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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Schrafft’s, plural

Two weeks ago I posted a tax photograph of a Childs restaurant. I realized after the fact that next to that Childs stood a Schrafft’s. You can see both restaurants, albeit at distance, in this tax photograph:

[Schrafft’s, 291-293 Broadway, Manhattan, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

Like Childs, Schrafft’s restaurants were once ubiquitous in Manhattan: the 1940 telephone directory lists twenty-nine of them. When my mom and dad, not yet parents, worked in Manhattan, they would sometimes meet for lunch at a Schrafft’s. Noticing this Broadway outlet made me want to look for the Schrafft’s where my mom and dad may have eaten lunch.

So I called the Paul Drake Detective Agency and told what I know: my mom would walk from American Cyanamid (30 Rockefeller Plaza); my dad would walk from Johns Manville (22 E. 40th Street). Drake’s conclusion is that they must have met at the Schrafft’s at 556 Fifth Avenue: an eight-minute walk from Rockefeller Plaza, a ten-minute walk from 22 E. 40th. (Paul Drake is never wrong.)

[Schrafft’s, 556 Fifth Avenue, Manhattan, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

Wikipedia has a brief history of the chain. Vanishing New York has some good photographs. The New York Public Library has menus that take forever to load. Here’s one from 1955, when my parents, not yet my parents, may have been Schrafft’s-ing. And here’s a description of Schrafft’s from a 1964 guide to New York.

There’s a website for a revived Schrafft’s whose tone — “Where the Forward Thinkers and Life Seizers, the Night Owls and the Morning Dealmakers banter amongst the Famous and soon-to-be Famous, the Old Guard and their Tiny Titans to be” — and spelling — “fashionable not fadish” — leave me cold. The revival as yet seems to be more idea than reality.

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30-D, three letters

A clue in this past Saturday’s Newsday Saturday Stumper, 30-D, three letters, “____ king,” made me think of a food from childhood. The answer: ALA, as in Chicken à la King. I’ve always thought of Chicken à la King as a mid-century convenience food, a TV Dinner in a can, but Wikipedia tells me that the dish has a longer and more interesting history.

I found this two-page spread, which jibes with my memory of Chicken à la King — something served with crackers.

[Life, March 18, 1957.]

You can click either image for a larger view. Do click: you won’t be disappointed, though you may become nauseated. It’s always difficult to photograph (and colorize?) food.

The bakery with a thousand windows? Here’s an artist’s rendering. And a tax photograph:

[2902 Thomson Avenue, Long Island City, Queens, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

Louis Armstrong’s house

[34-56 107th Street, Queens, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

Louis Armstrong was born on August 4, 1901. He and his wife Lucille bought this house in Corona, Queens, in 1943. It was Armstrong’s home for the rest of his life. Here he is on the front steps, after the house had been sided. And here are many more photographs of the exterior and interior.

Today 34-56 is the Louis Armstrong House, whose virtual exhibits are many. One remarkable moment: Armstrong on a 1951 home recording, playing along with the King Oliver Creole Jazz Band’s 1923 recording of “Tears” — featuring Louis Armstrong.

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Childs

[With apologies to Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart.]

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

Childs restaurants were once ubiquitous in New York. The 1940 telephone directories show one in Queens (at the World’s Fair) and a handful in Brooklyn. In Manhattan, they march up Broadway and Fifth Avenue and Broadway: 47, 196, 285, 351, &c. And they were elsewhere. Like Duane Reades, they were everywhere.

From the song “Manhattan”:

We’ll go to Yonkers,
where true love conquers in the wild.
And starve together, dear, in Childs.

Wikipedia has an excellent article about “Manhattan” that makes clear something I never understood when much younger: the song’s lyrics are about a couple without much money, seeking frugal delights. The Childs chain offered inexpensive food.

Wikipedia has a detailed article about Childs, complete with menus. A search for “childs restaurant menu” will return many more. Eat up.

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Mott Street, in July

[With apologies to Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart.]

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

And tell me what street compares with Mott Street in July, sweet pushcarts gently gliding by. Please imagine the pushcarts gliding. See also Delancey Street.

Click for a larger view and see if you can see the four people at their windows.

*

July 24: A belated thought: check the WPA Guide:

The pushcarts on Mott Street from Canal to Broome, a block east of Mulberry Street, are relics of a thriving market that once embraced the four streets west of the Bowery. They sell ripe and green olives, artichokes, goats‘ cheeses, finochio (sweet fennel), and ready-to-eat pizza, an unsweetened pastry filled with tomatoes and cheese, meat, or fish.

The WPA Guide to New York City: The Federal Writers’ Project Guide to 1930s New York. 1939. (New York: The New Press, 1992).

Notice that the exotic food pizza has to be explained.

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On old Delancey Street

[With apologies to Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart.]

[6-8 Delancey Street, Manhattan, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

It’s very fancy on old Delancey Street, you know. The fixtures charm us so, as tables sit below, in the snow.

I won’t let a discrepancy in numbering between the store fronts and the tax records spoil my fun. These storefronts are in fact 191 and 193 Bowery. But let’s imagine them on Delancey Street, nos. 6 and 8.

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“Swims clings or crawls”

[Eddie’s Fish Market, 5410 New Utrecht Avenue, Boro Park, Brooklyn, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click either image for a much larger view.]

I went roaming around the primal neighborhood and decided to take a look at the spot where 13th Avenue and New Utrecht Avenue intersect — at 54th Street. The car-and-train chase in The French Connection never made it that far.

I like the Eddie’s Fish Store slogan, and fortunately the second of these photographs has it complete:

If it swims clings or crawls we have it.

Commas be damned.

Bonuses: The neon fish. The kid’s hat. The face at the window. (Click for large and look closely.)

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Apples?

[70 East 102nd Street, Manhatttan, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click the second image for a much larger view and some choice details.]

The vagaries of the archives: that first photograph, an outtake, misidentifies the lot number. I’m not sure how I found my way to the second photograph. I just traipsed the streets.

What’s that stand of apples doing there? Or are they tomatoes? Or plums? Did the photographer put the stand there for fun? Perhaps at the grocer’s request? I would like to know if the stand appears in a photograph from the opposite side of the street, but photographs from this street are few.

Golden Bantam is a variety of corn. I can find no evidence that it was ever a name for an apple (or tomato, or plum). The mystery deepens.

I chose these photographs for the fruit, but when I checked Google Maps, I realized that I know this location, at Park Avenue and 102nd Street, from a movie and from life.

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O Pioneer!

[263 Bowery, Manhattan, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for an enormous view.]

The Pioneer Restaurant makes a brief appearance in A.J. Liebling's “Bowery Boom,” in Back Where I Come From (1938):

Five cents pays for a shave at the barber college. For 20 cents the Boweryite may have “shave, massage, shampoo, singe and hair tonic,” just like a 46th Street bookmaker. Ten cents will buy “pig snouts, vegetables, potatoes and coffee, bread or rolls,” at the Pioneer Restaurant, 263, and 15 cents will buy an even more elaborate spread at Minder’s Restaurant.

If you click on the photograph, you’ll be able to read at least most of the Pioneer menu. And you’ll be able to better see three ghosts.

This tax photograph reminds me of Berenice Abbott’s 1935 photograph of the Blossom Restaurant at 103 Bowery. There’s also a 1937 Abbott photograph of a Pioneer Restaurant on West Third Street (64, not 60 as the page with the photograph says). The tax photograph of that corner shows the Pure Food Restaurant. Perhaps the Pioneer had moved to the Bowery by the time the Liebling wrote that piece. Or perhaps the Pioneer on West Third was a Bowery sibling, or an unrelated establishment.

In 2007, the building at 263 Bowery was still recognizable as itself. By 2011, everything had changed.

Here, before we leave the Bowery, is a barber school, 15¢ for a shave and a haircut.

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[Post title with apologies to Walt Whitman and Willa Cather.]

SIGNS

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

If you click for the much larger view, you’ll see that this photograph is huge. Many signs to read. And there’s a guy up at the window. I’m most drawn to the painted sign and the signboard on the side of the building. That wall, now blank, remains. Half Moon Hotel, or the infamous Half Moon Hotel, built in 1927, was a Coney Island attraction. In November 1941 — most likely after this photograph was taken — the Half Moon was the site of what seems to have been a defenestration. I’m sure though that the chef would have still been offer post-defenestration shore dinners.

Davega was the name of a New York City retail chain. If you look closely, you can see that the nearest Davega outlet was at 360 Something. That would have been 360 Fulton Street, a three-minute walk away.

[Click for a larger view.]

Many signs here, too, but no sign of swim suits, at least not that I can see. There is a reflection of a Thom McAn sign in the Davega window.

If you’re wondering about the large building behind the Lawrence Street storefront, that was the headquarters of the New York Telephone Company. Today it’s the BellTel Lofts, a condo building. No sign of the NYTC.

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Bodega

[54 E. 105th Street, Manhattan, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view and many details.]

I often wish that tax photographs came with a smart-looking border all around. No soap. But you might find some for sale in that bodega, at the corner of 105th and Madison.

Here comes some history, paraphrased from the Oxford English Dictionary:

The Spanish bodega first meant a wine cellar, wine shop, or bar. Later, a warehouse. Finally, a grocery store. The word derives from the classical Latin apothēca, a storehouse.

The word’s first meaning in English (1702): a warehouse. By 1825, “a building for storing or ageing wine, sherry, etc.” or “an establishment producing wine, sherry, etc.; a wine producer; a winery.” By 1849,

esp. in Spanish-speaking countries: a bar; a tavern. In the late 19th century sometimes (with reference to establishments in Britain): a bar, shop, etc., specializing in the serving of wine.

The specific British sense may derive from the Bodega Spanish Wine Cellars, opened in 1868 in Manchester, which was soon followed by other similarly named establishments in other cities.

In Philippine English (1851), the word came to mean “a storeroom or storehouse forming part of a house or other building.

And here’s the kind of bodega I was looking for:

U.S. regional (originally New York City ). A small local shop, usually with long opening hours, where customers can buy a limited range of household goods and groceries; a convenience store.

The term was first used with reference to Puerto Rican-owned businesses in New York in the 1950s and 1960s, but is now used there more widely to refer to any local shop of this type.

It’s fair to say that the bodega has supplanted the candy store of yore, offering a wider variety of goods and groceries along with chopped cheese and other food items to go. And “ATM Inside.”

La Nacional Boedga y Carniceria is long gone, and the corner is now home to an enormous parking structure. But there’s a bodega right across the street, open from 6:00 or 8:00 a.m. to 1:00 a.m.

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Slim’s Radio Service

[Madison Avenue between 118th and 119th Streets, Manhattan, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

Quite a variety of establishments in this stretch of Madison Avenue: a grocery store, Sun Shine Lunch, Slim’s Radio Service, a fish and vegetable market (“Fresh Fish Daily”), and Ebenezer Spiritual Church. I chose this photograph for Slim’s, which might be at 1820: there are few photographs and much ambiguity for this stretch. I like Slim’s signage.

The Municipal Archives’ online materials have been reorganized: tax photographs now seem to be searchable only by address, not with the block and lot codes preserved in the photographs themselves. And the photographs are now available sans watermarks. I’ve posted an especially large version of this one: if you click for the larger view, you‘ll see many details.

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Shopping

[1646 Madison Avenue, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

Still on Madison Avenue in East Harlem. I like this photograph because it captures one way people used to do the marketing: with their own two arms carrying a bag of groceries. The Platonic ideal of that bag (paper not plastic) has a head of celery sticking out of one corner. And, of course, I like this photograph because the shopper has turned around to smile, and the photographer didn’t shoo her away.

The other way of doing the marketing: an old-fashioned two-wheeled cart, pushed or pulled. A car? Who needs a car? There’d be one or more small grocery stores just a block or two away.

The buildings on the 1646 (west) side of the block of the block are almost all still standing.

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Car trouble, continued

[1694 Madison Avenue, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

Last Sunday we had car trouble on Madison Avenue. I found a second photograph with the same trouble, seen from the other side of the avenue. The numbers that go with the photographs show this one, ending in 0017, coming first. (The other ends in 0022.) Thus we can imagine an adult or two looking on before walking away, leaving a man to struggle as two boys (his boys?) watch.

The buildings in this photograph, like the ones on the other side of the avenue, are now gone.

[Click either image for a larger view.]

In yet another tax photograph, the Wonder Bread truck makes a return appearance. (Thanks, Brian.)

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Car trouble

[1701 Madison Avenue, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

Car trouble in East Harlem, found by chance. Is the man looking under the car wearing a hat? Hard to say, but I’m sure he owns at least one. Is that a Wonder Bread delivery truck? Hard to say.

What I do know: that’s a flower shop across the street. And those buildings are now gone.

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Fred’s Ping Pong

[203 West 38th Street, Manhattan, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

The Garment District had BILLI RDS. It also had television, with spectator sports: baseball, basketball, boxing, hockey, and wrestling. And ping-pong, or ping pong. And dig the straw hat and white shoes. Is that man dressed appropriately, or is it well past Labor Day?

These buildings, modified, stand today. As of August 2022, an amusing piece of wall art graced the side of the tall building on the left. Mister Softee FTW!

*

April 29: A reader’s comment prompted me to look in Google Books. By 1944, Fred’s Ping Pong Centre was Hy’s Ping Pong Parlor, and — sakes alive — someone was taking bets on baseball games.

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Almost 58 Pike Street

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

This photograph is as close as I’m going to get to 58 Pike Street, in a neighborhood called Two Bridges (the Brooklyn Bridge and the Manhattan Bridge). That’s the Manhattan Bridge behind the laundry. The Pike Street address is a crucial one in the noir Where the Sidewalk Ends (dir. Otto Preminger, 1950). And in the movie it looks so real. But it’s a set.

[Detective Sergeant Mark Dixon (Dana Andrews) is about to call on a suspect. Click for a larger view.]

The set even includes a basement apartment, where Dixon sees Mrs. Tribaum (Grace Mills), whose radio plays as she sleeps in a chair. She will later explain that she’s taken to sleeping there since her husband died.

[Click for a larger view.]

Though the IMDb entry for Where the Sidewalk Ends lists 58 Pike Street as a filming location, there was no such address. As an extraordinary post about the movie at NYC in Film establishes, there was no 58: the Pike Street numbers jumped from 56 to 60, and no building stood that matched the building we see in the movie. And no building today matches the one in the WPA tax photographs.

Where the Sidewalk Ends is streaming at the Criterion Channel as part of the 1950: Peak Noir series. The movie is, indeed, peak.

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A portal

[419 West 36th Street, Manhattan, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

I have to imagine that if anyone with children lived in this building, life must have been a constant battle: “Stay out of the tunnel!”

The archive photo has no date for this building, but its construction must have predated that of the Lincoln Tunnel. The building is now gone, and if you type its address into Google Maps, you get, yes, a chunk of the Lincoln Tunnel. And if you type lincoln tunnel into Google Maps and make a U-turn, you can ride one of its tubes all the way to Weehawken, New Jersey, against traffic. Even Tony Soprano couldn’t do that.

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[U-turn: in other words, turn the little person around before moving forward.]

BILLI RDS

[232–234 West 37th Street, Manhattan, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

Back in the Garment District. When I first spotted those windows, I thought the ascended letter might be a B. Billi Bros., wholesale fabric distributors? After all, it’s the Garment District. Then I looked more closely.

Google Maps shows a fifth floor added to the building. In August 2022 the first floor housed two fabric companies, one or both now defunct. The second and third floors, which once housed Kay-Atkin Co. (buttons) and BILLI RDS, were available to rent: 929-434-7018.

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[Kay-Atkin: so spelled in the 1940 Manhattan telephone directory.]

Castorini and Cammareri

[19 Cranberry Street, Brooklyn Heights, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

That’s the Castorini family’s house in Moonstruck (dir. Norman Jewison, 1987). It’s a wow of a house, with considerable history in the world of non-fiction.

And here’s the Cammareri Bakery, which became the corner bakery in Moonstruck. It didn’t even have to change its name. “Cammereri’s Bake Shop,” Chrissy (Nada Despotovich) says when she answers the phone.

[502 Henry Street, Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

In 1940 Mr. and Mrs. Nicholas Cammareri lived at 502. I’d like to think that’s Mr. Cammareri out in front.

[Click for a larger view.]

[Click for a larger telephone directory.]

And look: another bakery, in Boro Park. Any relation? That’s a rabbit hole down which I will not go. But you can see Cammareri’s Bakery (as its sign says) in the Municipal Archives.

A 1943 Brooklyn Daily Eagle article about the 11th Avenue bakery mentions Angelina and Grace Cammerini, “handsome Italian girls,” originally from Palermo. A plaque in the bakery marked their brother Andrew’s second year in military service.

In 1998, the Henry Street bakery, by then known as the Cammereri Brothers Bakery, closed after nearly eighty years. No. 502 today houses MozzLab, a cheesemaker and food purveyor. No. 5910 is now a residential behemoth.

A wonderful bit of TV from when the bakery was flourishing: WABC-TV’s Chauncey Howell went to Carroll Gardens and interviewed residents about Moonstruck. Priceless stuff.

*

April 1: A reader sent links to the Daily News articles with the bakery: one and two. “Cher, she goes crazy when she eats the lard bread.” Related reading
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In the Garment District

[592 8th Avenue, Manhattan, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

Today we’re in the Garment District. The first floor of no. 592, formerly the 8th Ave. Remnant Store, is waiting for a new tenant, still with a display of ties in the window. The barber shop, Ben Klein, Louis Jacoby, Benjamin Sklar, Sam Kupferman are now long gone. As the poet said, there is no permanence.

Benjamin Sklar was a name in buttonholes and eyelets as early as 1918 and as late as 1958. What does it mean to manufacture buttonholes anyway? Are they little pockets of nothingness, to be sewn onto garments? Did Benjamin Sklar spend his life making nothing? No, of course not.

The Simplex name — “since 1918” — is still around, attached to machines for cutting rubber and other materials. And no. 592, that small building between giants, is still there. Today it houses a Western Union outlet.

Here’s a better view of the no. 592 and the giants.

[No. 592 in a larger context. Click for a larger view.]

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[Google Books gave me Benjamin Sklar’s first name. The 1940 telephone directory gave me the rest of Jacoby’s and Kupferman’s names. Kupferman sold woolens and dress goods.]

631–639 5th Avenue

Better known as St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

[St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Manhattan, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger cathedral.]

Happy St. Patrick’s Day.

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[Leddy is an Irish name.]

A golden pig

[231 4th Avenue, Gowanus, Brooklyn, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

I enjoyed an outstanding porketta sandwich last week, and it brought to mind somthing I hit upon a few months ago, a tax photograph of a Brooklyn pork store, Suino d’Oro. A little history:

In 1905, an “Italian provision store” that occupied this property had its stores of ham, cheese, and macaroni plundered by burglars. The culprits were later found fighting in a gutter over what had become of their loot: “What did y’ do with that cheese? Where’s all that ham that was left?”

In 1959, a newspaper advertisement has three Suino d’Oro addresses, none of them this one.

As late as 1980, a pork store with this name was sponsoring a local baseball team. There could be a connection. But some quick searching suggests that suino d’oro is common parlance in the world of pork.

Back to that sandwich: why porketta? Wkipedia explains:

In the Upper Midwest porchetta, more often spelled “porketta,” was also introduced by Italian immigrants to the iron ranges of Minnesota and Michigan. Porketta remains a popular local dish in towns such as Hibbing, Minnesota, with distributors such as Fraboni Sausage.

And whaddaya know? Fraboni’s, a third-generation Italian grocery and deli in Madison, Wisconsin, plays a part in the story of our restaurateurs.

Now about that sandwich: it’s Italian pork roast, salsa verde, provolone, spinach, and banana peppers on focaccia.

[Click for a larger view.]

Today, no. 231 is an apartment building encased in scaffolding. Brooklyn Newsstand helped me add some yesterday to this post.

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