Stripes redux

[2154 Hughes Avenue, Bronx, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

This Sunday’s tax photograph is the product of a lucky typo: I was looking for 2514 (still to come), transposed two digits, and thus found more stripes. Stripes redux.

Brian tells me that these awnings of heavy striped fabric were called Hollywood awnings. Here’s a 1927 advertisement. There were and still are ballfields on the other side of the Hughes Avenue, with no buildings to block the sun from the west, so awnings must have been both practical and glamorous. This block of Hughes Avenue was full of them.

Once my eyes adjusted to all the stripes, I looked closely at the three figures on the porch of no. 2156. I assumed that they represent three generations, but perhaps not. The 1940 census shows a family of six living at this address: a husband and wife, fifty-two and forty-seven, and four children, sixteen- and fourteen-year-old sons and ten- and six-year-old daughters. Is that man with the pipe and suspenders only fifty-two? Is that fellow in the rocking chair a teenager?

[I jacked up one end of the porch for this closeup. Click for an even larger view.]

In 2022, no. 2154 was standing, minus its stripes and porch. No 2156 was porchless, unoccupied, and in total disrepair.

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