Out on Staten Island

[70 Satterlee Street, Staten Island, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

Just an old house from the far end of the Forgotten Borough. Save perhaps for the lookout (we’re not far from the Arthur Kill and Raritan Bay), it looks to me more like something from the dilapidated world of The Sound and the Fury. This house made it into the 1980s but is no longer standing.

Notice the car and workmen (?) to the left.

*

Later that same day: There’s no trusting Google Maps, which shows nothing but an empty lot for 70 Satterlee Street. But this house still stands. And it’s a house with history: the Henry Hogg Biddle House, built in the 1840s. Here are two more views.

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Lillian Edelstein, 2F

[867 East 176th Street, East Tremont, The Bronx, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

Lillian Edelstein and her husband Sam lived in this building in apartment 2F. Lillian’s sister lived in 3F. The sisters’ mother lived in 3G. This building is one of the 159 buildings, housing 1,530 families, that Robert Moses tore down in 1953 and 1954 for the Cross Bronx Expressway. Moses said that the buildings were “slums,” “walkups,” “tenements.” “Tenements? ” a former resident of the neighborhood said to Robert Caro. “Listen, I lived in tenements. These were not tenements at all.”

Lillian Edelstein, a self-described “housewife,” became the leader of the East Tremont Neighborhood Association and kept up a valiant fight against the destruction of her neighborhood. But the fix was in. Here is an affidavit in which she told her story. Here is a 2015 obituary. And here is a 1989 episode of The American Experience, “The World That Moses Built” (aired January 10, 1989), in which you can see and hear Lillian Edelstein talk about Robert Moses and her fight, briefly at 6:13 and at greater length in a segment about the Cross Bronx that begins at 41:47.

What does Robert Moses think about the constuction of the Cross Bronx Expressway and the destruction of East Tremont? From Robert Caro’s The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York (1974):

Asked if he had not felt a sense of awe — of difficulties of a new immensity — when, beginning active planning of the great road during the war, he had first seen the miles of apartment houses in his way, he said he had not. “There are more houses in the way [than on Long Island],” he said, “there are more people in the way — that’s all. There’s very little real hardship in the thing. There’s a little discomfort and even that is greatly exaggerated. The scale was new, that was all that was new about it. And by this time there was the prospect of enough money to do things on this scale.” Asked if he had ever feared that the tenants might defeat him, he said, “Nah, nobody could have stopped it.” As a matter of fact, the East Tremont opposition hadn’t really been much trouble at all.

“I don’t think they were too bad,” Robert Moses said. “It was a political thing that stirred up the animals there.”

As you can see in Google Maps, there is now no there there, only the polluted air above the Cross Bronx Expressway. (You′ll have to turn the image around to see the missing side of the street.)

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A Bronx de Chirico

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

We’re in The Bronx, though at a safe distance from the path of the Cross Bronx Expressway. I chose this photograph for the strangeness of the long, sloping, vanishing building, which makes me think of Giorgio de Chirco’s Mystery and Melancholy of a Street. The partial face on the billboard adds another kind of strangeness. That billboard must be for Chesterfield cigarettes, whose slogan was “They Satisfy.”

This building stands today: it’s a church, the Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque Roman Catholic Church, established in 1923. Readers of James Joyce’s story “Eveline” will remember Blessed Margaret Mary Alacoque, who was canonized in 1920, post-Dubliners.

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Two East Tremont buildings

[1781 and 1783 Fulton Avenue, East Tremont, Bronx, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

In The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York, Robert Caro devotes a chapter, “One Mile,” to the story of just one mile of the Cross Bronx Expressway and the havoc that mile’s construction brought to the East Tremont section of the Bronx. In mapping out the expressway, Moses chose a path through East Tremont that in 1953 and 1954 destroyed 159 buildings housing 1,530 families. He refused to make a slight alteration in the expressway’s path that would have required the destruction of just six buildings housing nineteen families and saved ten million dollars. Why? Because he was Robert Moses, and he had made up his mind.

This tax photograph shows just two of the East Tremont buildings destroyed to make way for the expressway. Google Maps shows no there there today.

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[The larger building on the corner is 1783. The smaller building to its left is 1781.]

Just some guys hanging out?

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

When I was a kid in Brooklyn, the older fellows did their hanging out leaning against or sitting on cars. Maybe these guys are just hanging out. Maybe not. They might be waiting for someone to unlock the garage door so that they can get to work. Notice that the guy on the far right has a newspaper. Is it opened to the sports pages? To Nancy ? Maybe the guy who’s out in front is demonstrating a new dance step. Maybe he’s goofing off for the camera. Is he really that tall? Or is he just out in front?

[Click for a larger view.]

It’s hard to tell what’s at this address today.

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Another disappearing pharmacy

[5027 3rd Avenue, Sunset Park, Brooklyn, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

Last Sunday I posted the tax photograph for a Sunset Park pharmacy, one of countless commercial and residential properties torn down to make way for Robert Moses’s Gowanus Parkway (later Expressway). Robert Caro tells the story in The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York, pages 520–525. Here’s a second Third Avenue pharmacy that was torn down, five blocks away, the Koblentz Pharmacy.

It’s not possible to know the date of this photograph, or any tax photograph (“1939–1941” is all we’ve got), but this one looks as if it was taken after work on the parkway had begun. Other tax photographs from this part of Third Avenue show the El tracks already gone. The pharmacy and the adjacent storefronts in this photograph look empty. And many of the windows of the apartments above the pharmacy have been boarded up.

The Moses project took out the pharmacy and the one-story storefronts on 51st Street. The rowhouses stayed. You can see them in Google Maps. And once again, a building that is now on a corner still bears scars from the removal of a neighboring building.

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There is no there there

[4523 3rd Avenue, Sunset Park, Brooklyn, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

“When Commissioner Moses finds the surface of the earth too congested for one of his parkways, he lifts the road into the air and continues it on its way”: thus gushed The New York Times in 1941 on the creation of the Gowanus Parkway (later Expressway), a six-lane highway that wreaked havoc in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park neighborhood. Robert Caro tells the story in The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York, pages 520–525.

This building, at the southeast corner of 46th Street and 3rd Avenue, was one of many that were destroyed to make room for the parkway. The first rowhouse that followed this corner building was also destroyed: the block now begins with the rowhouse with the bow window. Look at this corner in Google Maps and you can see that it’s as if buildings have been sheared away.

I think of the kid in knickers as a silent witness to a neighborhood’s destruction.

*

A reader tracked down the pharmacist: Dr. Max Korowitz, who had been at this address since 1916. In 1936, he was the subject of an article in The Brooklyn Eagle.

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“NO FOOD FINER”

[234 East 41st Street, Manhattan, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

Not just a diner: the diner. I can imagine that the song “Dinah” — is there anyone finer? — might have had something to do with the jaunty slogan on this establishment’s sign.

[Click for a larger view.]

Today, there’s an entrance to a parking garage.

[From the 1940 Manhattan directory.]

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George’s Diner

[72 Third Avenue, Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

I like seeing a diner wherever there’s space for one. Nature abhors a vacuum. See also the Loring Grill, the Tiny Diner, the Unique Diner, and Jack’s Diner, which is right down the avenue from George’s.

The church to the right still stands, now as the Temple of Restoration. (You can see the words Church Office on that door.) The space once occupied by the diner is now a church parking lot.

Thanks, Brian, for pointing me to this diner.

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Clarkson Diner

[152 Leroy Street or 586 Washington Street, Manhattan, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

The employees of T SIDE and WEST SID, otherwise known as the West Side Iron Works, would have had an easy time of it when the lunch half-hour came around: they were just a short walk away from the Clarkson Diner.

The 1940s.nyc website shows this diner facing Washington Street, with Leroy Street to the north, Clarkson Street to the south, and West Street to — that‘s right — the west. The site has three photos, with this outtake showing the diner to best advantage. If you click for the larger view, you can see a Bell Telephone sign, a Schaefer Beer sign, the name Clarkson, and several blurry pedestrians.

In the Municipal Archives the diner’s address is 152 Leroy Street. The 1940 telephone directory has the address as 586 Washington Street. But the diner itself (listen closely) whispers, “Call me Clarkson!”

[Click for a larger view.]

Today there’s a FedEx warehouse.

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T SIDE and WEST SID

[591-593, 610-12 Something, Manhattan, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click either image for a much larger view.]

I chose these photographs for the signage and for the fellow who appears to be iceskating his way into the frame. The 1940s.nyc website shows both locations on West Street, with nothing nearby that would make them identifiable. The Municipal Archives have nothing for these street numbers. The 1940 Manhattan telephone directory has nothing. Several sources in Google Books from the later 1940s give 801 Greenwich Street as an address for West Side Iron Works — perhaps that was a later address. Without placards showing block and lot numbers for these locations, I give up. As did, it would seem, the keepers of the signage.

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Chamois chop suey

[289, 291, 293 Church Street, Manhattan, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view, with one person at a window, another atop a fire escape..]

This tax photograph follows from last Sunday’s photograph of Needle & Thread Grill: here we see the side of the restaurant and the establishments that follow: Sidney’s Luncheonette (289), Schroeder & Tremayne Inc., Sponges–Chamois (291), and Holland Tire Distributors (293). It’s like something from the world of Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer.

Schroeder & Tremayne and Holland certainly had their pick of places for lunch: if they didn’t want to walk all the way to the Needle & Thread, they could have had a quick bite at Sidney’s. There’s no listing for Sidney’s in the 1940 Manhattan directory, but Holland is in it, at a different address. Maybe the food choices drew Holland to Church Street. Or drove them away.

[Click for larger sponges.]

Schroeder & Tremayne was in business in St. Louis as early in 1918 as a wholesaler of — you guessed it — sponges and chamois. The firm made a splash with a “tasty display” at the 1918 convention of the National Association of Retail Druggists.

[N.A.R.D. Journal 26, no. 27 (1918). Click for a larger view.]

Back to food: the oddest detail in this tax photograph is CHOP SUEY, the stylized (clichéd) letters squirming every which way against a giant T. (Why?) There’s no restaurant in sight other than the Needle & Thread Grill, so the grill must have been taking its menu in a new direction.

In today’s Tribeca, Sidney’s appears to be a residential property. Schroeder & Tremayne houses apexart, a not-for-profit arts organization. Holland Tire Distributors is now OD Studio, home to a personal trainer. No spare tires to be found there, I’m sure.

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Needle & Thread Grill

[34 White Street, Manhattan, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

Last week I chanced upon a surprising moment at nos. 36, 38, and 40 White Street. So I thought I should look at the corner, no. 34. And lookit: in the heart of the mercantile district (now Tribeca), right next to the Crown Textiles Corp., is the Needle & Thread Grill.

[Click for a larger view, and notice the spindles, spinning wheel, Rheingold Beer placard, and loom (?) in the window.]

[Listing from the 1940 Manhattan directory.]

Today no. 34 houses Petrarca Cucina e Vino. (Molto costoso!) Google Maps shows a bit of the ghostly sign still on the side of no. 36.

Needle & Thread had a payphone (note the Bell Telephone sign) and its own matchbooks. I bet Petrarca can’t say that.

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Zoom!

[36, 38, 40 White Street, Manhattan, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

I found this photograph by chance (swear), closing my eyes and clicking the mouse. Was the photographer more deliberate, wanting to catch this car in motion? Or did the driver just zoom into the frame?

These White Street addresses are found between Church Street and Broadway in Lower Manhattan, in an area once devoted to trade and now known as Tribeca (Triangle Below Canal). The first floor of no. 36 today houses a neon store. The first floor of no. 38, a purveyor of axes, knives, and camping gear. No. 40? No idea. What do the lofts on the upper floors go for? You can imagine.

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Kids making the scene

[1013 38th Street, Boro Park, Brooklyn, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

I always like seeing kids in these tax photographs, standing around while the WPA fellows take their pitcher. This photograph struck me because of the words written on the door: NO KIDS UNDER 16 YR ALLOW. The sign above the building reads JUNK SHOP. I can understand why a junk-shop proprietor would keep the younger set out. But that hasn’t stopped these kids from making the sidewalk scene.

What happened one day on 38th Street: those three kids followed the photographers down (or up) the block. These kids would not be denied, though I doubt that anyone was trying to deny them. Click any image for a larger view.

[1001 38th Street.]

[1003 38th Street.]

[1005 38th Street.]

[1013 38th Street.]

[1023 38th Street.]

And down at the end of the block, still-younger kids have taken over.

[1071 38th Street.]

The three stars of these photographs appear only on the north side of 38th Street. Why? No doubt because they were too young to cross the street by themselves. If they’re still around, they’d now be close to or over ninety, and perhaps too old to cross the street by themselves. Who knows? My wild hope is that someone with an older relative who lived on this block will go browsing at 1940s.nyc and see someone they know. You never know. That kind of thing does happen. More than once.

“And that's why I have a blog.”

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Ladies & Gents Restaurant

[56 3rd Avenue, Manhattan, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

On the Lower East Side, another 56 3rd Avenue. I was ready to write that as in Brooklyn, a large building now bears the 56, but this Manhattan building and its neighbors are still standing. At no. 56 today (or at least recently), Saki, a “sushi restaurant in minimalist digs.” They’d be unlikely to offer the sauerkraut cocktail that William Lins, successor to L. Reinken, offered. (Look closely.)

At no. 52, Sig. Klein’s Fat Men’s Shop. Could this be where Ed Norton bought the spats he gives Ralph Kramden in the Honeymooners episode “’Twas the Night Before Christmas”?

[Click for a larger view.]

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Jack’s Diner

[56 3rd Avenue, Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

I like seeing a diner wherever there’s space for one. Yeah, it oughta fit. See also the Loring Grill, the Tiny Diner, and the Unique Diner.

At this address today: a large building. (What did you expect?)

[From the 1940 telephone directory. Click for a larger view.]

The WPA fellow at the placard looks as if he might have time-traveled in from the Nouvelle Vague. But I could be wrong.

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Animal house

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

Walk down Flatbush Avenue from (what I’ve dubbed) the Leaning Tower of Brooklyn, and you woul have found The House of Pets, aka Altman’s Long Island Bird Store.

I’ll let this ad speak (at length) for itself:

[Brooklyn Times-Union, May 29, 1933.]

Do click for a larger view of the tax photograph for many choice details. The capped fellows looking at the window make me think Sam (Tom D’Andrea), the cabdriver in Dark Passage (dir. Delmar Daves, 1947) who wants to buy a pair of goldfish for his room: “It adds class to the joint.” Though these guys seem to be contemplating birds. Or maybe puppies. Different scenes attracted crowds at other times:

[“Pig-Tailed Monkey Wrecks Pet Store in Berserk Spell.” The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, January 23, 1930.]

[“Snake, Loose in Pet Shop, Crawls into Window with Pups, Kittens.” The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, November 29, 1941. Click for a larger view.]

*

October 1: A reader found evidence of further mayhem. Thanks, reader.

[Daily News, May 13, 1951.]

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The Leaning Tower of Brooklyn

[113-115 Flatbush Avenue, Brooklyn, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

Some serious density of signage. The camera angle makes this corner look like the Leaning Tower of Brooklyn, but in truth it’s the tip of an triangle bounded by Flatbush Avenue (to the left), Ashland Place (to the right), and Lafayette Avenue (out of sight).

Everything in that triangle, along with the El, is gone, and there’s now an Apple Store on the corner. But the Brooklyn Academy of Music is still going, on Ashland Place, Fulton Street, and Lafayette Avenue. Elaine and I saw Twyla Tharp Dance perform at BAM in 1984. And I said hello to André Gregory in the lobby.

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Just some diner?

[553 Union Street, Gowanus, Brooklyn, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

No, not just some diner. It’s Frank’s Diner. Or (look closely) Frank’s Union Diner. As in, “Say, how’s about we grab a cup o’ java while they’re changin’ th’ erl?”

Many details to notice in the photograph. The most interesting one: the advertisement for a radio show with Joe Penner (1904–1941), a comedian in vaudeville, radio, and film. His work is well represented at YouTube. You just have to watch a bit to notice a resemblance to Pee-wee Herman. You don’t even have to read his Wikipedia entry.

Thanks, Brian, who pointed me to this photograph some time ago. Now I'm there, and the java is great. The Joe (Penner), not so much.

[Click for a larger view.]

*

September 16: As jjdaddyo suggested in a comment, that appears to be an electric truck. I’d say that that’s the most interesting detail in the photograph. Strange: both a bakery and an electric vehicle company were named Ward.

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Neon in semi-daylight

[4920 New Utrecht Avenue, Boro Park, Brooklyn, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

“Neon in daylight is a / great pleasure”: Frank O’Hara, in “A Step Away from Them,” imagining what his friend and fellow poet Edwin Denby would write.

I chose this photograph for its neon in semi-daylight, vivid in the shadow of the El. The band of light between the El and the buildings looks itself a bit like neon, or at least like fluorescence.

A quick check of online sources shows that in 1909 the 4920 address housed a saloon. A neighborhood miscreant passed a bad check there. The construction of the El in 1914 led to lawsuits from the owner of 4920 and other property owners on the block over noise, darkness, and decreased rental value, with damages paid out in 1922. In 1933 4920 may have housed a delicatessen.

The property may have been undergoing an identity crisis when its tax photograph was taken. Was it a bar & grill? (Look closely.) A delicatessen? (Look closely.) A liquor store? (Look closely.) The 1940 telephone directory has it as a restaurant:

[Click for a larger view.]

Two brands of beer are advertised in the window, Breldt’s and Ox Head. The Peter Breldt Brewing Company was based in Elizabeth, New Jersey. During Prohibition, the Peter Breldt Company, minus the Brewing, brewed near beer that was too near. Ox Head was a product of the Wehle Brewing Company, West Haven, Connecticut.

In 1949, just days after a liquor license was issued to the Utrecht Restaurant (to a new owner?), this advertisement appeared in The Brooklyn Eagle:

[The Brooklyn Eagle, March 20, 1949.]

Someone was cleaning house.

The Utrecht Restaurant, still operating under that name, received another liquor license (for yet another owner?) in 1963. In 1964 the liquor license for this address went to the Boro Lounge. Today the first floor of 1420 is split between Emil’s Shoes and Zion Car Service.

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Empire of signs

[8 Columbus Circle, Manhattan, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

Can you spot the wingback chair?

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[Post title borrowed from Roland Barthes’s book about Japan. La Marseillaise (dir. Jean Renoir) was released in 1938. I don’t know when it arrived in the States. Swanee River (dir. Sidney Lanfield) was released on December 30, 1939.]

A lost Clipper

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

This morning we find ourselves in Chinatown, right off the Bowery. Doyers Street has a substantial history. Here’s some more. And still more. I chose this photograph because of the strangely shallow building to the left, looking almost like a facade from a movie set. And then I noticed the sign to the right, at no. 3.

[“Real Chinese Dishes.” Click for a larger view.]

The China Clipper Restaurant has some history of its own. It was one of three restaurants owned by Wah Sun Choy, or Watson Choy, a restaurateur fascinated by aviation — more specifically, by the seaplanes or “flying boats” built in 1935 and 1936 for Pan American Airways: the China Clipper, Philippine Clipper, and Hawaii Clipper, first used for transpacific airmail service from San Francisco to Manila. Choy’s other restaurants were in Jersey City: a second China Clipper (menu included!) and the Plaza Tea Garden. It seems that the design of the Jersey City Clipper was meant to give patrons the feeling that they were aboard an airplane.

In 1938, Choy embarked on a flight from Alameda, California, headed for Honolulu, the Midway Islands, Wake Island, Guam, and Manila. Choy was — allegedly — carrying $3M in U.S. gold certificates, raised by his own efforts, to be delivered to Chiang Kai-Shek to aid China in the Second Sino-Japanese War. His plane, the Hawaii Clipper, disappeared on July 29, 1938, en route from Guam to the Philippines. No trace of the plane, its six passengers, or nine crew members was recovered. But the considerable speculation about what happened lies beyond the borders of a tax photograph.

“Distinguished Men on Board Clipper.” The New York Times, July 30, 1938.

*

A reader found a bit of film from the 1950s in which the strangely shallow building is visible, with a 7 Up advertisement on its side. Thanks, reader.

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A New Utrecht address

[New Utrecht Hand & Electric Shoe Repairing, 5515 New Utrecht Avenue, Boro Park, Brooklyn, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

Just another establishment in the old neighborhood, just up the avenue from Eddie’s Fish Market. The 5515 address makes several appearances in the newspapers collected at Brooklyn Newsstand. The earliest is grim:

["Wife Dies, Husband, Girl Hurt at Fire.” The Brooklyn Daily Times, June 26, 1916.]

“Unknown cause,” “empty store”: as the article says, the fire was deemed suspicious. Mary Fenis dropped her three children from the third floor to her husband George, who had jumped to the sidewalk. She then jumped, falling on her head and grievously injuring her husband. George Fenis or Feneis wrote to a civic group later in the year to plead for fire escapes on what he called “two-family firetraps”:

[“Women Ask for Fire Protection: Man's Story Leads to Request for New Laws.” The Brooklyn Daily Times, October 5, 1916.]

By 1925, the first floor was a shoe-repair business:

[The Brooklyn Daily Times, November 27, 1925.]

And in 1945 the building was for sale:

[The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, January 28, 1945.]

By 1951, the first floor had become a liquor store:

[“Lone Thug Robs 2 Liquor Stores of $600 Total.” The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, November 10, 1951.]

In 1965, there’s another owner:

[Coney Island Times, February 12, 1965.]

After 1965 the newspapers go dark. Today 5515 is a real estate agency, Gold Realty: “List with Gold and have it sold.”

I chose this tax photograph for the “Ladies & Gents” sign. I wonder if anyone who isn’t reading this post knows of the tragedy that visited this address just over a century ago.

[“Ladies & Gents.”]

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