New York’s kitschy and colorful store signs

Dating from roughly the 1960s to the 1980s, these eye-catching relics of another New York don’t take themselves too seriously.

I’ve never been to the Bridgeview Diner, near the foot of the Verrazano Bridge in Bay Ridge, but I like the image of the tipped-forward cocktail glass so much, I wouldn’t mind having a drink there.

A Hello Kitty and a Smurf on one sign? It’s a 1980s kid’s dream place to shop. I didn’t even know they still made Smurfs, but I guess this Chinatown store stocks them.

Ephemeral reader Sheena snapped this one on Schenectady Avenue. I imagine rows of bee-hive hair dryers inside.

Love the crown image with the building number inside.

The candid street photography of Helen Levitt

Born in Bensonhurst in 1913, Helen Levitt spent seven decades capturing images of poor and working-class New Yorkers going about life’s unheralded rituals—working, eating, and observing.

And in the case of children, playing. ”Levitt’s photographs of Harlem and the Lower East Side, primarily from the late 1930s through mid-1940s, were among the first to expose the inner lives of children, worlds that had only recently surfaced in American art through the spread of psychoanalysis and surrealism,” wrote Richard B. Woodward in the Wall Street Journal in 2009, shortly after her death.

“Her boys and girls immerse themselves in their roles as gangster, diva, street-corner dandy, wise guy, or holy terror with utter conviction.”

In later decades, Levitt worked in color, creating perceptive and tender portraits of ordinary people against the backdrop of a city in decline.

Publicity shy and notorious for rarely giving interviews, she lived alone in a walkup near Union Square for almost 50 years, until she died at age 95.

Her street-theater photos of New York caught off guard have been collected in many books, including the magical Slide Show, published in 2005.

When Brooklyn dedicated its German Hospital

October 22, 1894 was a proud day for the prosperous German community centered around Bushwick and Ridgewood.

That’s when the cornerstone of the new German Hospital, on St. Nicholas Avenue between Stockholm and Stanhope Streets, was put down.

“The project for the erection of a hospital has been under discussion by Brooklyn Germans for several years,” stated a  celebratory New York Times article. “The various German clubs and singing societies throughout the city interested themselves in the matter, and finally enough money was raised.”

Speaking to a crowd of 5,000, Brooklyn Mayor Charles Schieren promised:

“It will not be an exclusively German hospital, but all patients, without distinction as to race or creed, will be admitted but, naturally, the control, as well as the care and keeping, will be left to our German citizens, and in their hands it can be safely left.”

So what happened to German Hospital? Like Manhattan’s German Hospital, it underwent a name change after World War I, when anti-German sentiment was high.

The Brooklyn hospital became Wyckoff Heights Hospital, now Wyckoff Heights Medical Center.

Getting a sandwich—and hit on—at the Automat

The Horn & Hardart Automat is one of those institutions New Yorkers seem to collectively mourn the loss of.

Call it early 20th century fast food: Put a nickel in the slot and turn the chrome-plated knob, and a glass window would open granting you access to the food item of your choice: macaroni and cheese, baked beans, Salisbury steak, pie and of course, a hot cup of coffee.

From 1912 to the mid-1960s, the city had up to 50 Automats, like this one depicted on Depression-era color postcard.

The easy-access food wasn’t its only appeal. The Automat was a place you could sit and nurse a cup of coffee all night long—and got hit on by a famous Beat poet, as Patti Smith recalls in her tender memoir about her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe, Just Kids.

[Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe on their West 23rd Street fire escape, about 1970]

“One drizzly afternoon I had a hankering for one of those cheese-and-lettuce sandwiches.

“I got my tray and slipped in my coins but the window wouldn’t open. I tried again without luck and then I noticed the price had gone up to sixty-five cents. I was disappointed to say the least, when I heard a voice say, ‘Can I help?’

“I turned around and it was Allen Ginsberg.

“Allen added the extra dime and also stood me to a cup of coffee. I wordlessly followed him to his table, and then plowed into the sandwich.

“Allen introduced himself. He was talking about Walt Whitman and I mentioned I was raised near Camden, where Whitman was buried, when he leaned forward and looked at me intently. ‘Are you a girl?’ he asked.

“‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Is that a problem?’

“He just laughed. ‘I’m sorry. I took you for a very pretty boy.’

“I got the picture immediately.”

When New York was officially named New Orange

How New York got its name can be summed up like this: In 1624, a Dutch ship arrived at the foot of lower Manhattan, where colonists set up a town they named after Holland’s largest city, New Amsterdam.

By 1664, New Amsterdam fell into the hands of the British (Peter Stuyvesant signed over the colony, now a city, without a fight), who renamed it New York in honor of the Duke of York.

[The city skyline, 1653]

Case closed? Not exactly. In 1673, the Dutch regained control of New York, sailing triumphantly into the harbor with a fleet of 21 ships.

Dutch leader Anthony Colve rechristened the colony New Orange, its official name for about a year—at which point it was permanently ceded to the British under the Treaty of Westminster.

As The New York Times’ Sam Roberts put it in a 2009 podcast, New York “was the Big Orange before it was the Big Apple.”

The tiny holdout building in the middle of Macy’s

For decades it’s been hidden behind billboards or wrapped in a giant faux shopping bag. Many shoppers never even notice it.

But old photos reveal a five-story building (right, in 1906), sticking out like a sore thumb in front of the world’s most iconic department store.

Although Macy’s leases ad space on it, the five-story building has never been owned by the store and is one of the most famous “holdouts” in New York real estate history.

It all started around 1900, when Macy’s, then located on West 14th Street, began picking up land in Herald Square for its huge new shopping mecca.

Macy’s had a verbal agreement to buy a plot at the corner of 34th and Broadway. But an agent acting on behalf of rival department store Siegel-Cooper scored the plot instead.

Reportedly the agent wanted Macy’s to give Siegel-Cooper its 14th Street store in exchange for the land at 34th Street.

But Macy’s wouldn’t have it. The store was built around the plot.

In 1903, Siegel-Cooper put up the five-story building there today.

[Above, how Macy's covered up the building in 1936 and in the 1960s]

Squirrels chomping acorns on New York buildings

Not real live squirrels but the kind this blog really gets a kick out of, the ornamental ones decorating offices and apartment towers.

Like this cute critter above, surrounded by leaves and branches, from the former circa-1867 Kings County Savings Bank headquarters just over the Williamsburg Bridge.

Considering how many squirrels live and thrive in city parks and backyards it’s a surprise that they get so little play from architects and designers.

You’ll find many more owls, lions, beavers and even turtles, hares, and insects than squirrel motifs.

On the right is a bushy-tailed guy stuffing his face with an acorn. He adorns an office building on Park Avenue on the Upper East Side.

Stashing away cash at the city’s first savings bank

Before New York was flooded with neon-lit Citibank, Chase, Commerce, and Bank of America branches at every corner, the city had dozens of sober, stately neighborhood banks—like the appropriately named Bank for Savings.

I don’t know when this card dates to, but it had to be before 1959, the year Fourth Avenue was officially renamed Park Avenue South.

It may even predate 1933, when the FDIC was created. Notice there’s no “FDIC insured” line on the card.

$1000 must have been a princely sum for working stiffs back then. You can just imagine all the stamps on each customer’s passbook over five years.

The original Bank for Savings branch still exists on Park Avenue South and 22nd Street. But today, as you can see in the photo above, it’s a Morton Williams supermarket.