The ices vendor setting up on East 110th Street

The ices offered by this street vendor are probably not artisanal or organic. But I bet they hit the spot on a hot summer day.

Photographer John Albok captured the cones and syrups of one man’s cart in East Harlem in 1938, a neighborhood of Italians at the time with a small but growing influx of Hispanics.

The link from the Museum of the City of New York describes them as piraguas—the Puerto Rican treat sold by many vendors today.

[Photo: MCNY Collections Portal]