SELF SELF SERVICE SERVICE

[3433 East Tremont Avenue, Bronx, New, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

East Tremont is a neighborhood in the West Bronx, undone by Robert Moses’s Cross Bronx Expressway. But Tremont Avenue stretches across the width of the borough. No. 3433 is on East Tremont Avenue, but it’s not of East Tremont. It’s all the way on the other side of the Bronx.

I chose this photograph for the odd repetition of the signage — SELF SELF SERVICE SERVICE, along with that Troy in the middle. Wikipedia reports that “by the 1950s about 80% of the grocery trade in America was on a self-service basis.” But notice how the prospect of self-service takes Edward G. Robinson’s Mr. Wilson by surprise in Orson Welles’s The Stranger (1946). “All your needs are on our shelves. Just look around, help yourselves,” says the drugstore proprietor, Mr. Potter (Billy House). He stays busy running the register, playing checkers, and listening to the radio. We even see Mr. Wilson behind the soda fountain drawing his own cup of coffee.

Nos. 3433 and 3435 still stand. Troy is now Nailology, a nail salon. Aronowitz’s variety store is now Frank Bee Stores, “selling costumes for kids & adults (including branded characters), plus makeup, wigs & props.” The Frank Bee awning (over no. 3437) makes a bold announcement: “First Place to Try for Anything.”

[Listings from the 1940 directory.]

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