A Waverly Place smoke store sign returns to view

Oren’s Daily Roast departed from 28 (or 31, depending on the source) Waverly Place before 2019, so we can’t blame the closure of this coffee place across from Washington Square Park on Covid.

But the fact that a new occupant for the ground-floor space in this lovely 1930 apartment building hasn’t moved in yet might be coronavirus-related. (It’s not the best time to open a business, unfortunately.)

In the meantime, the faded lettering of a previous tenant’s sign has come back into view—the Waverly Smoke Shop.

The name has an old New York ring to it; I can imagine cigar store Native American statues guarding the door. (Alas, I don’t see any in this 1940 tax photo of the corner of the building.)

But the shop existed until at least 1991, when the New York Daily News noted that the store had become popular because it carried the NYU tank top Ellen Barkin’s character wore in the movie Switch.

Now, if only I could make out the faded outline of the store sign next door. It looks like “Eing—” and then I just can’t figure out the letters.

[Third image: NYC Department of Records and Information Services]

What remains of an East Harlem pharmacy sign

Today, 2268 First Avenue is a brightly lit 99 cent store selling all kinds of household goods, party supplies, and colorful balloons.

But decades ago, in a different New York with independent drugstores on just about every block, this storefront was home to what appears to have been called the Purity and Accuracy Pharmacy.

I’m a fan the nifty Rx symbol—old pharmacy designs and icons are fun, like this mortar and pestle on the Upper East Side—and the cursive font reserved for the “pharmacy” part.

I don’t know when the pharmacy opened, nor is it clear when it closed.

But who doesn’t love coming across these bits and pieces of the city’s past hiding in plain sight, ready to tell a story of a long-gone drugstore and the people who shopped there?