GOING over some of my older images from a couple of decades ago, I recall how thrilled I was to find this one during my lunch hour at Macy’s during the summer of 2000. I was tipped off by my friend Mike Olshan, whose photo of this marvelously rendered sign in the florid script used in the late 19th Century at 772 8th Avenue between West 47th and 48th appears above. In Hell’s Kitchen in those years, there was a lot of work by the docks and Young & Schmuck’s was a pool hall that served drinks. According to the New York Times’ late architecture critic, Christopher Gray (with whom I conferred on occasion) there is no record of a Young & Schmuck’s pool hall here, but Fred Schmuck did own the building, so it may have been nearby. Building records indicate the sign, uncovered by demolition, was painted between 1873 and 1897.
I shot this image myself and gives the ad some context in the NYC of 2000. The 19th Century tenement buildings are being demolished to make way for a large multi story mixed use tower, The Biltmore, which was finished in 2002. Luxury residences populate the upper floors while the usual franchises, Staples and Starbucks are on the ground floor. The name may have been meant to be evocative of the famed Biltmore Hotel on Madison Avenue.
At left, FDNY Engine 54 Ladder 4 remains, on the corner of West 48th. In the center, Paramount Hotel Times Square looms and at right is the Lincoln Hotel (1927) but if you were around in the 1970s and 1980s, you know it from the TV commercials as the Milford Plaza.
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7/1/23
9 comments
My favorite comic book store was on that block… weeping weeping… now my wife works in the Biltmore
“Y’know, some guy one time kidded me about the name– ONE time.”
There’s some teeny-tiny lettering in the right corner…what does it say? Something about 33rd Street. I wonder if it was the painter.
Likely
In the lower right small text. First word is “Schmuck’s then maybe & Sons then an address with St at the end.
Fred Schmuck went on to famously found Schmuck & Geezer’s Bingo Parlor.
I have to pity a guy who was literally a Schmuck, but it looks like he had fun with it.
In New York parlance schmuck is a perjorative usually applied to hapless/clueless individuals. In German the word means jewelry. In Yiddish, I have been told, it also can mean jewel or gem. Thus the utterance “What a schmuck” is a sardonic characterization equivalent to “What a gem.”
One of the early 20th century mayors of the Nassau County Village of Lawrence was named Schmuck. His former home is now the Lawrence Village Hall.