Tents and Canvas and Two Bridges

[61 Rutgers Slip, Manhattan, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

The lettering on this building caught my eye: I liked the way the signpainter managed to balance the five- and six-letter words. It wasn’t until I looked more closely that I noticed the unattended child amid the tents and canvas. Two men — oblivious? — stand off to the side. Two women — or a woman and a man — sit working amid the tents and/or canvas.

Rutgers Slip is in the Two Bridges area of lower Manhattan, a one-tenth of a mile walk from the East River Greenway. The bridges, Manhattan and Brooklyn, are slightly to the west. A 2009 report prepared for the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation notes that “In the first years of the 20th century, the neighborhood surrounding Rutgers Slip continued to evolve into a ‘ghetto district’ as the living conditions within the Lower East Side slums worsened.” Today, the Rutgers Slip of this photograph is unrecognizable, with massive new apartment buildings and a park.

In 1924 Paul Tavetian described his line of work in testimony when he sued the Staten Island Rapid Transit Railway Company for injuries sustained in a train accident:

Q. Tell us what business you are in?

A. I have confectionery store, 2092 Richmond Terrace [Staten Island], next Empire Theatre, with a partner, and I have an army and navy store, 2080 Richmond Terrace, and I do wholesale buying, buy goods from the Government, of the United States Government, and sell it to the jobber on Broadway and East Side also.

You can see what might be or have been the confectionery in this tax photograph. The number, 2074, isn’t right, but the store is almost next to the theater. A doctor who testified for Tavetian called it a “candy, cigar and soda water store” — a candy store.

Paul Tavetian was at one address or another in the Two Bridges area for some years. He was at 78 Rutgers Slip in 1929:

[The Billboard, May 18, 1929.]

By 1931 he had moved to no. 61:

[Better Farm Equipment and Methods, September 1931.]

And he was still there in 1935:

[Porter Sargent, A Handbook of Summer Camps: An Annual Survey (Boston: Porter Sargent, 1935).]

And there he is in the the 1940 Manhattan telephone directory:


A Google Books snippet, too small to reproduce here, shows that by 1949 Mr. Tavetian had moved his business to 62 E. Broadway. Keeping it in the neighborhood, still.

Find a Grave lists one Paul Tavetian, d. 1956, buried in Queens. He must be our man.

For tax photographs with more signage painted on buildings, see Gnome Bakers and Grant’s Pickle Works, “Home of Piccalilli.”

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