A Boro Park five-and-ten

[4318 13th Avenue, Boro Park, Brooklyn, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

In our house it was known as the five-and-ten. Or Woolworth’s. I have a limited number of specific memories of the Woolwort's pictured here: Silly Putty, smooth wood floors, enormous (or so they seemed) glass cases full of loose candy to be scooped into paper bags, small Christmas presents for my grandparents — a comb, a pocket mirror.

Note the baby carriages parked in front of the store. I’ve established to my satisfaction that yes, people really did leave carriages outside stores. It was another world, in a number of ways: here is the lunch counter in the Greensboro, North Carolina Woolworth’s that is now the International Civil Rights Center & Museum.

More pictures of interiors: the Library of Congress has a number of photographs of shoppers in the 1930s and ’40s; a Wisconsin newspaper offers nine photographs from the 1955 opening of a Woolworth’s in Falls River. And here’s Madison Woolworth’s, also from 1955. The 1968 film The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter has scenes in a working Woolworth’s. I put two representative shots in this post. The Woolworth-hungry reader can find more photographs by searching for woolworth store interior.

In recent years this Brooklyn storefront has housed a Duane Reade, a Carter’s with clothing for babies and kids, Little Luxury (baby clothes), and Regency Family Wear.

Related reading
More photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives (Pinboard)