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