She's a nervous jerk, but still, she's hard to beat

[sovay]

selkie sent me a link to an interactive map of New York City in the 1940's, specifically a digitized archive of photos taken between 1939–41 by the WPA in collaboration with the New York City Tax Department.

I found my great-grandfather's pharmacy at 1036 Coney Island Avenue in Brooklyn.



I'd never seen a picture of it. None came down in our family. I had to find out the address from public records as an adult. I got stories: my grandmother playing as a child with beads of mercury that ran together and shivered in her palm; my great-grandfather who liked beer and liked chocolate milkshakes anticipating a craft brewery trend by at least seventy years and discovering he didn't like the taste. My grandmother who went to Brooklyn College at sixteen must have lived at home; it would have been a fifteen-minute walk at most. I don't remember when the business closed—it survived my great-grandfather, but not the '70's—but it wasn't even a pharmacy by the time spatch and I went looking in the early 2010's. And there it is now, not just as in my grandmother's youth, but as I could see her father behind the counter if I stepped through that door. Maybe the photographers went in for a fountain soda afterward. Looks like a hot day. I held on to Rob: I hadn't expected to find it. How am I expected to believe ordinarily in time when there it is in front of me, waiting for a streetcar on the Smith Street Line?

Comments

[rushthatspeaks]

Oh, that's so good.

Time has never been linear, and sometimes we are more lucky in its loops than other times.

[selkie]

You believe in linear time?

*hugs*
It is important to put a pin in the map, when one can. And it really is just an extraordinary photograph, as if the moment the shutter clicked could come effortlessly back again and we could step into the crosswalk toward it. Do you know how hard it is to get a lime rickey in this decade?

[sholio]

What an amazing find! ♥

[gwynnega]

That is so cool!

[thisbluespirit]

Aw, how cool! That's wonderful.

[cmcmck]

I love being able to make that sort of connection.

Here there's a brand of bread known as 'Hovis'- it's a patent light wholemeal bread that's been around since Victorian times and was originally known as 'Snape's Patent Wholemeal Bread'.

That Snape was my Great, great grandfather! :o)

[strange_complex]

Oh, how cool! I love the Deco font on the shop sign, too. Your great-grandfather evidently had a nice sense of design aesthetics.

So it sounds like you and spatch were able to find the building, but that it's no longer used as a pharmacy? How great, though, to be able to rub away the grime of intervening time via this photograph and see it as it was!

[troisoiseaux]

Wow!! What an amazing find-- both the map and the photograph.

[asakiyume]

How wonderful--what a tremendous gift.

[isis]

That is so cool!

[genarti]

Oh, wow. Wow!

[larryhammer]

Nifty!

[luzula]

What a lovely photo! I was looking at old family photos recently too, among other things there was a great photo of the band that my great aunt had in the 1930s.

[thistleingrey]

Such a clear shot, too--I realize it's for documentary purposes, but the people who took this photo did their jobs well.

Also, now I understand something a bit better about (relatively) older construction in SF Bay Area buildings. The windows and roof line in the photo are of a familiar type; as things broke down (perpetual tiny quakes, not only the few big ones), they diverged when rebuilt. But the initial downtown areas for several Bay Area towns and cities followed NYC-or-New England styles generally, not DC/Baltimore. ...Not based only off this one photo! but it's so clear that it brought *clicks*.

[ckd]

How wonderful!

[osprey_archer]

How wonderful that you found the photograph. It really does look like you could walk right into the photo and buy a chocolate soda... Some pictures just have that "step on in" look to them.

[nineweaving]

How absolutely wonderful!

Nine

[pameladean]

Oh, that's amazing. Almost three-dimensional somehow. P.

[konstantya]

How cool! And what neat stories to now go along with it. <3

(Also, as a typography nerd and former graphic design student, I gotta say--I love the font!)

[nnozomi]

Lovely description of your family stories, and that site (although I find it hard to navigate) is fascinating! Sent to my mother who was born in NYC right around then. Thank you.
(And that is such a classic Brooklyn/Queens building, low rise, fancy brickwork, good proportions...)

[umadoshi]

That's so wonderful! *^^*

[starlady]

That's so cool! Is the sign in the foreground for the tax records?

[pengwern]

The brickwork on there is lovely - I remember doing a small architecture project for eighth grade and noticing the romanesque arch over the portices and windows of the stone faced (?) building across the street, so much lovelier than what I assumed was plaster (and even that had more curlicues than the vinyl one next door.) What a cool find \o/

[sara]

From about the same time, my paternal grandmother's family business in Pittsburgh: https://historicpittsburgh.org/islandora/object/pitt%3A715.3523823.CP

[shalpacafarm]

Madinek’s was mentioned in 1976: https://www.nytimes.com/1976/05/02/archives/police-seek-aid-from-public-in-search-for-slayers-of-doctor-in-park.html

And dissolved as a company 4/16/80