When Igor’s Barber Shop took over this modest storefront at 15 Eighth Avenue last year, the owners could have covered up the stained-glass sign on the facade, all that was left of a shoe store that occupied the circa-1845 building.
Luckily, they didn’t. They decided that this piece of old Greenwich Village should remain. It’s been exposed under the Barber Shop sign for at least a year now, and it’s wonderful to see.
Who was J. Yormark? The Greenwich Village Society for Historical Preservation put together a fantastic Off the Grid blog post that provides a little bit of backstory on Jacob Yormark, a young immigrant from Austria-Hungary who opened his shoe store in the 1890s.
He lived above the store, at least in the 1920s, when this announcement of his daughter’s engagement notice ran in The New York Times.
[Photo of Eighth Avenue at West 12th Street in 1929 from the NYPL. Yormark’s is the third building from the five-story one at the corner]
Ephemeral New York 