(Photo: Frank Mastropolo)
Last week was Record Store Day. This week is record store back in the day. This ghost sign was recently revealed during the demolition of the J&R Music World strip of stores on Park Row. The pitch for “tapes” probably dates the sign to the mid-sixties but vinyl was still king as “needles” takes the top rung. The word “stereo” is obscured above the cool music notes.
Click here for more ghost sings around town.
On October 1, 1955, The Honeymooners premiered on CBS. The classic 39 episodes of that first and only season would achieve cult status and be rerun for decades. The legendary sitcom starred Bushwick’s favorite son, Jackie Gleason, as bus driver Ralph Kramden. But before he became “The Great One,” Gleason honed his craft in Bushwick’s lodge halls and vaudeville houses.
Detail of S. Oppenheimer & Co., 170 Eldridge Street. (Photos: Frank Mastropolo).
When we first brought you our top 10 favorite ghost signs in January, there were still many more examples of the past on walls throughout the neighborhood. In April we featured another ten signs.
Photos by Frank Mastropolo
Don’t let the shi shi galleries, bone broth bistros and man-cessory shops fool you. The country’s most violent criminals have lived and plied their trade in the East Village and Lower East Side for more than two centuries.
Of course, a man needs a place to relax after all that mayhem. Here is a current look at some of the most notorious gangsters haunts in the neighborhood, listed chronologically.
Click through the slideshow to see what our favorites look like today, then leave your own in the comments.
All photos: Frank Mastropolo.
With the rapid pace of development in the Lower East Side and East Village, it’s remarkable that so many ghost signs – ads that have long outlived their businesses – have survived. As you’ll see, sometimes progress can also reveal long-hidden signs. In January we brought you our Top 10 favorite ghost signs but there are too many good ones left to stop now. Click through the slideshow that follows to see our picks, then leave your own in the comments.
“Mulberry Bend” shows Mulberry Street looking north to Bayard Street. (From Jacob A. Riis’s “How the Other Half Lives.”)
Watching people enjoy mah-jongg in Chinatown’s Columbus Park, it’s hard to imagine the site was a dangerous, decrepit slum in the late 1800s. Photojournalist and social reformer Jacob A. Riis dedicated a chapter in his 1890 book How the Other Half Lives to the squalid conditions in the area then known as Mulberry Bend.
(Photo: Frank Mastropolo)
While researching our recent story on ghost signs, we were saddened to discover that a Lower East Side classic has disappeared. The façade of 19 Kenmare Street used to boast a 1940s-era sign for two companies still in business: P. Zaccaro Co. Real Estate and J. Eis and Son, an appliance store. Workers have removed the iconic hand-painted ad.
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(Photos: Frank Mastropolo)
Though many lament the frenzy of change in New York’s oldest neighborhoods, there are still remnants of the past to see if you’d look up from your smartphone. Ghost signs, advertising signage that has survived long after a business has gone bust, are still around… but are disappearing fast.
Click through the slideshow to see our favorites, then leave your own in the comments.
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(Photo: Frank Mastropolo)
No band is more identified with the East Village than the Ramones. The band’s performances at Hilly Kristal’s CBGB and other neighborhood venues defined punk rock forever. In 2003, the corner of the Bowery and Second Street near CBGB was officially named Joey Ramone Place. Over time, members of the group lived, drank and hung out in the East Village.
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John De Robertis and customer (Photos: Frank Mastropolo)
There’s only a limited time left to experience an era when people came to coffee shops to talk rather than stare at a computer screen. De Robertis Caffé is scheduled to close for good on Dec. 5, Bedford + Bowery has learned.
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