Looking Up at the Fulton Mall

NOP;

Your post took me back to the day…

I too remember when a trip to Fulton St. was a day out for many a Brooklyn family. Women actually wore white gloves on Fulton Street in those days, and you considered yourself to have really made it if you shopped in Martin’s. I also remember the fishing contest in Prospect Park. For those who don’t know about it: the point of the competition was to reel in the catfish that had a brass ring attached to it. If you caught it,you would win a prize.

You forgot to mention one other prominent store in those days: Mays (not to be confused with the present-day May department store chain). Mays was a NYC chain that catered to the working class. Another was EJ Korvette’s, which was also on Fulton St. (Another piece of trivia: the name “E.J.Korvette’s” dervies from the founders, who were Eight Jewish Korean (War) Vets!

Brownstoner:

I hope that limestone beauty above is a landmark! (Although reading today’s Times I wouldn’t be surprised if it slipped through LPC’s fingers!) This building, which my mother remembered as a department store when she was growing up in Park Slope during the 1930s, is as good as the old Bonwit Teller on Fifth Avenue — maybe better!

During the 1950s and early 1960s, when I grew up in Brooklyn, Fulton Street had a spread of working-class to upper-middle class stores. The current Macy’s was Abraham and Strauss (Brooklyn’s equivalent of Macy’s back in the day) and the site of the new H+M was “upscale” Martin’s, Brooklyn’s Altman’s (another great Fifth Avenue store now only a memory).

Martin’s had a Romanesque building, much smaller than Abraham and Strauss, befitting the exclusivity of its clientele. As I remember, its shopping bags showed a horse-drawn delivery wagon pulling up to a distinguished brownstone front, recalling the time when it catered to the “carriage trade.”

Martin’s was the store my parent’s allowed me to go alone to make my first department-store purchase, probably because I couldn’t come home with anything too crazy. Nevertheless, I bought a pair of suede loafers — v. cool for a kid — that had Dad burst out laughing when I unwrapped them, proudly, at our apartment.

Abraham and Strauss was best at the holidays, when its Art- Deco first floor turned a riotous red with Christmas balls and bunting and the elevator operators (do they still have those at the new Macy’s?) wore sprigs of bright berries. Something about the decorations and all that marble, bronze, and brass put everybody in the holiday — and shopping — mood. (Another early purchase of mine: a garish pendant of fake diamonds, bought there for a girl’s birthday; I cringe at the memory!)

A ‘n S, as we kids called it, was one of Brooklyn’s old-fashioned “benevolent” institutions that advertised the borough’s virtues when it was “in decline,” bleated proudly about Brooklyn Heights’ landmarks designation — the first historic district in the country, as I seem to remember it claiming in a two-page spread in The Times — and stocked Prospect Park lake with fish for an annual rod-and-reel competition for children. (To A ‘n S’s credit, the kids lined up lakeside in the ads in The Times were a racially-integrated group at a moment when white panic and exodus were at their peak.)

The last time I was on Fulton Street was 30 years ago at the wedding-rehearsal dinner of a Park Slope relative at Gage and Tollner (gone, too, I understand). She was marrying the next day at the Montauk Club on Grand Army Plaza (still there, but much reduced, I’m told).

As late as the 1970s it was possible for old Brooklyn families to keep up traditions. Now the newbies in my old borough will have to invent their own, as I’m sure they will. The wonderful architecture along Fulton Street provides a durable framework for future retail and rituals. It just needs to be filled in (and not entirely at the expense of sneaker shops, I hope).

Nostalgic on Park Avenue

Lovely, but hardly “only in Brooklyn.” You can find the same buildings in almost any upstate small city/big town. Brownstoner, you really need to get out of town more often.

I’ve always advocated that the upper floors of these buildings should be rented out as offices and small business spaces. They would be perfect for medical offices, dentists, architects, and other small businesses that would thrive in a commercial hub.

But as a recent study done on the area showed, most landlords don’t want to bother, as the retail spaces more than pay for leaving them empty. In many cases, the stairways upstairs have been boarded over or removed for more retail space, and they are loathe to change them.

I think this is just wrong, not to mention a potential fire hazard. Many of these buildings are landmarked, because they really are special and important pieces of architecture and urban history, but if you can’t access the roof for repair, or the rest of the building for structural upkeep, one is just asking for serious trouble.

Downtown has some great architecture, to be sure, most of which is covered up and unappreciated.

If it is to be the Soho of Brooklyn, that is, like Broadway, don’t see how substituting lower end chains with higher end chains is that much of an improvement. Go to Soho, if that’s what you want.

As has been said endless times, the stores there, however distasteful to certain upscale types, are paying their rents, making money, and catering to the people who shop there, and who have been shopping there for the last 25 years. If a cell phone store goes out of business, then lobby/pressure/invite/open yourself, something better.

Moving them to Bed Stuy is typical of Prop Joe’s idiotic, racist attitudes. Great answer, Amzi!