Ace Rug & Carpet Cleaning is long gone from Brooklyn; the current occupant of the address in this 1940s ad is a Pentecostal church. I bet that cute Brooklyn baby snagged them lots of business. Anyone know why “defender” is the local telephone exchange?
This is actually a cardboard ink blotter, a necessity back in the age of leaky pens. You used it to blot runaway ink instead of letting the ink gunk up whatever you were writing. Every household had tons of them, as they were distributed free by businesses as an advertising vehicle.
Tags: Church Avenue, old Brooklyn ads
June 21, 2008 at 2:20 am |
Defender???
Hmm, got me there. Never heard of that one.
August 20, 2008 at 4:43 pm |
DEfender would be 33 in all-digit dialing. In the 1960s my family, living about two miles south of that location, had a 33 number, but the exchange was named DEwey. Perhaps it was Dewey all along, but the carpet cleaner thought Defender sounded more impressive.
March 11, 2009 at 9:38 pm |
No. DEfender 3 was a really OLD Brooklyn exchange. It went away in the 1930s. Later on, they had a DEfender 5 exchange in Queens, but that was in the 1950s. DEwey was originally only DEwey 9, and other DEwey exchanges came later.
April 26, 2009 at 1:32 am |
Correction. I said it went away in the 1930s; it might have been a bit later. I know DEfender 3 was in use in 1937 but was gone by 1945; I need to do more searching.