THIS painted ad for Kaufman Office Stores on Mott Avenue in Far Rockaway is considerably faded, but still recognizable, from when I first spotted it at the Dawn of Forgotten NY in 1998. By now, Staples has pretty much cornered the market on the dwindling office supplies biz. When I first moved to Little Neck in 2007, a Staples occupied the building adjacent to the Scobee Diner and across Little Neck Parkway from an OTB betting parlor, and by now all three are gone.
Of chief interest for history buffs on this ad is the presence of two old-style phone exchanges, FA 7-1132 and LO 5-6252. FA stood for FAirbanks while LO could be LOcust, LOgan, or LOwell (Help me out here in Comments).
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7/24/24
5 comments
LO- meant different things in different neighborhoods. When I moved up to Inwood in 1972, there were lots of establishments, like bakeries or pharmacies, named Lorraine and the LO- exchange was pretty often seen. I believe that LOngacre was in use further downtown. I don’t know about Rockaway.
To add, you can tell an old-timer from his phone number even now that they are completely numerical. A number like mine, 569-**** is just LOrraine9-**** from the old days. At some point they ran out and in came 942 which could be WHitehall, WHitney, WIlliam(s), WIlson, WIndsor, but none of those names ever had any local significance. Thinking further about the prevalence of Lorraine in the Inwood area, it is possible that the shops were named after the phone exchange and not the other way round.
“LO” could also be “Lorain,” but I would ask whether the “FA” in a Far Rockaway ad stood for, oh I dunno, “FArrockaway”?
It could be LOngacre
A while back I was walking around a mausoleum, and the utter silence in that place of the dead was of a profundity I had rarely experienced before.
Oh wait, it wasn’t a mausoleum, it was a Staples.