More Bozzo

[1232 Madison Avenue, Carnegie Hill, Manhattan, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

Looking into the history of 406 Third Avenue in Brooklyn, a restaurant/coffeehouse owned by Ralph Bozzo, led me to a Dominick Bozzo, perhaps a son. In 1918 a Brooklyn newspaper has a Dominick Bozzo at the 406 address going off to the Great War. The 1940 Manhattan telephone directory has Bozzo Dominick frts veg at 1232 Madison Avenue. And the 1940 census has just one Dominick Bozzo, forty-five years old, living with his wife Anna on East 91st Street in Manhattan, less than half a mile away. His occupation: proprietor of a fruit and vegetable store. The Social Security Death Index lists just one Dominick Bozzo (1894–1985).

[Click either image for a larger view.]

One far from minor complication: Anna Bozzo, who gave the census info, reported her husband as having been born in Italy. But if he was Ralph and Jennie Bozzo’s son, he would have been born in the States, right? Ralph Bozzo, who came to the States as a child, was already in the restaurant business in Brooklyn by 1895.

But now I can hear the WPA fellow in the photograph saying, “Look, don’t worry about this stuff — just write about the picture already.”

Okay.

I think what we see in this picture is a combination fruit and vegetable store and butcher shop, something like a proto-supermarket. A. Steigerwald is listed in the 1940 Manhattan directory as mts, an abbreviation I couldn’t find in compendia of directory abbreviations. Monuments? Searching for steigerwald and this address in Google Books turned up the 1950 Meat Packing Cycolpedia. So mts is meats (duh). If you look closely at the photograph, you’ll see a tattered awning below the Steigerwald name. Perhaps that awning names the frts veg side of things. The streetside crates certainly suggest produce for sale.

Another detail about 1232: the Poe scholar Thomas Ollive Mabbott (1898-1968) once lived there, presumably in one of the apartments above the store. I found Mabbott’s name at this address in The British Numismatic Journal (1938). In the 1940 Manhattan directory, Mabbott, identified as prof, and his wife Maureen are living at 56 E. 87th Street. Each address is less than a mile and a half from Hunter College, where Professor Mabbott taught for many years.

One more thing: in recent years 1232 housed one of three Madison Avenue locations for the 3 Guys restaurants. On every visit to New York, Elaine and I would have lunch at the 1381 Madison Avenue 3 Guys with our friends Seymour and Margie Barab. Before looking into this tax photograph, I never knew there was more than one 3 Guys.

[1232 again. Google Maps, December 2017. Click for a larger view.]

Sometime after August 2018, the 1232 3 Guys disappeared, and a fourteen-story building replaced the building in the tax photograph. The 1381 3 Guys closed in March 2023. The restaurant at 960 Madison appears to still be going.

I followed my advice to walk every block and noticed something remarkable: when this tax photograph was taken, this one block of Madison Avenue held five small grocery stores. At least one was offering meats, poultry, seafood, dairy products, groceries, and produce. In other words, everything.

And now I recall what Marty Piletti (Ernest Borgnine) says in the movie Marty, when he thinks about taking over his boss’s butcher shop:

“Of course, you gotta worry about the supermarkets. There’s two in the neighborhood now, and there’s an A&P comin’ in — at least that’s the rumor.”

And:

“Well, there’s lots of things I could do with the shop. I could organize my own supermarket — get a bunch of neighborhood merchants together. That’s what a lot of them are doin’.”

Perhaps Bozzo and Steigerwald went in together to fight the competition.

*

Speaking of fights, see also this post about one philosophy professor beating up another at 1232 Madison.

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

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper, by Matthew Sewell, is full of novelty. Not much time to write this morning, so just some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

1-D, three letters, “What was seen on sets in the ’70s.” My first guess was UHF.

14-A, ten letters, “Earnest appeal.” I like the unashamed colloquialism.

10-D, fourteen letters, “Active aspiration.” I guess so.

15-D, fourteen letters, “Vitamin-enriched cereals, for instance.” Don’t tell the kids.

25-D, three letters, “34-wk. period.” Oof.

My favorite in this puzzle: 28-A, eight letters, “Comic relief?”

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

THANK YOU

On a walk, a longer walk than usual, we added a turn around a park pavilion, a turn that we’d never taken before. I was listening to This American Life, to a long segment by the writer Sean Cole about his struggle to stop smoking cigarettes. And I started thinking about cigarettes.

Or more accurately: I started feeling about cigarettes. I last smoked a cigarette almost thirty-four years ago (October 8, 1989), and I would never smoke one again, but I still sometimes miss them. I started visualizing a pack of Pall Malls — the deep red, the elongated white letters, the (fatuous) slogan “Wherever Particular People Congregrate.” I visualized the blue paper strip across the top of the pack (I think it showed a somber-looking Native American man in my day), and then I visualized the tips of the unfiltered cigarettes — white outlines with brown and tan flakes of tobacco, all against the deep red pack.

And then, as we moved past the pavilion, I saw a sign above the picnic tables: THANK YOU FOR NOT SMOKING. Well-placed, Department of Parks and Recreation.

Related reading
All OCA smoking posts (Pinboard)

Reading and writing in the dark

Master Abraham is thinking of turning his learned tomcat Murr into a caged performer:

E.T.A. Hoffmann, The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr, trans. Anthea Bell (1999).

Also from this novel
“Scholarly voracity” : “My little right paw”

[“Smell of the lamp”: “Said of a literary production manifestly laboured. Plutarch attributes the phrase to Pytheas the orator, who said, ‘The orations of Demos′thenēs smell of the lamp,’ alluding to the current tale that the great orator lived in an underground cave lighted by a lamp, that he might have no distraction to his severe study”: Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (1895). Notice the help with pronunciation. Brewer’s also glosses “inkhorn terms”: “This phrase, once common, might be revived to signify pedantic expressions which smell of the lamp.”]

The Republic of Laundry

“I’ve become a model citizen in the Republic of Laundry.”

Related reading
All OCA domestic comedy posts (Pinboard)

[Elaine is the prime minister.]

From Artie to Zippy

[“Pucker Up.” Zippy, August 10, 2023.]

Today’s Zippy needs annotating. The artichoke has cried out: “Help! I’m an an advertising mascot trapped inside an artichoke!” But it’s more complicated than that. Artie the Artichoke is the mascot for Scottsdale Community College. There’s also Arti the Artichoke, who represents Ocean Mist Farms, growers of, yes, artichokes.

When Zippy mentions Speedy Alka-Seltzer’s “skill” (it’s “Plop, plop, fizz, fizz”) and asks Artie about his special ability, Artie replies, “I can thistle!” Artichoke thistle is an invasive species found in California.

Related reading
Alkalize with Alka-Seltzer : All OCA Zippy posts (Pinboard)

“My little right paw”

Murr learns to write:

E.T.A. Hoffmann, The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr, trans. Anthea Bell (1999).

And look: here’s the cuff. And the manual.

Also from this novel
“Scholarly voracity”

[Hilmar Curas: “A teacher and author of the manual Murr mentions, entitled Calligraphia Regia. Königliche Schreibfeder, published in 1741.”]

Ian’s Shoelace Site

Ian’s Shoelace Site, with twenty-five ways to tie your shoes, and more than a hundred ways to lace them. (Who knew?)

“The stuff that was good”

Shahid Kamal Ahmad, game developer, interviewed on the podcast Mac Power Users:

“It’s a short life. We’re not kids anymore. But we forget so much of the good, and it’s just the way we’re primed. Evolution rewards us for remembering that which screwed us up. It does not reward us for remembering the stuff that was good.”

I listen to most of MPU at 1½× — so much of it is beyond what I need for my Mac endeavors. But every time I listen, I hear something of interest — though before today it’s always been something about the Mac. A reminder to remember the good stuff in one’s life is helpful regardless of platform.

“Scholarly voracity”

Murr learns to read:

E.T.A. Hoffmann, The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr, trans. Anthea Bell (1999).