Not yet a Great Day
The brownstone where the 19478 photograph A Great Day in Harlem was taken.
SUITS PRESSED
A dry cleaner’s sign.
Some Automats
There are thirty-eight Horn and Hardart Automats in the 1940 Manhattan telephone directory. This has been some of them.
Recently updated
An NYC tax photograph, now with Arbuckle Coffee.
block=1 AND lot=1
No time for rabbit holes this week; I decided just to use the numbering system for the WPA tax photographs to find a property: block=1 AND lot=1. The building looks like a warehouse of some sort, with the Manhattan Bridge looming overhead.
Generations and a settlement house
Lots of human interest in these tax photographs.
On Chauncey Street
Jackie Gleason and The Honeymooners.
On the waterfront
Just some grocery store in the Waterfront District, with a guy who looks like he’s from On the Waterfront.
Tires and skins
A Manhattan building with two mysterious tires and a business in hides.
A waterfront barber
At 194 Columbia Street, Brooklyn. Not quite Edward Hopper’s Early Sunday Morning.
Myrtle Ave. Drug Co.
Whoever owned this building knew something about monetizing: it looks like a miniature Times Square, minus the LEDs.
David and Judith Schubert
A poet’s apartment in Brooklyn Heights.
5 Patchin Place
Home to Djuna Barnes for more than forty years.
Recently updated
A second bookstore behind a bookstore.
Drugs, groceries, books
Home of Three Lives & Company.
“Leaning. a little to the left”
“St. Bridget’s steeple leaning a little to the left.”
Laundry day
The likely residents of 561 Union Street, and a connection to a grocery store down the street.
Four Duryea’s
City Island, the Bronx.
Recently updated
There’s someone — maybe two people? — doing laundry in that photograph.
Mind the gap
A recent real-estate listing ($2.695 million) tells the story of a property with “so much charm that even the pickiest Parisienne will melt.” At the time of this photograph though? Maybe not so much.
Recently updated
Much more about Joseph Magnasco’s family history.
The scene of the crimes
A Gowanus restaurant, scene of a robbery and a gangland slaying.
Transit Diner (?)
A Gowanus corner.
Gowanus scaffolding
When I saw this photograph, I thought “That’s all of New York now.”
More 1232 Madison
In 1926, Lawrence Buermeyer, who taught philosophy at New York University, resided at 1232 Madison Avenue, where he was soundly beaten by his friend Joseph Carson, who taught philosophy at Columbia University.
More Bozzo
Fruits and vegetables and meats on Madison Avenue.
Nick’s Diner
A Gowanus location.
R. Bozzo
From 1913 to 1951, Ralph Bozzo ran this restaurant/coffeehouse.
More 14th Street
Going down the block and seeing changes.
Retail density
106 East 14th Street.