The rent for these big duplex lofts (Spiral staircase! Full kitchen!) sounds pretty cheap today.
But in July 1984, when this ad ran in the East Village Eye, wouldn’t $1150 and $1300 a month be kind of on the pricey side?
I wonder what the location was and if these apartments still exist—or if they’ve been boutique-hotelized.
A mile-long spit of land that surfaced off the coast of the Rockaways in the mid-1800s, Hog Island eventually became a popular summertime seaside resort along the lines of Rockaway Beach and Brighton Beach.
This favorite vacation destination for Tammany Hall politicians featured the usual late-19th century bathing facilities, pavilions, restaurants, and regular ferries.
This print depicts neighboring resort Rockaway Beach. Hog Island probably looked similar.
So what happened to this modern-day Atlantis? First, it was battered by the Hurricane of 1893. While this category-2 storm reportedly triggered 30-foot sea swells off Coney Island on the night of August 23, it decimated the buildings on Hog Island.
A few more brutal storms in the 1890s sealed its fate; the sea swallowed it back up in 1902.
Miss Harlem. Miss subways. Miss Brooklyn. The list of long-gone local beauty contests is filled with small-time titles and pageants.
But one mattered so much to residents, it reportedly attracted almost as many city voters as a presidential election at the time did: Miss Rheingold.
A promotional jackpot for Brooklyn’s Rheingold Brewing Company, the Miss Rheingold pageant ran from 1941 to 1964.
Every summer, grocery stores would be stocked with ballots featuring six finalists. The winner spent the following year on Rheingold billboards and in magazine ads. (Tippi Hendren, a 1953 finalist, above, didn’t snag the title.)
Miss Rheingold helped make the beer New York’s most popular in the 1950s and 1960s. Rheingold goes way back in the city; it opened in 1883 in Bushwick on the nabe’s famed “Brewers Row,” which earned its moniker because so many German-American beer companies began there.
Alas, they shut down in 1976, but the brand was revived in the 1990s. A new Miss Rheingold contest was also reinstated recently, but the contestants are all female bartenders.
Too bad this poster doesn’t provide any details on what, exactly, was being exhibited by this now-extinct arts group. The Brooklyn Art Association galleries stood at 174 Montague Street in Brooklyn Heights.
The Fund for the Pedestal, launched in 1884, helped bring the Statue of Liberty—the “Bartholdi Statue,” as the poster calls it—to New York Harbor in 1886.
Ads for escort agencies based in New York City never seem to feature women who actually look like they live in New York City. But this vintage-1980s ad, for an outfit called Flash, is different.
Published in a March 1982 issue of the Soho News, it features a trendy, New Wave kind of chick, the sort of girl found in downtown indie classic Smithereens.
No bikinis or breast implants—instead, these escorts come to your Tribeca loft decked out in geometric earrings and white plastic sunglasses.
Phone number blocked out to protect the Manhattan resident who has this number now.
From a publication called The World’s New York Apartment House Album comes this sketch and description of a beautiful turn-of-the-century residential building, the Hendrik Hudson.
Spanning the entire block between Riverside Drive and Broadway at 110th Street, the Hendrik Hudson must have been a striking sight when it was completed in 1907. The facade was modeled after an Italian villa and the roof made from Spanish tile, topped by two imposing towers.
As ambitious as the facade was, the 7- to 9-room apartments were also innovative, explains Andrew Alpern’s Luxury Apartment Houses of Manhattan:
“Walnut paneling, wood-beamed ceilings, mahogany doors with glass knobs, and the latest designs in porcelain bathroom fittings were all used to attract tenants,” writes Alpern. “Also offered was a billiard parlor, a cafe, a barber shop, and a ladies hairdressing salon—all for the exclusive use of the building’s occupants and guests. Rents ranged from $1500 t0 $3000 per year.”
As Morningside Heights became kind of sketchy in the post World War II years, so did the Hendrik Hudson; at some point, one of its towers disappeared. The building went co-op in 1970. It looks like an terrific place to live today.
Before Times Square theaters (and others scattered around the city) began routinely showing triple-X flicks, they pushed the envelope with low-rent, R-rated fare—like these two movies advertised in a December 1970 edition of the New York Post.
In the pre-Internet, pre-cable, pre-VCR days, this was about as much skin as you could possibly see on screen. Looks almost romantic compared to what’s available today!
An Ephemeral reader sent in this link to the very soft-core, surprisingly action-packed trailer for The Student Nurses.
What in the world did they do or sell at the Robotorium? In the early 1980s, it occupied a small storefront on Mott Street near Prince Street, back when this little crossroads was considered part of Little Italy and Nolita had yet to be dreamed up.
Robot paraphernalia—sounds like a cool little place. Now, 252 Mott Street houses a designer eyewear store.
This ad appeared in a 1982 edition of the East Village Eye.
These three white-on-red brick ads are especially tough to decipher because one, if not all, of the words have fallen victim to the elements.
This one is in East Harlem on a building at Second Avenue and 109th Street. Hartketcher? Hoffketcher’s? It’s a total mystery.
At least the “Tea Co.” part is legible in this Tribeca ad. But whose company was it? The small type on the right looks like it could say “in Holland.”
Tribeca (the name wasn’t coined until the 1970s) used to be the center of dry goods distribution in New York City.
Could the bank name in this ad be the Corn Exchange Bank Trust Company? Founded in New York City, it dates back to 1852. In 1954 it merged with Chemical Bank, and eventually the Corn part was jettisoned.
It’s hard to believe that in the 1890s, New York’s population of just a million and a half residents supported 19 daily English-language newspapers—along with scores of weeklies and foreign dailies.
These papers were an illustrious bunch. There was the anti-immigrant New York Herald; publisher James Gordon Bennett Jr., reportedly said that a newspaper’s role is “not to instruct but to startle.”
The New York World, published by Joseph Pulitzer, was hugely popular with working class residents. It was known for stunt journalism—as well as printing its Sunday supplement in color.
The dead newspaper list also includes the New York Sun, the New York Journal American, the New York Mirror, and the often-lamented Brooklyn Eagle.
Many were headquartered around City Hall, then nicknamed Newspaper Row. This thermometer/clock affixed to the old New York Sun building down on Chambers Street doesn’t work, but it’s a nice remnant of the neighborhood’s past.
