Forgotten New York

A POUND OF BASKERVILLE

DELICATESSEN Lassen and Hennig has been in business in Brooklyn in various locations since 1949, as the sign indicates. Currently, it is located on Montague Street in Brooklyn Heights (this photo) and on Water Street in DUMBO. My attention, though, was drawn to the signage, which is in a font much underutilized in that role, Baskerville.

Many of the serifed (the fonts with the little lines or teardrops at the end of strokes) typefaces we read today go back many years, even centuries, though the two most common, Times Roman, was created in the 20th Century, as was the nonserif Helvetica. John Baskerville (1707-1775) was a paper manufacturer who dabbled in typefont design, and his signature font, first cut in 1757, based on previous designs like Caslon, caught on, especially as a book font. It’s sparingly used in signage, which is why I note it here. There are numerous knockoffs and variants, such as a thick-shafted version used in Reader’s Digest magazine for many years. As a Photo-Letterer in the 1980s, I worked with its own variant, Baskervale.

As an added attraction, the lettering on the right side of the front window is in Bernhard, a font perhaps best recognizable from its use on the intro and outro titles of The Twilight Zone in the 1950s-60s and again in its Jordan Peele revival in 2019.


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3/29/25

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