CLASSIC 86th

Saturday was a busy day in the Walsh household.

The mornings called for a thorough dusting and vacuuming of the entire apartment at 8302 6th Avenue. The old man did the bulk of it, and my mother and I, when I was a bit older, pitched in to some degree (when I moved to my new place in the 1980s I wasn’t so much of a dusting devotee, unless I knew there would be guests). After the cleaning, shopping would begin. The three of us would sally over to 86th Street which then as now, along with 3rd and 5th Avenue, is Bay Ridge’s shopping mecca. 3rd Avenue is a bit funkier than the other two streets, where the staples would be found. A trip to Key Food would be paramount, and there were, for a time, two separate Key Foods on 86th Street. There would also be various tips to butchers (there was a beef/pork place and a poultry place); the bakers; and hardware stores. We would have the groceries sent on later in the day.

Then it would be time for lunch. Bay Ridge abounded with diners. There were Hinsch’s and Pohl’s, both ice cream parlors that served lunch; the Green Tea Room, where the walls were green, not the tea; the Surprise, a diner at 5th and 87th; a seafood place on 4th and 87th; and the Tiffany Diner, 4th Avenue and 99th, for which a bus trip was usually undertaken. After lunch there, a walk down to Shore Road for a peek at the new Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge would be done in decent weather.

Today on FNY, I’ll show some of the places along 86th that the Walshes frequented, as they appeared in 1940 on Municipal Archives photos. In most cases the signage had changed by the 1960s, when I arrived on 86th Street. None of these stores, theaters and restaurants are around today, but I recall them well in most cases.

Everything here is on 86th Street on the 2 blocks between 4th Avenue and Fort Hamilton Parkway.

Forgive me. I recall B. Senter, but I don’t know what was sold there (help me in Comments). I can comment on nomenclature, though. Many businesses bore the name of the founder, with just an initial for the first name. That’s rarely seen these days; usually it’s “Smith’s This and That” if there’s a name at all. You’ll see some of those on this page too.

Ebinger’s Bakery is spoken of in hushed, reverential tones by Brooklynites of a certain age, and since I am of a certain age, I remember its green boxes with diagonal black lines, its V-shaped counter on its 86^th Street, Bay Bridge branch, and its small cakes coated on all sides by rich icing…as well as its butter cookies, drizzled with frosting that was every conceivable color in the rainbow. Of course, I always ate the ones with the most icing first. These days, you see most nostalgic references about either its blackout cake or babkas, which I apparently never sampled. Ebinger’s, amazingly, went bankrupt in 1972, but was revived in a much inferior product in the mid-1980s. Its role has been supplanted…almost…in the delis and groceries by Entenmann’s.

Our bank was Hamilton Federal; the bank later moved its offices further west on 86th Street to near 4th Avenue in a building now occupied by Chase, which coincidentally is the bank I began patronizing in 1984. I still have some Hamilton Federal passbooks in the back of a drawer. For you kids, bank customers got passbooks in which the amount you deposited or withdrew was stamped by hand. HF was chartered in 1890 and acquired in 1976.

Goldstyle, women’s clothiers, hung in there on 86th Street into the 1980s.

A pair of 5 and dimes, Woolworth’s and Kresge’s, duked it out on 86th Street in the 1960s, but in the Fab Forties, Kresge’s had the run of the street. The first Kresge stores opened in 1912, with the chain founded by former McCrory’s employee Sebastian Spering Kresge (1867-1966). They were immensely successful and by 1924 S.S. Kresge was worth $375M. In 1962 the first K-Mart appeared and Kresge’s shifted to the new name, forming K-Mart Corporation in 1977. In 2005, KMart was acquired by the Sears Holdings Corporation.

Both Woolworths (at 5th Avenue and 86th) and Kresge’s, on 86th between 4th and 5th, were still around in the 1960s, but in the 1960s, Woolworth’s won out.

By the time I arrived on 86th Street, Loft’s Candies held down the SW corner of 5th and 86th. The first Loft’s candy store was opened by British immigrant William Loft in 1860, with his son George Loft gradually opening more branches in NYC in the 1890s. Production was centered in Long Island City, expanding to ten office buildings and factories at Vernon Boulevard and 40th Avenue. Loft’s acquired  Pepsi in 1931 — you read that right, they acquired Pepsi, forming PepsiCo. All NYC Loft’s had closed by the 1990s.

Nedick’s, the lunch counter featuring fresh orange juice and hot dogs, was a familiar site for commuters exiting from the 4th Avenue Line subway, the present R train. Nedick’s was founded in 1913 by Robert Neely and Orville Dickinson, who combined their last names, with the first location in the long-departed Bartholdi Hotel at 23rd Street and Broadway at Madison Square. During the Depression in 1934, the founders lost the chain, but new owners were able to expand it to over 80 metropolitan area locations before Nedick’s disappeared in the 1980s. It was revived by the Riese Organization (owners of Appleby’s and other chains) briefly in the mid-2000s.

There were also two movie palaces on 86th Street. The RKO Shore Road, opened in 1924 and closed in 1951. I remember it as the home of my local record store, The Wiz, which nobody beat. The building currently (2020) hosts chain stores Foot Locker and a Payless (whose stores were recently shuttered).

The RKO Dyker survived rather longer, at 86th Street opposite Gelston Avenue. Even if we weren’t seeing a movie, we loved walking past it during the summer for a cold air-conditioned blast. The theater opened in 1926 and closed in 1977. I remember seeing a double feature, Horror of Dracula with Christopher Lee and Trog, starring Joan Crawford and a murderous troglodyte. The theater employed the same marquee and vertical neon sign until its closure. The building became the home of Lerner’s and later, Modell’s Sporting Goods.

At the corner of 86th Street and 5th Avenue was the 64th NYPD precinct, a forbidding building I was happy to never be hauled into on suspicion of evildoing. In the early 1970s, the adjoining buildings and the precinct were wiped out so a nondescript municipal parking garage, which is still there, could replace them. In a point of endless confusion for me, the 68th Precinct now protects the area, on 65th Street off 3rd.

Ridgeton Meats was still there in the 1960s and it was there that the Walshes purchased the week’s stores of steaks, lamb chops, pork chops, hamburger meat etc. The store also had a freezer full of Howard Johnson ice cream. Our butcher was named Frank and I was fascinated by all of his tools and saws, as well as the slice of baloney he would hand me.

S. Birnbaum was the hardware store of choice for the old man. Beginning in the 1960s, Century Stores, later Century 21, bought up most of the property between 4th and 5th on the south side of 86th Street. But Birnbaum’s, as we called it, soldiered on. For awhile they were in a n agreement with Century because you could go to the back of Birnbaum’s, turn left, and head into the Century! As a kid, I was fascinated with this.

Check this FNY page for photos of Bay Ridge in the 1960s… after the world turned color!

Check out the ForgottenBook, take a look at the gift shop, and as always, “comment…as you see fit.”

5/29/20