SCHRAFFT’S BUILDING, FULTON MALL

386 Fulton Street, now home to a Duane Reade drugstore, as also known as #1 Smith Street. In the late 19th century, this location was the home of impresario Alexander Samuells’ Mozart Concert Garden, which featured lush greenery, shrubs, fountains, singing birds, and live fish alongside musical concerts. In 1925, though, the garden was long gone and replaced by a strange Gothic castle that became home to a branch of Schrafft’s restaurant.

This 1940 tax photo shows the Schrafft’s entrance on Fulton when the street was still shrouded by the Fulton Elevated, which came down in this stretch in 1942. A couple of doors down is Loew’s Metropolitan Theater, which opened in 1918 and survived as a multiplex all the way to 1998.

“Everybody went to Schrafft’s. Kirk Douglas as a young struggling actor worked as a waiter in a Schrafft’s. Movie stars, politicians, even Presidents (Truman) stopped into Schrafft’s. Truman Capote got thrown out of Schrafft’s (more than once) for being a nuisance to the clientele (joking around irreverently and laughing too loudly). James Beard admired “the precisely trimmed egg salad sandwiches. Mary McCarthy ate them. E.L. Doctorow’s character “Billy Bathgate” ordered the crustless chicken sandwiches at a Schrafft’s where he and his mother joined “all the fine people in the Bronx.” Authors often placed their characters in Schrafft’s, and often noting the specific choices on the menu because those were famously delectable to millions of New Yorkers and out-of-town visitors.” David Columbia [New York Social Diary] 

From FNY’s Smith Street page:

The  restaurant chain was founded by Frank G. Shattuck, who expanded William Schrafft’s candy business founded in Charlestown, Massachusetts in 1861 into chain restaurant empire beginning in 1898. 

Schrafft’s was known for wholesome, all-American fare, served by fresh-faced Irish waitresses. Mothers and children ate there; so did movie stars. Schrafft’s restaurants were located in high-end shopping districts, like Fulton Street in Downtown Brooklyn. But times changed, Fulton Street changed, and Schrafft’s did, too. By 1968 they seemed quaint, almost dowdy. They hired Andy Warhol, of all people, to give them a snazzy new with-it image, and remodeled to emphasize their bars to snag the younger clientele. [McBrooklyn]

Schrafft’s was purchased by the Riese Organization in 1978, the company that brings you T.G.I. Friday’s (which until 2007 occupied the old Gage and Tollner landmarked space on Fulton Street in Brooklyn) and soon after their many locations closed. “Schrafft’s” has since been reactivated as an ice cream brand. [NYCNosh: In Search of Schrafft’s]

Check out the ForgottenBook (HarperCollins, 2006), as well as Forgotten Queens (Arcadia, 2013). I also have a chapter in the anthology “New York Calling: From Blackout to Bloomberg” (Reaktion, 2007). As always, “comment…as you see fit.” I earn a small payment when you click on any ad on the site, which helps in site upkeep and also aids Greater Astoria Historical Society.

11/4/26