BICKFORD’S, Flatbush

Across the street from The Flatbush Reformed Church and cemetery, and two doors down from historic Erasmus Hall High School, another chapter in Brooklyn history has been temporarily revealed at Flatbush and Church Avenues. A beautiful terra cotta Bickford’s restaurant facade has been revealed by the removal of a Liberty Income Tax storefront sign.

Bickford’s was a restaurant chain once dominant in the NYC area founded by Samuel Longley Bickford (1885-1959). The first Bickford’s opened in 1921 and the chain eventually expanded to over 100 locations in the NYC area, New England, Florida and California,where restaurants were known as Foster’s Cafeterias.

All of NYC’s Bickford’s, however, were closed by 1982. In 2016 only four Bickford’s remain open, all in Massachusetts in Brockton, Burlington, Woburn, and Acton.

Photo: Ian Miller

9/2/16