Walkabout: Dine at Joe’s, Part 2

Read Part 1 of this story.

Joe’s Restaurants were iconic parts of 20th century Brooklyn life. Joseph Sartori and Joseph Balzarini, two Italian immigrants who came to America in the latter half of the 19th century, found their life’s work and fortunes in their Brooklyn family restaurants.

Joseph Balzarini was twenty years older, and was already established in his Coney Island Restaurant on the Bowery, when he took Joe Sartori under his wing, and gave him a job.

Joe S. was soon so valuable to the business, he became a partner. They decided to expand into the heart of Brooklyn, and opened another Joe’s, this one on busy Fulton Street at Pierrepont, at the edge of Brooklyn Heights, in the middle of Brooklyn’s civic and business district.

This Joe’s opened in 1909, and was soon a popular power restaurant for Brooklyn’s politicians, businessmen, civic and social leaders.

It was also a popular family restaurant, open for not just meals, but for special occasions such as birthdays, First Communion Breakfasts, Knights of Columbus meetings, teachers’ and civil service association dinners and much more.

The Fulton Street Joe’s was a two story building at 330 Fulton Street, facing Borough Hall. As we learned last time, its owners and employees were celebrated Brooklyn fixtures, and its tables home to people like Branch Rickey, the owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers, whose offices were just next door.

When a popular waiter went to war during World War I, the papers covered his career. He left a waiter, and returned to eventually become Joe’s manager. Branch Rickey would discuss hiring Jackie Robinson with his long time team announcer, Red Barber, at his favorite table at Joe’s.

All throughout the restaurant, Brooklyn’s judges, politicians, lawyers and top businessmen used their tables at Joe’s to make deals, and celebrate those deals with colleagues and friends.

The “Joe’s” soon followed the Fulton Street restaurant with another further downtown, on Nevins Street, near the corner of Flatbush Avenue. The first Joe’s on that block had a distinctive Medieval/Tudor façade on the building, a storybook look designed by architect Arthur Starin for Joe Satori in 1922.

The half-timbered and stucco façade cost $40,000, but was an easily recognizable and popular feature, and well worth the expense. In 1925, Joseph Balzarini bought the Johnson Building, a nine story tower next door, for half a million dollars, at the time, the largest price ever paid for real estate in that general location.

Buying the building enabled them to expand the restaurant, which also became a hangout for politicians and power brokers.

Whether by design or personal acrimony, Joe Sartori was more closely associated with the Nevins Street Joe’s, as well as the Coney Island location, while Joe Balzarini was the face of Joe’s on Fulton Street. Quite early into the 20th century, another man, Fred Magioli, was also brought in as a partner, and manager of Joe’s Fulton Street.

In 1929, Joe Sartori opened a new Coney Island restaurant near the old one, called Joe’s Spar. Sartori was one of Coney Island’s biggest business boosters and boosters. His Joe’s had expanded into several building fronts, and this new enterprise was right nearby.

He was also a part owner of the Half Moon Hotel, and was a trustee at a local bank. Joe’s Spar would be a new and modern place, with family fare and tables with benches.

They would sell hot dogs, Coney’s signature food, but theirs would be cooked on new fryers, under glass, with no odors and no cross contamination, setting a new standard for Coney’s restaurants. It was a huge success, and Sartori found time and money to engage in his favorite hobby: big game hunting in Africa and other remote places.

Everything at Joe’s on Fulton Street was going well until June 3, 1935. That day, a Sunday, Joe Balzarini was at his restaurant, as usual, when he complained of not feeling well.

He went home, and then went to visit relatives. That evening, he returned to his apartment at the nearby Hotel Towers, complained of illness again, and then had a massive heart attack, and died. He was 74 years old.

The funeral mass, at the Church of the Assumption, on Cranberry Street, was attended by the movers and shakers who frequented his restaurant, as well as the many ordinary people who had helped make Joe’s a household name.

His wife, son, and three daughters were in attendance, and he was buried at St. John’s Cemetery in Middle Village, Queens. He left everything to his wife, an estate worth a bit more than $750,000.

After the payment of debt, taxes, funeral expenses and other deductions, she was left with only about $291,000, which included a large financial interest in Joe’s. Still a lot of money during the Great Depression, but the Balzarini’s had not been the millionaires they were reported to be.

Joe’s on Fulton Street continued on, under the management of Fred Magioli and others. In 1937, it was sold to Anthony Caprile.

Tony Caprile, also an immigrant from Genoa, Italy, was the owner of a successful restaurant near the Polo Grounds, and came to Brooklyn to manage Joe’s that year. By 1944, he not only was the manager, he now owned the restaurant, along with eight other partners. Joe’s continued with very few changes.

By the beginning of the 1940s, Joe’s on Nevins Street had several very ugly and well-publicized strikes by waiters and staff. Management was not helped by the charges that the judge who had forbid them from striking in the first place, was the same judge who had been coming to the restaurant for years to eat free meals.

Then, in December of 1940, a fire broke out in Leggett’s Drug Store, behind the restaurant, in the Smith-Gray building that wrapped around the corner of Nevins and Flatbush.

The fire soon spread to a Chinese restaurant, a clothing store, and then Joe’s. Early newspaper reports said that the first floor dining rooms were destroyed, as were upper story banquet halls and a roof garden. The cause was thought to be a gas leak in the drug store.

However, a few days later, Joe Sartori told the Brooklyn Eagle that the reports of the damage had been over dramatized and that his kitchen was fine, and Joe’s would re-open in a matter of weeks. In the meantime, he would be bringing food from the kitchen to a temporary set up only a few doors away, and Joe’s would go on.

Sartori also mentioned that his valuable collection of paintings, which included a Rubens and three James McNeil Whistler’s, were not in the restaurant at the time of the fire. He had become quite an art collector, philanthropist and big game hunter who presented the Prospect Park Zoo with many exotic animals from his hunts in Africa.

He retired from Joe’s, and spent the last years of his life on the boards of organizations like the Brooklyn Industrial Home for the Blind and was a trustee of the Brooklyn Public Library. He lived in Park Slope, on Plaza Street, and also belonged to the Montauk Club. He and his wife, Theresa, had no children. Joe Satori died in 1949, at the age of 67.

Over on Fulton Street, big changes, greater than any fire, were soon to threaten Joe’s Restaurant forever. In 1946, Brooklyn Borough President John Cashmore announced his grand plan to expand the Civic Center in the new Cadman Plaza area.

Part of that plan included razing the buildings on the Brooklyn Heights side of Fulton Street, near Montague Street, going towards the bridge, to reroute and widen what would now be called Cadman Plaza West. One of the many buildings that would be destroyed would be Joe’s Restaurant.

However, at that time, there was no money to do this, and Cashmore didn’t want to take valuable property off the tax rolls before its time, and Joe’s was safe, for short while, anyway. But it was under a death sentence.

This was a clear case of eminent domain, and Joe’s and other buildings in the path of the expansion went to court to stop it. They lost. The city told the courts they could not override the decisions of the Corporation Council, which had already voted to condemn the properties.

They were planning the park, new exits and entrances to the Brooklyn Bridge, and the new Supreme Court Building. The building next door to Joes, 215 Montague Street, would also be destroyed. Over 100 businesses had offices there, including 50 law offices, real estate firms, insurance companies, and the Brooklyn Dodgers.

The ground floor and at least one other floor above had been home to the Brooklyn Trust Company, for whom the building was named. The Brooklyn Supreme Court agreed, dismissed the case, and the condemnation of the property was in effect.

In December of 1949, the courts awarded Joe’s $650,000 for the land, improvements and fixtures. The Brooklyn Trust Building next door was awarded only $850,000, but had agreed on tax settlements, as well. Other landlords also received smaller settlements.

At this time, Joe’s was the property of Tony Caprile and his partners, all former waiters and staff at the restaurant. They continued a long court fight, anyway, and continued to operate the restaurant for another ten years, while the city looked for funds to finish Cadman Plaza.

By May of 1958, the Courthouse was almost done, and the borough was proceeding with its plans to raze the old Court House and Hall of Records on Fulton Street, where the Brooklyn Law School now stands. They were getting ready to turn their attention to the Montague/Pierrepont side of the plaza, and Joe’s days were numbered.

Work was also set to begin on the new library building on Cadman Plaza West. On November 15, 1958, Joe’s was given its vacate orders, to be carried out in 30 days, at which time the restaurant and the other condemned buildings would be torn down.

The owners looked for another location nearby, but nothing panned out. By 1959, Joe’s, a fixture on Fulton Street since 1909, was rubble. Today, the new corner of Pierrepont Street and Cadman Plaza West is occupied by 1 Pierrepont Plaza and a non-descript piece of public plaza. I believe you can buy snacks at the newsstand. The Joe’s would not be happy. GMAP

(Photo: 1958, Joe’s, with Brooklyn Trust Building in background, all gone. Brooklyn Historical Society)