The Ghosts of Columbia Street: Parade Day

Not much information to go along with this lovely image of Columbia Street, between Kane and Degraw Streets, circa 1955. I'm guessing it's an Independence Day parade, judging by the many flags, the bright sun and the summer clothing. The barber shop in the background is 133 Columbia Street. The building doesn't exist anymore.

As with all the previous photos in this series, they belong to Freebird Books of Columbia Street.

The Ghosts of Columbia Street: Rayco Machine Co.

Here, in the latest of the wonderful stash of old Columbia Street images recently claimed from obscurity by Freebird Books, is a shot of the Rayco Machine Company, a player in the area's now bygone industrial past. It stood at the northeast corner of Columbia and Baltic Street, and there's not a sign of the company or the building today. (All photos are the property of Freebird Books.)

But Rayco is not what's interesting about this photo. What is is the gigantic ad for the Guido Funeral Home of the side of the building. This business is still a going concern, and operates on the corner of Carroll and Union Streets inside the historic John Rankin mansion. There it is below (photo courtesy of Carroll Gardens Patch.) There's a long, long history to that building, which I really should tell one of these days.

The Ghosts of Columbia Street: Eddie's Bar

Here's the latest shot from a cache of old 1960s photos of the Columbia Street, Brooklyn, area recently uncovered by Freebird Books. (All photos seen are the property of Freebird.) This photo depicts the southeast corner of Columbia and Congress Streets, as seen from the north (above) and from the west (below).

We can conclude by this time that Columbia was once a street of many bars. Previous photos depicted Otto's Scandinavian Bar and La Gondola Bar. Here we see Eddie's Bar (right across the street from Van Vorhees playground) and another bar/restaurant, the White Horse Bar, just two door down. The building that held Eddie's has since been demolished; there's an empty lot there today.

The Ghosts of Columbia Street: La Gondola Bar

As I mentioned in a past yesterday, I was recently contracted by the owner of Freebird Books, a fine indy used book store on Columbia Street. He recently lucked into a cache of old photos of the Columbia Street area, circa 1966, when the neighborhood still shows signed of its former life as a waterfront street, and a Scandinavian, Italian and Puerto Rican stronghold. 

I posted an old photo of Otto's Scandinavian Bar, at Columbia and Kane, yesterday. Here is a shot of La Gondola Bar, where sat directly opposite Otto's, to the north. Below is another view of the bar, and below that is a look at the building today, which most recently housed a sushi joint. (All of the photos are the property of Freebird.) It has been a bad-luck corner for the past few decades, with businesses coming and going quickly.  The building is remarkably the same, right down to the double entrance.

The Ghosts of Columbia Street Past: Otto's

I was recently contracted by the owner of Freebird Books, a fine indy used book store on Columbia Street, near Kane. He told me he had recently given given a cache of old photos by a neighbor on nearby Tiffany Place who was moving out. The photos and negatives were of the Columbia Street area, and date from roughly the 1960s, when the neighborhood was on its way down but had not yet been utterly killed by the long 1970s Columbia Street sewer dig. Many of the buildings that are now vacant, or have been converted to apartments or torn down, can be seen with stores in their ground-floor spaces. Quite a number of bars and restaurants, too.

You can see all the photos that have been scanned so far at Freebird's Flickr page. (Both of these photos are the property of Freebird.) There will be more to come. Here's one of Otto's Scandinavian Bar, at the southeast corner of Columbia and Kane. I have posted a photo of Otto's before on Lost City, but this is a new view. Below is a view of the space today. The restaurant that opened in the space last year recently closed. 

The Clock on Columbia Street

I've written about the large standing clock that used to adorn Columbia Street in Brooklyn before, but this photograph—the best I've seen to date—is the first I've posted on the blog. 

To recap, the intersection of Columbia Street and Union Street used to be one of the great commercial centers of South Brooklyn. Stores and pushcarts lined the streets. There were two movies theatres and plenty of bars and restaurants. The first Thom McAn shoe store and the original Citibank were located in the area. Then Robert Moses dug the BQE, cutting the neighborhood off from the rest of Brooklyn. The Brooklyn docks slowly died. And a big sewer dig throughout the '70s, designed to hurt the Mob, causes numerous buildings' foundations to crumble. The area died and has yet to fully recover today. 

One landmark oldtimers remember well is the clock. It stood outside a jewelry store run by Robert Corn on Columbia between Union and President Streets. It became an unofficial meeting place, as in "I'll meet you under the clock," and legend has it mobsters would convene there to hatch their criminal exploits. 

When the businesses began to leave and the buildings topple, the clock was uprooted and removed sometime in the 1970s. Nobody knows where it went, but some believe it still exists somewhere in somebody's basement or attic. 

I've never been able to find out anything about Robert Corn of his business. One would think he has ancestors out there somewhere who know something about that clock.

Sokol Bros. Sign to Be Saved

A local tipster informed me the other day that the great old sign to the Sokol Bros. Furniture Store—the Columbia Street institution that was torn down recently—will be saved.

When I saw said sign on a scrap heap of rubble recently, I feared it would be junked. I asked a workman about its fate, but he had no idea. My informant tells me that, once the apartment building that is replaced the store is built, the sign will be hung in the interior courtyard. Apparently, the preservation of the sign was part of the deal the owner of Sokol made with the developer.

Sokol Bros. Sign on the Ash Heap

The old Sokol Bros. Furniture building on Columbia Street in Brooklyn is all but demolished. Just a few bits of brick and the frames of a couple roller shutters left.

I peered in and what did I see laying atop the rubble but the old Sokol Bros. sign, which hung outside the furniture stores for half a century. I asked a worked what was going to be done with the sign. Would it be saved or tossed? He had no idea.

Faded Wrigley's Ad on Columbia Street Vanishing

Back in 2008, L&M Equities purchased the old buildings at the corner of Columbia and Warren in Cobble Hill West, and quickly tore them down. The idea was to erect a new apartment building. But for whatever reason, the plot stood vacant for the next three years.

That was OK by me, because the demolition had revealed an old advertisement  by that onetime king of outdoor signage, the O.J. Gude Company. It was an ad for Wrigley's gum, with the discernible slogan, "The Flavor Lasts."

Now, however, the cinder blocks have started to climb. And the gum ad is fast disappearing. A shame. Still, I'm glad they didn't go to the bother to paint over the ad. It's fun to imagine the surprise that will await New Yorkers when this crappy new building is inevitably torn down in 30 or 40 years time. The flavor lasts—and so do the faded ads.

Here's how the ad looked before construction began: 

Accardi Hardware, Oldest Business on Columbia Street, Closes

Many changes are coming to Columbia Street in Brooklyn lately. Yesterday, I reported that the one-time bustling commercial lane had lost one of its longstanding businesses, the 62-year-old Sokol Bros. Furniture Store. And a building near DeGraw that has operated as a slaughterhouse since for nearly a century, recently shut its doors, owing to Gowanus Canal-related construction that unsettled its foundation. Now it seems that Columbia has been robbed of another—perhaps its last—survivor from the old days: Accardi Hardware and Industrial Supply.

Accardi held down the fort at 157 Columbia—between DeGraw and Kane—for decades, when the street, commercially speaking, was little more than a ghost town. I could never find out much about the place, just that it was family owned and had been there forever. (It was actually established in 1915, making it by far the oldest extant business on Columbia.) They had a billboard down on Van Brunt Street (see below) advertising their presence, so I imagine they got a lot of business from Red Hook outfits.

I'm not sure what happened, but Accardi is gone. It's been replace by Red Hook Flooring and Area Rug World.  Area Rug World was founded in 2008.

Sokol Bros. Furniture Goes the Way of All Old Buildings: Apartments

Due to the numerous calamities that have befallen Columbia Street during the last 50 years—the big sewer dig of the 1970s; the erection of the BQE; the extension of the Brooklyn docks between DeGraw and Atlantic; all of which knocked out dozens of old Columbia Street buildings and businesses—there are precious few mercantile remnants of the thriving business district that once was.

One of the last survivors was the Sokol Bros. Furniture store, which took up three former brownstones on Columbia between President and Carroll Streets. The business was founded in 1950, making it a relative latecomer to the strip, which was by then already in decline. Michael Sokol took the reins from his father and uncle in 1976 and ran the shop until last fall, when he sold it for $3.3 million.

Lately, the place has been gutted and scaffolding has been erected. Construction is constant. The building will be converted into luxury apartments and three stories will be added to the edifice, making it easily the tallest, largest structure on Columbia Street (which is not protected by any sort of landmarking).

One of the one good things about such repurposings as this is you briefly get to see what the old building once looked like, as they tear away at the walls. Sokol Bros. has been covered up with an awful overlay of cream-colored bricks for years. Underneath somewhere are some ancient red-brick houses. Walking by today, I peeked inside and could see where old brick walls and a fireplace were revealed.

Sokol Bros. was a funny place. Though I bought a couch there once, and Michael was always on the premises, I never saw much business going on inside. It was the sort of family-owned, bare-bones, no-frilled, frozen-in-time furniture business that you used to see a lot of in Brooklyn. Every neighborhood had one or two. The furniture styles were always a few seasons behind the times, but the prices were good. The sprawling office in the back, walled by large wooden-framed windows, was left very much as it must have been in 1950. I would sometimes go in to ask Michael questions about how the old neighborhood used to be. He was one of the few remaining local experts.

Part of the store's appeal was the grand old, hollowed-out neon sign that adorned it. (See below.) It must have been something in the days when the Sokols bothered to fill the large metal letters with neon tubing—something I never saw. It hasn't lit up in decades.

I can't tell if the sign is still there. The scaffolding obscures the view.