Looking Up at the Fulton Mall
[nggallery id=”26356″ template=galleryview] Some readers noted that holding the announcement of the Shop Brooklyn initiative, intended to get folks to buy made-in-Brooklyn products, at the Fulton Mall was a little ironic. True, it’s filled with many chain stores selling the same wares as retail outposts across the country. But head down to the Fulton Mall…
[nggallery id=”26356″ template=galleryview]
Some readers noted that holding the announcement of the Shop Brooklyn initiative, intended to get folks to buy made-in-Brooklyn products, at the Fulton Mall was a little ironic. True, it’s filled with many chain stores selling the same wares as retail outposts across the country. But head down to the Fulton Mall and look up. There you’ll see plenty of architectural originality and only-in-Brooklyn buildings.
Montrose:
So is it Straus or Strauss? Or did different branches of the family spell it differently? This is starting to drive me crazy! (But so useful in procrastinating about preparing for tomorrow!)
NOP
I just looked it up, NOP. Nathan and Isador Straus partnered with Abraham Abraham to form A&S. They also had a controlling interest in Macy’s. The stores were kept separate, but had a joint buying office overseas. Nathan Strauss and family lived on St. Marks Ave. Isador and his wife, Ida, died on the Titanic.
Thanks, Altervoce.
I read the report. Now I do remember my mother speaking of “Namm’s” — and Loeser’s, which would combine with it to make Namm-Loeser’s, all closed by the 1950’s, just as I started to visit Fulton Street.
Abraham and Straus (I’ve been misspelling it all along), bought the building and tore down most of the store for its parking garage — early symptoms of Brooklyn’s misguided attempts at post-War suburbanization — but kept this beautiful bit for its offices.
Apparently there was a magnificent arched entrance to the building. Maybe it’s still there under the drek.
Anyway, all this is beginning to sound terribly “Miracle on Thirty-Fourth Street” (or rather, Fulton Street). Time to prepare for tomorrow’s guests: my family, for which this topic is sure to be discussed over the duck.
NOP
Great info, altervoce.
NOP, I think those were the same Strausses. At least that’s what I’ve always heard. It could be the Brooklyn branch, definitely the A&S Strausses, were not the ones who went down on the Titanic, but I’m pretty sure they were all in the dry goods/department store business, and had a hand in the success of Macy’s, which is actually rather ironic.
When I first moved to Brooklyn (around the same time at MM), my landlord’s son, roughly a contemporary, asked me where I liked to hang out. “Mostly downtown,” I said. “Near A&S?,” he replied incredulously. The first of many important geography lessons for me, since I meant Manhattan south of 14th Street. An Italian-American, more of the choir-boy than tough-guy variety, he also chided me for smoking Winstons, declaring them to be “a Puerto Rican cigarette.” The day before what is often a family holiday seems like a good time to indulge in some nostalgia.
More objectively, I believe there are only three landmarks on Fulton Street: Gage & Tollner, the interior of which is also listed; the former Offerman Building (503-13 Fulton Street aka 234-48 Duffield Street), which was the home to several department stores, including Martin’s and now Conway’s; and the former A.I. Namm & Sons Department Store (450-458 Fulton Street aka 1-7 Hoyt Street), which was Young World for a long time and now is the newer of the two Modell’s. Namm & Son is the building in the first of the five pictures above. The Offerman Building is the fourth picture.
LPC’s report on the Offerman Building is on-line at:
home2.nyc.gov/html/lpc/downloads/pdf/reports/offerman.pdf
The agency’s report on Namm & Son is on-line at:
home2.nyc.gov/html/lpc/downloads/pdf/reports/nammstore.pdf
Montrose:
Are the Brooklyn Strausses the same as the Manhattan Strausses?
The Strausses who went down with the Titanic owned part of Macy’s, so there may have been a lot of Strausses to go around.
As our Brooklyn historian, can you identify the limestone number pictured above? With its delicate details, it must have been one fancy store, a women’s emporium, I’d guess.
And do you remember the great New Yorker cover some years ago? It pictured all of New York’s late lamented department stores, with angels doing their holiday shopping.
When our mother died, my sister actually said that’s where she’d gone!
NOP
Benson, McRory’s was down near May’s, and Woolworth’s near A&S. My favorite food moment was getting hot roasted cashews from the candy and nut counter. I grew up upstate where there was only one store for miles that had that feature, so even as a young adult in NY, that was still a treat.
I remember the photo booths, too. They were great. I guess with cell phone cameras, those are beyond obsolete, now.
Amzi, you are correct. The Woolworth house is on Jefferson between Nostrand and Marcy. It was on the BS house tour one year, and I was suprised at how unpretentious is was. The owner had done a masterful restoration, too.
The Strauss family lived on St. Mark’s Ave, once the millionaire’s row of Crown Heights. Their house, between NY and Brooklyn Aves, is long gone, but the carriage house remains, behind the Neo-Georgian semi-detached houses built around 1912. Mr. and Mrs. Strauss died aboard the Titanic, opting to stay together, when he was denied a lifeboat seat. There is a memorial to them on the Upper West Side around 100th Street and West End Ave. The Abraham’s may have lived there as well, I’ll have to look that one up.
Yes, Amzi, you’re right about Crown Heights.
Although the A train didn’t bring them to the neighborhood. That was built in the 1930’s, well after the magnates had built their stores.
It was, however, what took my family to the pleasures of Fulton Street. To this day, I remember sitting on the old cane seats, lap piled high with Christmas boxes.
Happy holiday!
NOP
Gee, Montrose, those of us of a certain generation do love our department stores!
And Benson, your father’s unhappiness about the loss of A&S makes me think it was even worse for our parents’ generation.
Having moved to Manhattan, my mother went into paroxysms of despair over the death of Altman’s!
What is it about Brooklynites and shopping?
(Although Mopac’s post about Magnin’s indicates this is a larger American phenomenon.)
Did you know that kleptomania was first identified as a psychological problem during the 19th century? Apparently, the new department stores proved too tempting to middle-class ladies who’d hide goods under their long skirts!
I’m sure I have several such women in the family tree, given my mother’s propensity for shopping!
NOP