Delicatessen, or food store?
Right next to one another on Fort Hamilton Parkway.
A Boro Park five-and-ten
On !3th Avenue.
116th and Park
What made me look up the corner of 116th Street and Park Avenue: The Pawnbroker (dir. Sidney Lumet, 1964).
Recently updated
Munson Diners, now with more diner history.
“NEVER CLOSED”
Munson Diners in NYC.
A despedida, Marie Elisabeth
A New York billboard for sardines.
Grim, grey, unaffordable
Parts of a Brooklyn block.
La casa dei Roventini
Johnny Roventini lived here. Down the block, I was an infant.
Winckler’s
Just some candy store, you say? Just some luncheonette? Not so. At one time this establishment had its own matchbooks: Winckler & Meyer / Homemade Ice Cream / & Ices / Luncheonette.
1940s NYC
Julien Boilen’s 1940s NYC, which links points on a map to their WPA tax photographs in the New York City Municipal Archives, now accepts stories about NYC addresses from readers.
Sam’s, not Sam’s
An Italian-American grocery store.
Daylight and shadows
The Daylight Cafeteria, at New Utrecht and 62nd. This photograph is here because I like the cafeteria’s name, and because the arrangement of lines and surfaces makes me think of the paintings of Charles Sheeler.
63rd Street Super Market
A corner in Bensonhurst.
An unattended carriage
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, people used to leave carriages unattended in front of stores. This tax photograph features the fourth unattended carriage to appear in these pages.
The shadows
A kid stuck minding the baby carriage, and lots of long shadows in the foreground.
Southern Boulevard spect-op
“Excuse me, mister, whaddaya doin’?” “Takin’ pictures for the tax records.” “Whaddaya, gonna make me pay more taxes?” “No ma’am, it’s just for the records. It’s a WPA project.”
Tip-Top Diner
A Bronx diner. “Tip-top” goes back to 1702.
Recently updated
Some history for the Loring Grill.
Loring Grill
A Fordham Road diner.
Recently updated
A mystery corner, now with a 1937 advertisement for Kane’s Food Shop and links to a color postcard and an advertisement for Tom’s Restaurant (the Seinfeld coffee shop).
Mystery corner
it’s the corner of Broadway and 112th Street, 2880 Broadway, Morningside Heights, Manhattan, long the home of Tom’s Restaurant, whose exterior served as Monk’s Café in Seinfeld.
Unique Diner
Just down the avenue from O.B. Rude Drug Co., the Unique Diner.
Recently updated
A 1922 ad for mail-order pharamaceuticals from O.B. Rude Drug Co.
The Harlem Branch Y
As in Langston Hughes’s “Theme for English B.”
O.B. Rude Drug Co.
A Norwegian pharmacy in Brooklyn.
Bronx games
Shuffleboard and horseshoes.
The Oteris and Marty
Arthur Avenue: a baccalà store, and two butcher shops, one where the opening scene of Marty was filmed.
On Arthur Avenue
Arthur Avenue Noodle & Macaroni Manufacturing.
On Arthur Avenue
Women in hats (a mother–daughter pair?), two women in aprons, a man with a cap, a window full of . . . cans of olive oil maybe?, a mystery storefront with . . . fabrics on display?, sawhorses, a sidewalk entrance to a cellar, a tough customer with a tie, improbable watering cans, and a baby carriage.
Recently updated
A Bronx candy store and the meaning of “light lunch.”