Cheer Up?

[113 Mulberry Street, Little Italy, Manhattan, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

Here’s the second of four Mulberry Street tax photographs that I’m posting. I chose this photograph for its canine and human interest (notice the person at the apartment window and the ghost child on the sidewalk), for the pushcart (holding what?), and for the Cheer Up delivery van in front of it.

What was Cheer Up? A lemon-flavored soda containing lithia. “A delightful drink,” the delivery van’s sign says, “a real supercharged mixer.” More information here, before-and-after photographs of a bottle here, and a bottlecap here. Bonus: a happy owl. That’s enough.

A descriptor on the bottle is much more troubling than what’s on the delivery van’s sign: “For hospital home and general use.” You don’t often see that in a carbonated beverage.

I had to squint at the storefront in the background, and there's the listing in the 1940 Manhattan directory for the M. Marinacci Choice Meat Market:

Nothing though for the Vesuvius Pizzeria and Restaurant next door. Today no. 113 is a pizzeria, Manero’s of Mulberry (named, yes, for Tony Manero in Saturday Night Fever). The building appears to still have the same fire escape as in the WPA photograph.

And there’s still a Cheer Up, made in Bangladesh. No relation, I assume.

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