The spirit of East Fifth Street

As I was saying, East Fifth Street between Avenue A and Avenue B is one of my favorite blocks around... and, aside from the masses looking for the Ace Bar on weekends, it's a lovely little street with a strong sense of community...

And this is the block in which the family of East Village-based professional photographer James Maher spent their lives... His grandparents and mother all grew up here... Thanks to James for letting me post some of his family photos from the 1930s and 1940s. (He has many more at his site, New York Photography by James Maher)

Talk about a strong sense of community. Here's a celebration of the "Fifth Street Boys" returning home from World War II.

Per James on the photos below: "I just spoke with my Aunt who tells me that the photo was taken around 1945 to celebrate the end of the war. I don't know exactly which building, but apparently my grandma and relatives had three apartments in the same building on 5th Street between Avenue A and B, which is where this photo was taken from. My grandmother and all of her sisters are most of the girls that are looking up at the camera in the second photo."




And here's a shot likely taken on East Fifth Street... on the way to an Easter Party...



And, arguably my favorite photo... "This is taken of my Great Aunt Julia, who lived until she was 100. She was sharper at 99 than I am at this moment, and it's nice to see a younger photo that shows the same spark that everyone knew her for." This was taken on a rooftop of an East Fifth Street building...



[Find a few more family photos like the one above at the New York Photograph Blog]

And as Mick noted in the comments, Ephemeral New York — an EVG favorite — highlighted "The East Fifth Street Boys" in a post on Sunday.

Introducing EV Transitions

Well, apparently all that time EV Grieve regular Pinhead spent on the NYPL archives is being put to good use for our benefit! Check out EV Transitions, Pinhead's newly launched blog. Per the description:

Call it "Streetscapes Lite," after Christopher Gray's column in the Sunday NY Times. I apply my full geek powers and talent for time-wasting to researching the history of locations and buildings and other places in my neighborhood that I find interesting.

Meanwhile, EV Grieve, EV Heave and EV Lambo have all collectively sued Pinhead for violating our EV copyright!

Kidding... I love the site... though it will be better once he gets that full liquor license...

The Ninth Street Bread N Cake Bakery was great until they applied for a liquor license

Thanks to Goggla's comment the other day, we've all been spending far too much time looking at photos from the New York Public Library archives ... EV Grieve reader Pinhead came across this shot..

It's taken from the old Cooper Union building, looking at Stuyvesant Street to the east toward St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery, 1856.



As Pinhead says: "Be sure to zoom the amazing detail, like the Ninth Street Bread N Cake Bakery at 172 E 9th (an address that doesn't exist anymore because of the NYU dorm)."

Guess the streetscape

The Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation posted this photo to their Flickr account yesterday... and they ask, Where in the Village was this streetscape?



See a larger image here.

NYC blizzards...in 1948 and 1888

Here are two of my favorite blizzard-related photos from the Corbis archives...

Times Square in 1948...



...and Union Square in 1888... Per the original caption:

"The Perils of Union Square in the midst of the Blizzard". Scene of people struggling to walk in Union Square during the blizzard of 1888. Wood engraving.



Think of a possible caption from yesterday...

"The Perils of Union Square in the midst of the Blizzard". Scene of people struggling to walk in Union Square during the so-called blizzard of 2010 while carrying those Earth-friendly Whole Foods paper bags that shred at the first drop of moisture because you didn't bring your own recyclable bag*. Digital photo.

* Not written from experience.

25 Great Jones in 1935

Via Curbed.

A Norfolk Street Now and Then

Jill at Blah Blog Blah found this great site, Dino's NYC Now and Then Pics. Pretty self-explanatory.

Here is one of Dino's now and thens...looking north on Norfolk Street on the LES in October 1942...



...and this past December...



And here's a Now and Then group on Flickr of random various cities...

Another shot of old East 10th Street

Following up on our earlier post today on 10th Street and Avenue A.... EV Grieve reader Mykola (Mick) Dementiuk sent along this Morris Engel photo from the 1950s of 10th Street between Avenue A and First Avenue (looking northwest).

(Via Flickr)

Now and then: 10th Street and Avenue A

At Flickr, rollingrck has a great set of old East Village postcards, including this undated shot of 10th Street and Avenue A...



I tried to line it up to compare to today's corner...

A view toward the Williamsburg Bridge circa 1913

Was poking around Shorpy.com when I found this photo... Summer 1913. "Bird's eye view of N.Y.C. from roof of Consolidated Gas Building." George Grantham Bain Collection.

It's looking to the south east... if you click on the image, then you can see some familar landmarks...such as Tompkins Square Park and the two old steeples at St. Brigid's...I keep staring at it and finding something different...

Something strange about this ConEd Building photo...

Right. No dorms or other high rises around it... Anyway, I always appreciate the archival items that EV Grieve reader Mykola (Mick) Dementiuk finds and sends along...such as this shot of the ConEd building via 1957 (from Life magazine).



And this rooftop shot in the EV of Steve McQueen and Natalie Wood from 1963's "Love With The Proper Stranger."

A little bit of Hollywood on Avenue A

Well, let's keep the old movie theater theme going this week... Take a look at East Village Farms on Avenue A between Seventh Street and Sixth Street...and you'll likely be able tell that it used to be a movie theater...



According to the always-reliable Cinema Treasures:

Located on an ever-busy stretch of Avenue A, in the heart of the East Village, this theater is easy to miss. Opened as the Avenue A Theatre in 1926, it was operated by RKO, followed by Loew's, and was closed in 1959.

Today, it's merely a receptacle for retail space on the former orchestra level of the remains of the original auditorium, which have been converted into a health-oriented grocery store called the East Village Farm. The theater's lobby was also converted into retail space, but has been empty for several years.

Like other theaters in this area, the theater's auditorium runs parallel to the street, with a narrow entrance on Avenue A. Much of the theatre's exterior has survived, including its emergency staircase. The decorations in the auditorium are thought to survive, above the false ceiling of the ground floor store.

One of the Cinema Treasures commenters got a peak inside at the mysterious upstairs...perhaps this is where the never-ending supply of sea salt chips are stored...






And here's what the Hollywood looked like circa 1949:



Photos via Cinema Treasures commenters.

When 72 Avenue B was a luxurious 1,750-seat theater

You'll recognize Fifth Street and Avenue B here...



But until 1957, it was a Loew's theater...



According to Cinema Treasures:

Loew's Avenue B is part of one of the great rags-to-riches stories of showbiz history. Movie mogul Marcus Loew erected it on the very site of the tenement building where he was born. Needless to say, his birthplace was demolished to make way for the luxurious 1,750-seat theatre, which was designed by Thomas W. Lamb and first opened on January 8, 1913, with vaudeville as its main attraction and movies thrown in just as fillers.

The Avenue B was the top Loew's house on the Lower East Side until the mid-1920s, when the circuit took over the Commodore on Second Avenue, which was a much busier area for entertainment and shopping. The Avenue B was reduced to playing movies at the end of their Loew's circuit run, and remained so until its closure around 1957-58

.

As Cinema Treasures commenter Warren G. Harris noted:

The theatre cost $800,000 to build. In his opening night speech, Marcus Loew said "This is the most pretentious of the houses on our string, because my better judgment was over-balanced by my sentimentalism and my longing to do something better here than I ever did before." According to corporate histories, the Avenue B was never successful, but Loew's kept it running for decades as a memorial to its founder, who was born on the spot.

Top photo via.

Previously on EV Grieve:
Former landmark countercultural theater now for rent on Avenue B

Reminder and a look back: The Ukrainian Festival...and St. George Schools

The Saint George Annual Ukrainian Festival
starts tomorrow... EV Grieve reader/commenter Mick passed along the link to some photos from St. George Schools on Seventh Street... no exact date is given on these two...just some time in the 1950s...

Speaking of Union Square South

Here's a Life magazine photo of 14th Street looking east circa 1951. Hey, where's Forever 21?



P.S.

For no reason, a DC-4 passenger plane flying over Midtown. (No date listed.) Perhaps a photo opp for the Douglas Aircraft Company?

Nostalgia for 1980s New York in Beijing

From the Times:

What’s interesting about “Ai Weiwei: New York Photographs 1983-1993” at the Three Shadows Photography Art Centre, in Beijing, is that the Americans I know who have visited the exhibit, particularly those born and raised in New York, tend to focus on the location photos: the raw, grimy East Village sidewalks; Tompkins Square Park with its anti-gentrification protesters and drag queens; shirtless students at St. Marks Place; the bums on the Bowery and the gritty sidewalks and graffiti-covered subway cars that inspired “Stranger Than Paradise,” Jim Jarmusch’s 1984 film set partially in New York City. They are drawn to them precisely because they induce feelings of nostalgia for 1980s New York.

But Chinese visitors viewing the exhibit, most of whom have never been to New York (or America, for that matter), tend to focus on the Chinese people in the photos. Where the typical American will focus on how much Times Square has changed from the 1980s to now, the typical Chinese viewer looking at that same photo will focus on what looks like a Chinese immigrant sitting on top of a taxi.

Hell yeah, it's HoJo's

Thanks to reader/frequent commenter Mick for passing along the url to HoJoLand, a comprehensive Web site devoted to the history of Howard Johnson's. The last HoJo's closed on Times Square on July 9, 2005 (first photo below). As HoJoLand points out, there were 10 HoJo's in Manhattan at one point...



...like this one on 53rd and Lexington...



...uh, somewhere on Broadway...



and at 1551 Broadway...



Meanwhile...you'll find the world's largest repository on the last HoJo's in the city on the site...

The life and times of Mr. Zero

This Ain't the Summer of Love's Mr. Zero post is now live... Mr. Zero -- Urbain J. Ledoux -- was known for his charity relief kitchens on the Bowery in the 1920s and 1930s, among many other charitable acts....

Previously on EV Grieve:
More on Mr. Zero

More on Mr. Zero

[Update: The link to This Ain't the Summer of Love's Mr. Zero post/photo archives is currently down...we'll let you know when it's back up...]

In case you missed his comments yesterday on my Urbain Ledoux/The Tub post, NYCDreamin at Ain't the Summer of Love dug around for some more information on Urbain Ledoux, the man behind the former diner/greasy spoon The Tub on St. Mark's in the 1930s:

According to what NYCD found:

Urbain J. Ledoux -- better known as "Mr. Zero" -- introduced a novelty in the form of a 5-cent turkey dinner. He fed turkey dinners at "The Tub" in the basement of 33 St. Marks Place, on the basis of "All you can eat for a nickel," and said that he was able to break even financially. Dealers furnished the turkey and trimmings at cost, the cooks volunteered, the diners waited on themselves, there was no overhead and and at the end of the day the ledger showed no red ink marks, according to Zero, who claims credit for the world's greatest achievement with the 5-cent piece.

NYCD also found further Ledoux-related archival photos...as well as this video..."Near the end of this clip, you can see some of the men from the Bowery taking a meal at one of Mr. Zero's charity relief soup kitchens," NYCD wrote...

At the Tub, Christmas 1933

From an archival photo from Corbis dated 1933. Here's the original caption:

Homeless and Unemployed Men Eating at Relief Center
Mr. Zero A Real Santa To Them. Nearly 5,000 homeless and unemployed men were the guest of Urbain Ledoux (Mr. Zero), at a Christmas Day dinner served by him in his haven for the needy, called the Tub at 33 St. Mark's Place, New York City. The principal item was Mulligan stew, made of turkey, chicken, goose and squabs, and how they enjoyed it. Here are some of the needy "digging in" at the savory meal prepared for them.

33 St. Mark's Place is now home to, among other things, Rockit Science Records.

(Hat tip, Mick)

[Image: via Underwood & Underwood/CORBIS]