SOMETIMES, the only thing that keeps ads painted on walls from fading into oblivion is the quality of paint used. Can it stand up to pollution and rain and can it withstand direct sunlight? The latter has faded hundreds of street signs around town into illegibility. On Myrtle Avenue west of Broadway in Brooklyn, we have a perfect example of quality paint that still advertises a business that disappeared decades ago.
Information on the World Wide Web is sketchy about L. Salzinger. Not much is out there at all. The Salzinger Building, on which the two ads are painted on either side of the building, to gather attention from passing Myrtle Avenue El riders, formerly held a metalic sign over the entrance, “National Bolt & Nut Co.” I gather that the NBNC was based elsewhere and that L. Salzinger became a franchisee. The metallic “L. Salzinger” sign is newer than the painted ads, so I’d imagine Salzinger, of whom google mentions nothing, joined the NBNC after several independent years. But, I’m speculating. The much faded telephone number is a GLenmore 8 exchange.
Along Myrtle Avenue between Lewis Avenue and Broadway are the last remains the Myrtle Avenue line that ran west and crossed the Brooklyn Bridge to Park Row in Manhattan. This particular el structure and tracks opened April 27, 1889. The old Broadway station on the el, also no longer used, sits atop the Broadway el. The oldest el structure actually in use (1893) is part of the Broadway-Jamaica el and runs over Fulton Street between Alabama Avenue and Cypress Hills.
I do not know why this section was never torn down but it may have something to do with the structural integrity of the remaining el structure that sits above the Broadway el.
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6/13/24
4 comments
Another factor is if the sign faces the direct sun or not. If it is on the “shade” side of a building it would last many more years than a sign that is in direct sunlight.
Doing a bit of foostering about on Ancestry, I did find in the 1948 telephone directory that Louis Salzinger operated a nuts and bolts business at 1125 Myrtle Avenue (telephone EVergreen 7-0230 — the ’49 directory lists it as HYacinth 7-3181); some previous directories from earlier in the 1940s, such as the 1942, 1945 and 1946 directories and his 1942 draft card, listed his business at 997 Broadway (FOxcroft 9-1612), which is just 0.2 miles around the corner. Salzinger was born in Austria (in what is now Ukraine) in November, 1890, and as of the 1940 census, was listed as a hardware store owner. By the time of the 1950 census, he’d moved to Miami — maybe he retired; he died in Pampano Beach at the age of 96 in 1987. The conclusion I would draw, based on the evidence of the telephone directories, is that that sign, and that advertising sign, were painted some time between 1946 and 1948, since he appears to have moved there in that window.
Not only has L. Salzinger vanished without an online trace, a not uncommon outcome for businesses that closed in pre-Internet days, but information on the building is similarly lacking. Looking at GSV images it appears that the roll-up doors were either replaced or painted in 2017, and their non-graffitied condition makes me suspect the building’s not completely abandoned. As for its current occupant(s), well that’s a mystery.
The title of this story reminds me of an article in a rural upstate newspaper, describing how someone escaped from an insane asylum and raped a local woman. The headline read “NUT BOLTS AND SCREWS”…