Louis Armstrong’s house
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.
Childs
Childs restaurants were once ubiquitous in New York.
Recently updated
Mott Street, in July, now with a passage from The WPA Guide to New York City. And pizza.
Mott Street, in July
With pushcarts.
On old Delancey Street
These storefronts are in fact 191 and 193 Bowery. But let’s imagine them on Delancey Street, nos. 6 and 8.
“Swims clings or crawls”
“If it swims clings or crawls we have it”: Brooklyn signage.
Apples?
A fruit stand on a Manhattan street.
O Pioneer!
The Pioneer Restaurant makes a brief appearance in A.J. Liebling's “Bowery Boom.”
SIGNS
The Half Moon Hotel and other signs.
Bodega
A word and its history.
Slim’s Radio Service
Slim’s Radio Service and other storefronts.
Memorial Day
A photograph by Esther Bubley
Sunday in the park with geese
After Seurat.
Shopping
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.
Car trouble, continued
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.
Car trouble
Car trouble in East Harlem, found by chance.
Recently updated
A ping-pong parlor, now with sports betting.
Fred’s Ping Pong
The Garment District had BILL RDS. It also had television, with spectator sports: baseball, basketball, boxing, hockey, and wrestling. And ping-pong, or ping pong.
Almost 58 Pike Street
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.
A portal
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!”
BILLI RDS
In the Garment District.
Recently updated
More about the Cammareri Bakery.
Castorini and Cammareri
The house and bakery from Moonstruck.
In the Garment District
Buttonholes, eyelets, all gone.
A golden pig
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.
Shave and a haircut
A Bowery barber school.
James Van Der Zee’s studio
A storefront on 7th Avenue.
Recently updated
Billie Holiday’s residence: Now with an apartment number and the 1940 census.
Billie Holiday’s residence
286 West 142nd Street.
The Duke Ellington House
On St. Nicholas Avenue.