Tuesday, March 14, 2023 – WHEN SHOPPING MEANT A TRIP DOWNTOWN

By admin

FROM THE ARCHIVES

TUESDAY, MARCH 14, 2023


ISSUE  938

EAST VILLAGE GHOST SIGNS

RECALL WHEN

CHILDREN’S STORES

RULED AVENUE A

Frank Mastropolo

Untapped New York

When a shuttered lottery store’s sign was removed on Avenue A in February 2023, multiple East Village ghost signs were revealed. The hand-painted glass panes that were uncovered probably belonged to Kammerman’s, a popular Alphabet City children’s shop in the mid-20th century.

60 Avenue A

The ghost signs advertise the carriages, strollers, and toys once sold there. Many of the glass panes on the Avenue A side of the building still exist, but only a few have inscription

60 Avenue A, close-up of two signs

Throughout much of the 20th century, Avenue A was a mecca for young parents shopping for children’s clothing, carriages, furniture, cribs, and toys. In 1972 the New York Times highlighted three stores within four blocks of each other on Avenue A: Ben’s Juvenile Mart, Schachter’s Children’s World, and Schneider’s Juvenile Furniture.

The shops employed artists who would adorn cribs “with any whimsy the customer desires,” noted the Times. “One woman recently requested a reproduction of a postcard her husband had sent her during their courtship.”

New York City, 1957. Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Anthony Angel Collection

In 2004 Schneider’s departure marked the end of an era. “In the latest sign that gentrification is overtaking Manhattan’s funkiest neighborhoods, a store that sold bargain-priced baby cribs and carriages on Avenue A for a half-century left the area when its rent quadrupled,” reported the New York Daily News. “‘We’d be working to pay the rent if we stayed,’ said Lorraine Waxman of Schneider’s Juvenile Furniture — which opened at 20 Avenue A when Harry Truman was president.”

25 Avenue A

In the 1930s, I. & J. Kramer Children’s Wear was a corner store on Second Street at 25 Avenue A. Glass signs with lettering edged in gold leaf described its merchandise: infants’ wear, children’s dresses, boys’ suits, underwear, and novelties.

25 Avenue A

Its ghost signs remained hidden for decades until they were discovered in 2016 by the owners of 2A Bar. “We were simply doing routine renovations on the facade of the building to fix our windows,” said Laura McCarthy, co-owner of 2A since 1984. “Lo and behold, we found these signs hiding out for decades upon decades underneath.”

25 Avenue A

“In this day and age when our city is increasingly losing its historical spaces, it seemed like a no-brainer to celebrate this previous incarnation of the bar and to share that story with the rest of New York City.” Time will tell if the East Village ghost signs revealed at 60 Avenue A will also be preserved, or disappear like the store they once advertised,

I remember Sunday trips to the Lower East Sie for shopping at Fine & Klein for handbags, Louis Chock for dry goods, Ezra Cohen for linens,  a store on Ludlow Street for nuts and fruits.  You never came home without lots of bargains.

TUESDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY

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WEEKEND PHOTO OF THE DAY

GOLDWATER HOSPITAL BUS CRASHES INTO EAST RIVER

1961
The retrieval of the bus that plunged into the Queens side of the East River.  Apparently, the driver had a heart attack as the bus approached the turn behind Goldwater and before Old City.  According to the news, 7 people, all hospital workers, died in the accident.

Although I was not on the island when this happened, I started as a hospital volunteer in 1966, I was told about the accident by Fr. Duino, the Goldwater Hospital Chaplain, who planted a small memorial garden at the site of the accident.
THANKS, ED LITCHER

UNTAPPED NEW YORK
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Frank Mastropolo

Frank Mastropolo is the author of Fillmore East: The Venue That Changed Rock Music Forever and New York Groove: An Inside Look at the Stars, Shows, and Songs That Make New York Rock, selected by Best Classic Bands as two of the Best Music Books of 2021 and 2022. Mastropolo has also written Ghost Signs: Clues to Downtown New York’s Past, winner of the 2021 Independent Publishers Book Award, and Ghost Signs 2: Clues to Uptown New York’s Past. Mastropolo is a journalist, photographer, and former ABC News 20/20 producer, winner of the Alfred I. DuPont–Columbia University silver baton and the Sigma Delta Chi award from the Society of Professional Journalists. His photography is featured in the Bill Graham Rock & Roll Revolution exhibition.

Text by Judith Berdy
Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS
Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website
Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff

All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated

UNTAPPED NEW YORK
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.

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