The Tale of the OTHER Max Garfunkel

Yesterday, as I was searching for information of the crooked banker of yesteryear, Max Garfunkel, of the firm of Garfunkel and Tauster, I kept turning up information about another Max Garfunkel. This Garfunkel was quite the opposite type. He was a classic, hard-working, honest, immigrant entrepreneur.

For some years in the early part of the 20th century, this Max Garfunkel was a well-known figure. He was the owner of the Busy Bee Restaurants, an early local chain of lunch counters around New York. The chain was well known enough in the 1910s for the New York Times to refer to it in articles without explanation. 

Max Garfunkel sailed from Kishivev, Moldova, to New York in 1888, with fifty cents in his pocket. He was 13 at the time. According to his son Louis, who later wrote a book about running diners, Max simply announced to his family one day that he was going to America—alone—and that was that. He spent his first night in this country sleeping in an empty open wagon on the New York waterfront not far from where he had been put ashore from Ellis Island. The next day, he roamed the lower part of Manhattan seeking work, and before nightfall had a job in a saloon and a home with the old German owner. 

He saved his money ($7,000 in all, a massive sum at the time) and, in 1893, started his first restaurant at 3 Ann Street, at the corner of Broadway, just yards from City Hall and all the Park Row newspapers. (That's the basic intersection, above.) Sandwiches, coffee and pie were all two cents. Max held to those prices for 20 years. 

According to Louis, the diner was an anomaly at the time. "In 1888," wrote Louis, "restaurants were mainly places for social gatherings, except to the few of wealth who considered it demeaning to carry food and could afford the dollar or two squandered on served luncheons. The only other places in which food could be had, aside from boarding houses, were the saloons which provided magnificent free-lunch counters to entice the drinking public...[Max] was to become one of the greatest factors in changing the eating habits of all Americans by introducing a meal at a price which eliminated the need for carrying a lunch-box to work."

The first restaurant failed, and Max lost all his money. He opened his second eatery in 1896, at No. 1 Ann Street. This one succeeded. He operated on a mass-production plan, with small profits and a large turn-over. "His patrons were office-boys, building workers, struggling young lawyers and business men, and the host of others who did not have much money to spend on their lunches," wrote Louis. "Many of them became important and most of them remembered Max with affection. For Max never turned away a hungry boy, even if he had no money."

Soon, there were 15 Busy Bees across the City. Max got ahead though work, work and more work. "My father was no sissy," wrote Louis. "His restaurant kitchen was in the basement of his store on Ann Street, in New York and was reached by descending an unbalustraded flight of wooden steps. One day, in a hurry to get something needed during the noon rush of thousands of milling customers, he fell and broke his shoulder. Carrying on until the noon meal was nearly over, despite the terrible pain, he walked to a hospital, had his shoulder set, and went back to the store, bound and trussed, to check up and give orders for the next day."

He was also no fool. When Max Garfunkel was 53, in 1928, he decided to retire. He told reporters, "For 40 years I've worked from 5 o'clock in the morning until 8 o'clock at night. I've never had a real vacation. Now I'm going to play. I want to go to Palm Beach, to Europe, to Carlsbad, Vienna, Paris and Switzerland. I am going to retire, quit. I am tired. Money is not everything. . . . Frankfurters, coffee, lemonade, savings accounts, seven days a week, little sleep, bustle, shouts, profits, frankfurters, soft shell crabs—these are my memories."

Max has smartly invested in real estate. When he retired, he sold off a dozen buildings, mainly along the Bowery. He had plenty of time to travel; he died in 1942. 

Louis continued in his father's business. He operated a place called Famous Maxie's in New Street until 1962, when he retired. 

I couldn't find a single picture of a Busy Bee lunch counter. The Ann Street buildings don't exist anymore. I doubt there's a scrap of evidence left in the City that the chain existed.

Manganaro Grosseria Italiana Closes for Good

Damn.

I passed by Manganaro Grosseria Italiana just last week, and almost went in for a sandwich. But didn't.

And now it's gone forever.

It's been on the books for a year now that it was on its way out. But it lingered. Not anymore. According to JVNY, the tables have been removed, the shelves emptied, and a note on the website reads, "As of February 27, 2012, Manganaro Foods will no longer be open in New York City. We will let you know when we re-open." (Looks like J. made the same mistake of not visiting when he got a chance.)

Thus ends a 121-year run.
Here's an account of a visit I paid last year about this time.

The Felonious Tale of Garfunkel and Tauster

I was walking down the lower stretch of Clinton Street on the Lower East Side when I gave 67 Clinton a once over and noticed its interesting cornice pronouncement: Garfunkel & Tauster Building. Who they?

They were private bankers, and Garfunkel & Tauster—not the most euphonious business name on record—was a banking firm. Max Garfunkel and Marcus Tauster were their principals. They went into business in 1919. By 1924, they were bankrupts, criminals and fugitives.

Garfunkel and Tauster were indicted for making false statements to the State Superintendent of banks before the failure of their bank. Garfunkel pleaded guilty and took a term of six months to three years. Tauster, however, fled with his wife and kids. He was found in October 1924 in North Bay, Ontario, posing as drygoods salesman Max Bauman. He was extradited and sentenced to two to four years in Sing Sing.

The real estate company that now owns 67 Clinton has cheekily taken on the building's name, calling itself the Garfunkel & Tauster Corp. I wonder if they are aware of their predecessors' business legacy.

Reflections on Steak Row

This blog has occasionally reminisced about Steak Row, the gone-forever strip of utterly male, red-meat-and-strong-booze eateries that once lined East 45th Street between Lexington and First Avenue in Manhattan. They had names like the Pen and Pencil, The Editorial, and Danny's Hideaway. They were—it would seem obvious—favored by journalists and magazine people, as well as a smattering of celebrities.

Because of my posts, I occasionally get an odd e-mail from some odd Steak Row habitue taking a tour down memory lane. (I have made contact with the son of the owner of the Pen and Pencil this way.) Recently, a former customer of The Press Box contracted me, looking for information on the year and reason why the restaurant closed. 

The Press Box, at 139 E. 45th, was run by Henry Castello and Harry Storm, both former Pen and Pencil bartenders, along with former Voisin waiter captain Fred O. Manfredi. By 1973, it was owned by Michael Wayne. Max Klimavicius, one of the current owners of Sardi's, began his restaurant career at a dishwasher at The Press Box. Unlike many of former mainstays that once help the Steak Row chow houses, the Press Box building still exists. It's a Chinese restaurant today.

I had little help to offer this reader, but he shared a number of scintillating details with me.

The place seems to have been rather rakish, in a "Mad Men" sort of way. This eye-witness said the staff used to hand out "press cards," which permitted ladies to visit the men's room. What the women did when they went there is left up to our imagination.

More unbelievable is what the women would see when they got there. According to the source, the urinals were affixed with magnifying shaving mirrors which hung at about waist level. This, I guess, ensured that every booze-soaked newshound left the loo feeling like a big man.

The Green Mystery of Onderdonk Avenue, Slightly Less Mysterious, And Perhaps More Sudsy

Two years ago, I blogged about this intriguing Ridgewood building at the corner of Onderdonk and Stockholm. I noted the odd color, the odd structure, and the presence, up top, of a number of Jewish stars and four-leaf clovers. I speculated that it was a religious building in the past, but find no evidence of such a past. At the time, there was garment work going on inside.

Recently, a reader wrote in, saying: "Green Mystery; Renovated our home (200 feet away). Found in ceiling on 2nd floor a green bottle with the Star of David. Could the building have been a brewery? Still have the bottle but can't make out all the initals; small b, large N over an A followed by Co."

Interesting. Anybody out there have a clue. I still can't find out anything about this building.

UPDATE: Commenter "Mingusal" sheds some light on the mystery below by reminded us of the six-pointed star's other symbolic past. Do we have a former German beer hall here?