Pure Food

On Flatbush Avenue, there was a Yankee Diner. South on Flatbush, a pizzeria and spaghetti house with a not especially interesting tax photograph. But go north, turn the corner onto Avenue U, and there’s still more food. And it’s pure. Pure Food: that really was the restaurant’s name, as the 1940 telephone directory makes clear.

[4212 Avenue U, Marine Park, Brooklyn, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

Also in the 1940 Brooklyn directory: Pure Carbonic Inc., Pure Coal Co., Pure Dairy Products, Pure Food Cafeteria, Pure Food Coffee Shoppe, Pure Food Store, Pure Food Stores, Pure Hand Laundry, Pure Home Made Products Co., M.M. Pure, Pure Oil Co., Pure White Laundry, Pure White Laundry Service, and Pure Wine Co.

The two men in uniform must have had some connection to Floyd Bennett Field, a now-defunct airfield then used by the United States Coast Guard and Navy. It’s not the Brooklyn Navy Yard, but still, I feel a song coming on.


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