Unearthed During an 8th Street Reno: Vintage Newspapers

A reader got in touch yesterday to say she’d enjoyed seeing the artifacts found during the renovation of 280 Washington Avenue and that she’s had a “similar, if less dramatic experience” during an ongoing renovation of a house on 8th Street in Park Slope. A bunch of well-preserved newspapers from the same week in October 1937 were uncovered after about four layers of linoleum were pulled up in one room. They have fun ads, like the one above, as well as real estate listings (click through to see those and other shots of the papers). There were also some questions from the renovator for the Brownstoner brain trust: Would stacks of newspapers like this have been used to level a floor, or for insulation or some other purpose? And, the real estate listings in the papers are only for rentals, not for homes that were on the market. Were for-sale properties not listed in classifieds back then?


These are difficult to make out, but it looks like apartments with “4-5 large rooms” on Union Street “3 blocks to Prospect Park” were renting for $40.