I recently walked much of East and West 45th, which will eventually turn up in an FNY Crosstown page. On the street, I worked for 6 straight years at what was the city’s biggest type shop when type shops were a thing, Photo Lettering, so I do feel a bit of nostalgia when I pass these realms again. Here’s a place I passed every late afternoon or evening on the way to work, though I never went in, preferring the nearby Blarney Stone on 3rd Avenue.
East 45th came to be known as Steak Row in its heyday beginning in the 1920s. One of the more famed of the restaurants of “Steak Row” was the Pen & Pencil, where Hunsecker/Winchell-esque columnist (though nicer and more journalistic) Earl Wilson once held forth from there. His NY Post columns were punctuated by a daily photo of a busty film diva and his tagline, “That’s Earl, brother.”
[John] Bruno’s Pen & Pencil expanded from 203 E. 45th St. to a larger location at 205, on the premises of a former soda fountain. John redecorated the new place to include watercolor paintings by Milton Marx of famous writers, from Lord Byron down, and at least two great newspaper publishers—Joseph Medill Patterson and William Randolph Hearst. [Lost City]
The Pen & Pencil closed in the 1990s and the premises was home to The Perfect Pint by 2006. Note the typefont the signs were set in. It is known as Benguiat (pronounced “BENG-gat”) and it was invented by Ed Benguiat, a jazz percussionist turned type designer who worked at Photo-Lettering, where I worked, and I would see him on the premises occasionally.
So, on the same block where “ink stained wretches” gathered were printing plants and type shops. I am glad to have had my feet in both worlds.
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8/29/24