I cannot tell you if Al Horn Baking Equipment, a wholesaler in the Westchester Square area, is still in business. I can tell you that the ghosts of its plastic letter signs on its brick building at 1314 Cooper Avenue are still there. Cooper Avenue is a strange enclave indeed, as it runs for one block between Westchester and Fink Avenues, has no sidewalk with 1314 the only surviving address, with just a barbed-wire protected parking lot and a garage facing on it. This group of photos from 1940 prove that there had been a few dwellings and that 1314 was home to a live poultry market.
UPDATE: Horn went out of business in 2014.
This Street View from 2011 shows that 1314 still had some of the plastic letters hanging on for dear life, but they’ve since been stolen or dropped off since then.
I’ve always been attracted to the Westchester Square area, with its ancient churches and cemeteries, Huntington Library, dead ends and alleys, and rich history as the former seat of Westchester County (the Bronx was carved out of Westchester in stages in the 1800s, and Westchester Avenue was once the Southern Wetchester Turnpike).
HT: Gary Fonville
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12/21/21