Ragu has been mass producing its popular tomato sauces since the 1940s. But I’d guess this wonderfully preserved full-color ad for Ragu spaghetti sauce dates to the 1970s.
It’s on the side of a restaurant on Sixth Avenue just below Canal Street. What a visual treat, coincidentally near the once-thriving Little Italy in Soho and Greenwich Village, where store-bought sauce might be considered an insult!
This Chatham Square faded ad is tricky to decipher because it’s actually two ads, one painted on top of the other.
The newer ad is for Turkish Trophies, an old cigarette brand. Underneath it is the word “for” in yellow, and a long word with a fancy F.
That’s for Fletcher’s Castoria, a children’s laxative popular in the 19th century. Fletcher’s had ads all over the city; here’s one on 109th Street and Second Avenue.
Thurston & Braidich are described as “drug merchants” whose store at 130 William Street was damaged by a fire in 1901, according to a New York Times piece that year.
But in his 1902 obituary, Adolf Braidich is described as a gum importer. Whatever his game was, an ad bearing his name is still holding up in Tribeca.
Ephemeral New York 