In the Brooklyn of my youth there were two-way streets and one-way streets. The two-way streets were designated as avenues and each had its own collection of stores, theaters, schools – urban collections that supported a now vanished life style.
In England it would be called the High Street; in most American cities, it would be Main, but in our Brooklyn it was 5th Avenue. Not to be confused with 5th Avenue in Manhattan which would be a mistake of scale and prosperity. Yes, 5th Avenue has shopping in common with its similarly-named thoroughfare across the bay, but the type and degree of shopping in Brooklyn was miles different than what was available in the big apple.
Fifth Avenue was where we went to shop for most everything besides food. Lerner’s, AS Beck, Thom McCann, Woolworths, Kresge’s, Lofts and Florsheim’s led the list as famous outlets.
On Brooklyn’s 5th, there were many other, smaller, specialized, often “Mom and Pop” shops.
At the corner of 55th and 5th Avenue was a cigar shop. I’m sure that cigars, newspapers and the kinds of merchandise that is associated with the nomenclature were in greater supply than were Tootsie Rolls, the big Tootsie Rolls. My Aunt Dorothy, while on our way to shop on 5th Avenue, would always stop in the cigar store to buy my sister Kathleen and I one of those huge confections. My mother did not approve … too many sweets.
Lerner’s was the origin of my once-a-year new Easter outfit. Top to almost bottom, I was dressed in would-be Lerner’s haute couture. My younger sisters would have to be content to wear what I or my next younger sister had outgrown from previous Easter collections. My Mary Janes came from AS Beck, where my feet were measured with a fluoroscope. No Brannock device there.
Woolworths and Kresge’s were where I would spend the dollar that my mother gave me each Christmas season to spend on gifts for the family. You could purchase something for each of my siblings and my parents and keep it under or just at the dollar.
The stores that had the big chain names were to the left of 55th Street from the perspective of my house. To the right were the smaller, locally owned shops. On the opposite side of Fifth was the haberdashery that was rumored to be connected in some way to the criminal element. At least that is what my aunts said, based on their knowledge of what they read in the Daily News or the Mirror newspapers.
In the summer, walking along this part of 5th avenue, I would experience the oh-so-seductive scents of vanilla and carbonation wafting out of the open doors of the soda shops. I so wished that I had the money to treat myself to some of the luscious ice cream treats inside those establishments. Money was always tight, though, and even a nickel was a lot to have for a child. The smell of leather was rife outside the shoe makers and the smell of fresh baked bread perfumed the air outside the bakeries. My father would stop at one of these bakeries on Sunday, after mass, to buy six Kaiser rolls for breakfast.
My friend and classmate Nora Frers lived in a railroad flat above a shoe store on Fifth Avenue. Those apartments were entered through the kitchen. You had to walk through two bedrooms to get to the living room with its bay window that overlooked 5th Avenue. I can recall thinking how elegant her apartment was in comparison to the one where another classmate, Barbara Thomasewski, lived on 3rd Avenue. It was the same kind of floor plan but in a building that was dark and poorly maintained. Were the walls really painted ochre? Her living room overlooked the gloomy underside of the Belt Parkway. But if you looked hard enough you could see part of the bocce ball courts on the opposite side of the avenue. It did seem that the quality of housing changed as you went from the bay to higher numbered avenues.
Our parish church, Our Lady of Perpetual Help, was on 5th Avenue and 59th street. A large basilica, it covered the entire block between 59th and 60th street. We did not only visit on Sunday; as students in the school, my siblings and I went to daily mass at 7:30 a.m., a six-block walk in all weather. Mass was over before 8 and we would walk home for breakfast only to repeat the now seven-block walk to school.
Third Avenue had a collection of small stores that sold food. There was the butcher, a fish monger, the green grocery, the banana store and the source of most of our clothing, the Goodwill, thanks to my mother and grandmother’s skills with a sewing machine. It also was the location of our candy store, Pops, at the corner of 55th and 3rd where you could buy a Mello Roll ice cream. Then there was Vinnies, a small grocery store where you told the man behind the counter what you wanted to purchase and he retrieved it for you. I can remember walking down the street past the vacant lot to Vinnies repeating over and the short list of what my mother needed while clutching the change in my hand. “Bread, Pet milk, baking powder and sugar” …over and over. “Don’t forget to get change, Ann.”
There were untold hours walking along 4th avenue, past small stores, coffee shops, bars and large apartment buildings on my way to the library. Also on Fourth Avenue was the Coliseum, the movie house where we spent eons of hours watching double features with this week’s episode of an exciting serial, Pathe news’ “Eyes and Ears of the World” as well as three cartoons. This is where I absorbed a vision of the world where houses had 12-foot ceilings and women had long blond hair, dark lipstick and clothes that sparkled…not anything like real life, but so palatable to a child. What a comparison between our house, my Mom, her housedresses and the palatial homes in movies and Diana Durban.
That Brooklyn was created by and for a heterogeneous mixture of blue collar, aspirational peoples who have long moved out to “better places,” replaced by what has been described as hipsters who prefer more upscale and certainly far more expensive pursuits.
I am sure that the current residents will gather their memories in the same way as I have … different memories for a different population, but nostalgia for a time when you played stick ball and potsie in the streets, going home when the street lights came on, where your block was family and your church a central part of that family.
Nowadays memories keep both that time and place alive as well as a smile on my non-hipster face.
