ACCORDING to a Facebook post by the Tuffet Wine Bar on Graham Avenue north of Grand in Williamsburg, realtor Jacob M. Aufrecht walked the planet from 12/12/1903-2/7/1961. (Thus, I’ve now outlasted him.) When I began photography for Forgotten New York in 1998, two reminders of his existence could be found in Brooklyn, decades after his passing. The title shot is in glorious Kodachrome as I was still using film cameras. I was waiting for some friends at Union and Metropolitan Avenues at the Kellogg Diner, and I spotted these glorious painted ads on the opposite building, the bigger one for Harry’s Department Store. Unfortunately the house number on the ad was too faded to make out; but it was located on Graham Avenue, several blocks away.
Update: Harry’s was located at #356 Graham, north of Metropolitan; here’s a 1940 tax photo.
The other ad is for our friend Jacob Aufrecht, whose real estate business was at #286 Graham Avenue, just north of Grand, also several blocks away, now the location of the Tuffet Wine Bar. Why does the bar preserve the long ago tenant’s memory? Stay tuned.
In any case I’m glad I had the camera at the ready since just a few years later, all trace of the ads had vanished. However, the ghost of the plastic lettered Liquor sign remains, even after the letters have fallen off.
Here’s the Aufrecht office in 1940. At the time he was partnered with an individual named Westervelt Prentice. They don’t name people like that anymore. Many years ago, I was slumped in a bus trundling south on Manhattan Avenue in Greenpoint, and when I was jarred awake for a second, I spied a window with the name “Preston Hazlewood” on it. Like I said, they don’t name people the way they used to.
By the way, Jacob Aufrecht’s name appears in the wedding notices of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, October 20, 1929.
I fired this shot at 286 Graham some years before the Tuffet wine bar occupied the space; however, a recent Street View avers that the metallic Jacob. M. Aufrecht name is still there. Apparently it would be expensive to dislodge it. Aufrecht hasn’t occupied the storefront since at least 1961, and the Tuffet apparently intends to keep the letters right where they are.
Check out the ForgottenBook, take a look at the gift shop. As always, “comment…as you see fit.” I earn a small payment when you click on any ad on the site.
3/25/25
6 comments
Does Tuffet wine bar serve curds and whey?
The 1939-1940 Brooklyn Telephone Directory, which can be viewed on the NYPL’s website, lists Harry’s Department Store at 356 Graham Avenue (close to the corner of Graham and Metropolitan Avenues, right by the Graham Avenue subway stop), on page 279. EVergreen 8 8569, if you want to ring ’em up.
…and there’s a photo in the 1940 tax maps site. Block 2760, and the photos for lots 4,6 and 7 (Harry’s, I think, is lot 6). It’s a pretty small building for something advertising itself as a department store.
My father was the last owner of Harry’s and friends with Jack Aufrecht.
Harry’s, under prior ownership, was located on Graham between Metropolitan and Conselyea. It later moved into a former pool hall up Graham across Metropolitan.
The sign at the top of the post is across Metropolitan from the store IIRC. Sometime after the movie, my father got the store.
As for Aufrecht, in no particular order:
Yes, married;
No kids, raised show dogs instead;
Summered in the Hamptons where he ran a real estate agency selling land a woman inherited on her husband’s death. I presume the Brooklyn business managed during his absence. (Now that I think about it, I’m not sure whether the Hamptons business was full time during the summer or not.
Kids, it was a different era…
Just for what it’s worth, Westervelt Prentice actively worked as a real estate broker in Brooklyn from at least the 1910s, served as Secretary for the Parks Department in Brooklyn during the middle and latter part of that decade, and seems to have migrated politically during that period form a Bull Moose Republican, to a National Progressive (he finished a respectable third as the Progressive candidate in the 1912 Congressional election for New York’s 3rd House dsitrict with just under 19% of the vote) and then to the Democrats by 1920 or so. By the late 1920s, Prentice appears to be located in Baldwin in Nassau County, and he died in 1936 at the age of 54.
The sign here may be a legacy of his former brokerage, or it could represent his son, John Westervelt Prentice, who had survived him.
The wine bar’s FB entry on Jacob Aufrecht seems to be wrong, as Find a Grave has him living until 1969, as borne out by the photo of his gravestone in Mount Hebron.
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/search?firstname=Jacob&middlename=&lastname=Aufrecht&birthyear=&birthyearfilter=&deathyear=&deathyearfilter=&location=&locationId=&bio=&linkedToName=&plot=&memorialid=&mcid=&datefilter=&orderby=r