In the Garment District

[592 8th Avenue, Manhattan, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

Today we’re in the Garment District. The first floor of no. 592, formerly the 8th Ave. Remnant Store, is waiting for a new tenant, still with a display of ties in the window. The barber shop, Ben Klein, Louis Jacoby, Benjamin Sklar, Sam Kupferman are now long gone. As the poet said, there is no permanence.

Benjamin Sklar was a name in buttonholes and eyelets as early as 1918 and as late as 1958. What does it mean to manufacture buttonholes anyway? Are they little pockets of nothingness, to be sewn onto garments? Did Benjamin Sklar spend his life making nothing? No, of course not.

The Simplex name — “since 1918” — is still around, attached to machines for cutting rubber and other materials. And no. 592, that small building between giants, is still there. Today it houses a Western Union outlet.

Here’s a better view of the no. 592 and the giants.

[No. 592 in a larger context. Click for a larger view.]

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

[Google Books gave me Benjamin Sklar’s first name. The 1940 telephone directory gave me the rest of Jacoby’s and Kupferman’s names. Kupferman sold woolens and dress goods.]