meant to look like distant memories. “These storefronts are rendered as they appear on an ordinary Tuesday afternoon — in full color, full presence.” It is an approach that makes her work feel both nostalgic and incredibly immediate.
And perhaps that makes sense because Lily never actually set out to become the artist documenting New York. “I spent ten years doing data analytics, thinking in numbers and designs, before a chance encounter with drawing rerouted everything,” she says. But once drawing took hold, she knew it was more than a hobby. “Once it took hold, it became clear this was what I was meant to dedicate my time doing — not as a hobby, but as the thing I show up for, day after day.”
Today, she sees her work as a record of New York itself. “There’s nothing else I’d rather hand to this city than the record I’m building of it, one storefront at a time.” For Lily that means “honoring a place — whether it’s still standing or already gone — through a present-tense visual language.”
And there is something almost defiant about the way she approaches places that have disappeared. “The color doesn’t fade just because the storefront did. If anything, drawing it in full saturation is my way of refusing to let it go silent.” Lily first started drawing storefronts in the West Village, her own neighborhood. There was no grand strategy behind it.
“I’m drawn to the everyday because that’s where I started — West Village, my own neighborhood, drawing storefronts simply because I liked them. No mission, no plan.” She would draw “a pizza shop on the corner, a locksmith sign that hadn’t changed in decades, an awning older than I am.”
Then something unexpected happened. People started writing to her.
A drawing of a storefront could bring back a childhood memory. A closed theater could remind someone of an entire chapter of their life. A shop could transport someone back to a city they had not visited in decades. “Landmarks already have their portraits taken constantly. These places don’t.”
That realization changed the meaning of her work. “Beyond the façade,” Lily says, referencing the title of her first solo exhibition in 2023, “my work is about a record of people, the ones who built these places, worked behind their counters and grew up walking past them.” That distinction is at the heart of her work.
She is not simply drawing buildings. “The city’s culture doesn’t live in its skyline. It lives in the corner stores.” Her connection to the East Village has become particularly important. Although she is from the West Village and began drawing there, she says the East Village has influenced her work the most. “East Village has a different rhythm.” She is drawn to its community gardens, merchant associations, libraries and community centers, as well as the independent businesses that have remained part of neighborhood life. “Despite the city changing around it, East Village kept the texture I’m chasing: places that know their regulars, and regulars who show up for them in return.”
For Lily, that relationship between a business and its community is what makes a storefront worth preserving. “A storefront isn’t just architecture. It’s a gathering place, a memory-keeper, a small anchor in someone’s daily life.” One of the best examples of this philosophy is her illustration of Gem Spa. The iconic East Village corner store had already disappeared by the time Lily sat down to draw it. She never got to photograph it herself, so she gathered images from different eras and pieced them together.
The result is a storefront that feels almost like a time capsule. The black-and-yellow GEM SPA sign. The yellow awning proclaiming “New York’s Best Egg Cream.” The hand-lettered list of cigarettes, cigars, candy, soda, magazines and cellphone accessories. Then there are the smaller details: ATM decals, an “AT&T Authorized Dealer” sign, the Marlboro rack, a New York Lottery sticker, a handwritten “99¢” taped to the glass and a sticker machine promising to put “YOUR FACE on a STICKER.” There is even a rack of that day's New York Times. “Every one of those details is a fragment of a different visit, a different year, a different person who stopped in for something small,” Lily explains. “Piecing them together into one storefront let old and new exist on the same page — which felt true to what Gem Spa actually was.”
For Lily, that is exactly what the project is meant to accomplish. “Hold onto something that time and circumstance already took, and let it exist a little longer, cigarette rack, egg cream sign, sticker machine and all.”
The emotional response to her work has become one of the most meaningful parts of being an artist. “Yes, constantly, and it is truly the most meaningful part of this job,” she says when asked whether people have told her that her illustrations brought back memories. “People often describe my drawings as emotional.” Many of the messages come from people who no longer live in New York. “They thank me, often in the most personal terms — for bringing back a memory they hadn’t thought about in years, for giving them a reason to stop and really look at a place again, for handing them something to hold onto once it was already gone.”
One woman purchased Lily’s Macy’s illustration around Christmas. She had gone to Macy’s in New York every Christmas as part of a treasured holiday tradition. As she got older, health issues meant she could no longer make the trip. She had the artwork professionally matted and framed so she could keep enjoying that tradition at home. “She called it a treasure,” Lily says. “That’s not language I take lightly.”
For the artist, every one of these messages reinforces the same idea. “These places were never just architecture — they were the backdrop to somebody’s life.” If you are discovering Lily’s work for the first time, she recommends three New York illustrations as a starting point. The first is Army & Navy Bags, which has been open since 1956. Lily drew every sticker on the storefront, along with a pink heart that says “Keep Love Alive” and hand-painted signage layered over graffiti. “It’s Lower East Side density at its most honest.” The shop also tells an immigrant story. It was started by a Polish couple and later handed down to a longtime employee who had immigrated to the United States himself. “One immigrant’s shop becoming another’s inheritance — that’s New York distilled.”
Her second recommendation is the marquee for Oh, Mary! at the Lyceum Theatre. The historic architecture includes soaring columns, an ornate cornice and a mansard roof. Against all that history is the bold modern marquee declaring, “COLE ESCOLA IS MAGNIFICENT.” “Broadway keeps evolving, even inside its oldest buildings.”
Then there is Mars Bar, the East Village dive that closed in 2011. The bar was one of the last remnants of the neighborhood's punk rock past, a holdout from the era of CBGB and the Bowery's grittier days. Lily filled nearly every windowpane with details: tags, tiny figures and stickers layered over stickers. In its final days, spray-painted above the building were the words “THANKS FOR THE MEMORIES.” “I wanted to build it from the memories of everyone to whom it was home.”
Put the three illustrations next to each other and they look completely different. “Army & Navy Bags is chaotic but grounded, the Lyceum is disciplined and grand, Mars Bar is raw and unwilling to go quietly.” But they share something important. “All three are covered edge to edge in evidence that people were there.”
“None of these buildings are empty — they’re full of fingerprints.” That may be the closest thing Lily has to a thesis statement about New York. “New York is functional and immigrant-built, still evolving inside its oldest institutions, and never quiet, even after it’s gone.”
Her work is also becoming part of a broader conversation around New York City preservation. “I want my drawings to be the starting place for people to share memories, learn about architecture, and engage with the city’s preservation work.” At an exhibition called "Goodbye to the Brick and Mortar" at Tompkins Square Library, people who had worked behind the counters of the storefronts she drew, including Ess-a-Bagel, Kim’s Video and Music and 2nd Ave Deli, came together to share their own stories. “The room wasn’t admiring the work so much as trading memories and correcting each other’s timelines.”
That same thing happens at markets. “People come by casually — for an ornament, a donut — never planning to say anything personal to a stranger.” Then they recognize a storefront. “Suddenly they’re telling me it was their family’s restaurant, or the block they grew up on.” She has watched people become visibly emotional over places they were not even looking for. “It happens online too — someone tags a diner or bar I drew, and within minutes strangers are reminiscing together in the comments. The drawing is just the door. What happens after someone walks through it is the part that really matters.”
There is a fascinating story behind the artist herself, too. Lily has a background in data analytics, is an economist by training and is also a trained pastry chef. “It’s an odd path, but passion and precision runs through all three.” She has traveled to more than 60 countries, often carrying a sketchbook with her. She sketched everywhere from Tbilisi to Santo Domingo to Abu Dhabi long before she considered herself an artist. “It was probably the most obvious sign of where I’d eventually end up.”
Even her drawing sessions come with an unexpected soundtrack. “People often assume drawing all day is a quiet job. Mine really isn’t.” She usually has a British panel show, quiz show or French crime drama playing in the background. She speaks French and says she has picked up “an oddly deep knowledge of British comedy scene” along the way.
Then there is Mondo Kim’s on St. Mark’s Place, an illustration that became much more than a drawing. The store had already closed, so Lily had to reconstruct it from archival sources. She matched DVD and CD covers to the correct releases and researched what an old-school DVD machine looked like so she could get the silhouette right. One blurry poster had her stumped for weeks. “To my untrained eye, it looked like some kind of bleeding cat.” A friend eventually identified it as the cover of Sonic Youth’s "Rather Ripped". The deeper Lily went into the research, the more fascinated she became with the story of the store and Mr. Kim himself.
Then she discovered a documentary about Kim’s Video was premiering at the Quad Cinema. “I hadn’t set out looking for it. I just found it, and knew I had to go.” Mr. Kim was there. “I brought my drawings of his stores and showed them to him in person. He’s been a friend and a supporter of my work ever since.”
That is perhaps the perfect story for an artist whose work is all about unexpected connections. Lily does not have some secret list of New York businesses that are about to disappear. She says she uses a mental checklist instead. “Is a place architecturally, culturally, or historically significant — sometimes it’s one of those, sometimes all three.”
She also looks to preservation society publications. “If I hear a place that’s mattered for decades is closing, I reprioritize — not to be first, but to make sure it doesn’t disappear without a record. I try to connect with the owner directly, to lock in their story alongside the facade. History gives me the filter, urgency and human connection move something to the top.”
That sense of responsibility is what makes following Lily Annabelle’s work so compelling. Her illustrations invite you to look twice at the city around you. A storefront that you might normally walk past becomes something worth studying. You notice the typography, the awning, the stickers, the graffiti, the architectural details and the little traces of everyday life.
Then you start wondering about the people behind them. Who worked there? Who grew up around the corner? Who had their first date there? Who went there every Friday? Who moved away from New York but still remembers that exact storefront? Lily’s art does not try to freeze New York in time. Instead, it reminds us to notice what is here while it is still here, and to remember what has already disappeared.
That might be the best reason to follow Lily’s work. Because once you see New York through her eyes, you may never look at an ordinary storefront quite the same way again. You may start noticing the places that have been here for decades. You may take a photo of the sign you always walk past. You may finally ask the owner about the story behind the business. And you may realize that the New York worth remembering is not always the one featured on postcards.
Sometimes it is the little shop on the corner. Sometimes it is the faded sign. Sometimes it is the place that is already gone. And sometimes, thanks to an artist like Lily Annabelle, it gets to exist “a little longer.”
The bottom line: Lily Annabelle is doing something quietly urgent for New York City — preserving the storefronts, corner stores, and neighborhood anchors that disappear before anyone thinks to document them, in illustrations so vivid they feel more alive than a photograph. Follow her work, then go look at your own block a little differently.
