A photo taken around 1941 shows today's Frederick Douglass Boulevard and the corner of 8th Avenue when tenements with storefronts still lined that part of Harlem. The eye-catching sign with the spectacles and watch apparently belonged to a jeweler with a little bit of humor. In modern times, nothing remains of these buildings since public housing now mostly take up this part of the avenue in Central Harlem.
Photo via NYPL
How cool is that sign?
ReplyDeleteIf I'm not mistaken, just such a sign has a prominent place in Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (a book with, by the way, a pitch-perfect scene of post-World War I white slummers coming uptown for a moral holiday...).
ReplyDeleteThe Eyes of Dr. Eckelberg
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