Subway Inn is quite possibly my favorite neon sign still glowing in Gotham. I breathe a sigh of relief (and snap a photo) each time I walk by and see it humming along as it has for decades. #neon #nyc #signs #bars #divebars #manhattan #history
The old Hotel Tudor is now a Hilton, but the corporate hands haven’t gotten around to taking down the old sign, a Midtown East unofficial landmark. Hopefully it’s too costly and not worth the trouble to tear it down. This photo was taken from the 10th floor of WPIX, itself a neighborhood fixture since 1948. #signs #tudorcity #manhattan #vintage #oldnyc #murrayhill #kipsbay #unitednations #hotels #relic #artifacts #urbanarchaeology
In the wee hours of Thanksgiving 2012, the Grace Building across Bryant Park is being decked out with Christmas decorations. #thanksgiving #christmas #nyc #manhattan #holidays #decorations
In 2007, The Chrysler Building was pushed down into the status of third tallest in NYC by the building visible all the way down 42nd Street, the Bank of America Tower. Of course, 1 WTC means Chrysler is now fourth, tied with The New York Times Tower. Now you know. #nyc #skyscrapers #skyline #manhattan #architecture
Places we’re happy exist: Typewriters ‘N Things in Greenwich Village
Yep, that’s really the shop’s name. It’s in Greenwich Village, and it’s still very much in business. It is a thriving stationery store teeming with awesome little finds to adorn your desk and make you look — or even become — more productive. (Do you have a thing for Moleskine notebooks? Of course you do. This place packs an amazing selection.)
The shop’s name, by the way, is far from vestigial. The shop does indeed sell and service typewriters! You can bring yours in for a free repair appraisal — you know, that analog relic you picked up at the flea market or on eBay but haven’t quite gotten around to fixing? Now’s the time to do it. Typewriter repair isn’t exactly a booming business these days, but a hardy few are still fixing those keys and installing those ribbons.
Find Typewriters ‘N Things at 56 Eighth Ave.
Text and photos: Rolando Pujol
It’s a supermarket now, but this night depository box (which you’d open with a nickel) is a window into a Manhattan building’s former life as a bank
On Park Avenue South between 21st and 22nd streets is a remnant of a once-powerful bank. The Bank For Savings was chartered in 1819. This branch, opened in 1894, ran through the length of the block. Its interior soared several stories high. One attraction was a machine with a combination of real and counterfeit bank notes. Children especially delighted in pressing a button next to each bill to learn if it was real or fake. It was also one of the few banks with a coin counting machine.
The bank would go through several mergers, becoming the New York Bank For Savings, then Goldome before this branch closed in 1982. The bank moved to a nearby building, merging with Manufacturers Hanover and finally Chase. After this branch closed, the space was subdivided, with the largest portion becoming an Associated Supermarket.
The day and night depository box would be opened by depositing a nickel in the slot at the top. The 5 cents would be credited to the depositor’s account the next day.
Text and photo: Jefferson Siegel
Jefferson Siegel is a New York-based photojournalist and a contributor to The Retrologist.
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The neon ‘Miracles on 34th Street’
Where Murray Hill meets Kips Bay, there is a corner where mid-century New York meets the present.
For starters, the Clover Delicatessen has been holding the fort on the southwestern corner of East 34th Street and Second Avenue since the late 1940s, and its neon sign is one of the finest you’ll see on any street corner. To be sure, it’s the most glorious neon sign left on all of 34th Street, river to river. [Well, with the possible exception of Macy’s.]
But walk next door, and your trip through storefront time continues. This liquor shop has an amazing neon sign in the window.
Notice the “LE” in the telephone number — short for “Lexington exchange” — happily preserved in neon.
That means this sign must date, at the very latest, to the early and middle 1970s, by which time the use of exchange names was being phased out. Today, the store would write “532-0980,” and probably not in neon!
Interestingly, a few people to this day hang on tenaciously to their exchange name. It certainly adds poetry to the common phone number.
You can join the club by figuring out what your exchange name might have been by Googling the words “telephone exchange names” and clicking on the first result.
And then start giving out your cell number in this archaic format: KLondike5-5555.
People might think you’ve had one too many, but you’ll know better.
Text and photos: Rolando Pujol
A version of this post originally appeared in amNewYork’s Urbanite blog.
