Early Sunday Morning-ish

Still on Columbia Street.

[376 Columbia Street, Red Hook, Brooklyn, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

Figure at a window. Wildroot. (Still made!) But what immediately struck me was the Edward Hopper feeling. If it were really Early Sunday Morning though, there’d be no one at the window, and the barbershop would have a sign saying CLOSED.

I looked into the name Rinascente and learned nothing about this barbershop. (No barber lived at this address in 1940, only two longshoremen and their families.) But I did learn that Rinascente is the name of an posh Italian department-store chain, founded in Milan in 1865:

The name Rinascente, which means “she who is reborn,” was invented by the poet Gabriele D’Annunzio in 1917. The author found it “a simple, clear and appropriate name” because it indicated the action of rebirth that would carry into the future.

I suppose the barbershop was aspiring to some reflected glory.

What makes it all a bit weird is Rinascente’s present-day marketing of a line of men’s grooming products called Bullfrog:

Bullfrog is an Italian brand that draws inspiration from the concept of modern American Barber Shops and traditional Italian barbershops.

No. 376, no longer housing a barbershop, stands.

[No waiting.]

Related posts
Another Columbia Street barbershop : More photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives (Pinboard)

[Google Maps places this block of Columbia Street in Carroll Gardens. But everywhere else, it’s Red Hook. I amended other posts accordingly.]