Book Reviews

SCA

Store Front: The Disappearing Face of New York

By James T. Murray and Karla L. Murray

Corte Madera, Calif.: Gingko Press, 2008

336 pages + 4 fold-outs, 12 x 13 inches, 220 color

illustrations, $65 hardcover

Reviewed by David M. Guss

Somewhere a formula must exist to determine the proper

size of a sign in relation to the distance and speed of the

person viewing it. Of course, Venturi, Brown, and Izenour

speak about buildings that “can be comprehended at

high speeds.”1 And everyone is familiar with the large

disembodied 40-foot-high sign set beside a highway with

the store it announces a distant pillbox set behind acres of

asphalt parking. These buildings are typically windowless

with no displays of merchandise reaching out to attract the

customer. They are meant for cars and not pedestrians, the

opposite of what James T. and Karla L. Murray spent eight

years documenting in their magnificent new book, Store

Front: The Disappearing Face of New York.

The Murrays became interested in this project while

traveling around New York to document the work of graffiti

artists. Two resulting books, Broken Windows-Graffiti NYC

(Gingko 2002) and Burning New York (Gingko 2006),

stood out for the laborious stitching together of photos

that allowed them to present entire walls without any of

the obstructions that frustrate most photographers. They

also included lengthy interviews with the elusive artists

responsible for the tags, pieces, and throw-ups. It was while

visiting these sites in every corner of

the city that they became aware of

another type of wall, just as expressive

and personal—the store fronts of

‘mom and pop’ businesses, passed

down from one generation to the

next. Yet these stores were suddenly

disappearing in the epidemic

proportions of a species die-off. Of

the 220 pictured in this oversized

volume, a full third have already

closed.

The Murrays set out with the

same preservationist zeal that had

inspired their graffiti project. But

graffiti by its nature is an ephemeral

form destroyed as much by rival

artists as by government authorities. The storefronts that

populate this book are anything but ephemeral. They

are the glue that has held these communities together,

distinguishing one neighborhood from another. The

real estate boom of the last decade or so has dramatically

changed this. The single story Cheyenne Diner, for example,

which sat at Ninth Ave. and 33rd Street for 68 years, is

being replaced by a nine-floor condominium. Everywhere,

gentrification and escalating rents are forcing these small

family-run businesses to close. Of course, there are other

factors as well—competition from chains, city regulations

and rising costs, new ethnic groups with different tastes, and

new technologies and lifestyles that make some businesses

less profitable. Only one bookstore, for example, is featured,

the Strand, the last survivor of Book Row. And like most of

the survivors, they own the building, a refrain heard over and

over.

But owning one’s building is more than a hedge against

displacement. It’s a long term investment in the community,

resulting in a loyal network of customers that often goes

back several generations. Here’s how Novil Seward, co-

owner of the C & N Everything Store, located in the Bronx

for more than 50 years, described it:

I’ve been in this neighborhood so long that I’ve watched

many of my customers grow up and now some of them

even bring in their grandchildren. I know most everybody

by name and I treat all of them like family. One of the

biggest things happening in this neighborhood lately is

that there’s a lot of new construction. I don’t know who

can afford the rents they are charging. Most of these new

buildings are empty and you’d think the owners would

lower the rents instead of them staying empty but I guess

they’d rather leave them unoccupied. If we didn’t own

this building we would have been out of here long ago.

The relation to one’s customers is just as palpable in the

windows and signs on the front of these stores. To read them

demands intimacy. One can’t view them enclosed in a car

traveling 60+ miles per hour. Each storefront is a visual poem

which the viewer stands in front of like a canvas. Some are

orderly, like the butcher shops with their sausages and hams

hung in neat rows from one end to

the next, or the Italian bakeries with

their loaves of bread stacked as evenly

as boards in a lumber yard. Others,

like Strand Television in Queens

and Chun Lee Fabrics in Chinatown

have covered every inch of window

space, their products threatening to

burst out into the street. Some have

created museum-like dioramas such

as Pretty Decorating and Love Saves

the Day, both on Second Avenue

in the East Village. The densest

though are the candy and news stores

whose windows are busy collages

of information and products, the

store turned inside out where public

and private meet. At the other end are the bars such as the

Lenox Lounge in Harlem where Bird and Miles used to play.

These have big neon signs with cool enamel and stainless

steel panels, and odd-shaped windows that only hint at what

might go on inside. All of them invite you to come close, not

simply to look at the products, but to read the many notices

that have been taped up: menus, reviews, news clippings,

sales, family photos, seasons greetings, and even a wanted

poster with a police artist’s sketch at Joe’s Dairy in Little

Italy. And sometimes there are editorials for the community,

intimate messages like the handmade sign in the window of

Raul Santiago’s candy store in the East Village, “Odio las

drogas y amo a la Vida”: “I hate drugs and I love life.”

What makes this book so special though are not

simply the breathtaking photos. The Murrays have also

provided interviews with many of the shop owners. With an

ethnographer’s ear, they elicit what it means to be local and

to run a business in the same location for several generations.

A number of establishments such as Katz’s Delicatessen and

McSorley’s Old Ale House are well over a hundred years old,

and one, Lichtenstein & Co. Woolens and Tailor Supplies,

can trace its origins back 500 years to North Africa. The

connection to the “Old Country” is an important part of the

identities of these stores which have often been centerpieces

of new immigrant communities. Whether Polish, Hispanic,

Italian, Jewish, Caribbean, or Chinese, they helped bridge

the distance between these two worlds. This is one of the

interviews’ recurring themes, especially when the store sells

food. Recipes are treated as jealously guarded heirlooms

traced back to the family’s village of origin. As Robert

Esposito, third generation owner of Giovanni Esposito &

Sons Pork Shop says about his store: “We are known for

our homemade Italian sausage, made from a family recipe

almost a century old. Sausages are like handwriting. When

somebody tries to copy them, they just don’t come out

right.” And Yonah Schimmel Knish Bakery doesn’t just sell

potatoes and kasha wrapped in dough. They also produce

a stomach-soothing yogurt “made from the same culture

brought over from Romania in the late 1800s.”

Like Berenice Abbott’s 1930s WPA Federal Arts Project

that documented a “changing New York,” the Murrays have

also provided a tour of the city at a time of rapid transition.2

In fact, both Abbott and the Murrays photographed the

same Italian bakery at 259 Bleeker Street— A. Zito &

Sons—which closed in 2004 after 80 years in business.

Unlike Abbott, however, who photographed every aspect of

the city, the Murrays’ map is constructed through storefronts

alone. “These storefronts,” write the Murrays in their short

introduction, “have the city’s history etched in their facades.

They set the pulse, life and texture of their communities.”

They also dramatize the city’s remarkable diversity and the

role of local businesses in making people feel at home. And

yet, oddly enough, there are few people in any of these

stunning photos. There are also no cars, no rain, and no

snow. The weather is always perfect, and the busiest city in

the world is eerily quiet. It makes you want to approach each

store and press your nose against the window to find out just

what’s going on inside.

1

Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour.

Learning from Las Vegas: The Forgotten Symbolism of

Architectural Form. Cambridge: MIT Press. Revised edition 1986.

2

Bonnie Yochelson. Berenice Abbott: Changing New York. New

York: The Museum of the City of New York. 1997.

David Guss is the Chair of the Department of Anthropology at

Tufts University where he has taught since 1991.

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JAWAHARLAL NEHRU UNIVERSITY STUDENTS' UNION .

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Date: 15/2/06 .

Friends, .

The JNU students' union toda b . .

.

councilors of different schools ~ ~~emltted .the ch_arter of demands which was placed by the .

demands consists of central level d coun~l meeting held on 5'h December2005. The Charter of .

demands are made at the centrallev!l~on s and major demands of all the schools. Following .

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1. Implement the agreement of JNUSU 2003-04· , . Council and formation of Grievance Red ... . I CStude.nts r~presentatlon in the Academic JNU administratio'1. JNUSU after a histori;~~;~gglo~m~tee ts yet to be implemented by the .

have been taken from the administration J o ime I a achteved thts but tO positive steps students, union after the struggle. , p ement the agreements it had with the .

2. Fin~ncial_ Assistance: Keeping in mind the problem of h' h . .!o ftnanetal considerations, JNUSU demands financial '9. drop out rate tn our untversity due IS also demanded that the number of MCM h I ~~ststonce for all the needy students. It .

Learn Scheme should be increased R d.sc oars Ips and vacancies in Earn While You increased at once. · eo rng grants for the blind students should be .

3. Fello.wship: The JRF/ SRF should· be provided eve . . .

provtde fellowship to all the JRF /SRF students w~ month ~tthout delay. Untversity should recetved the sanction letter. The university can lot o. a~e sttll to recetve money but have come from the funding agencies. , er retm urse the money from the funds that .

4. Ratify old Rules and Reaulation of GSC ASH and n.o--.--·· -.

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JAWAHARLAL NEHRU UNIVERSITY STUDENTS' UNION .

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STUDENTS UNITED SHALL ALWAYS BE VICTORIOUS! .

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JNUSU APPEALS TO THE STUDENTS WHO ARE INTERESTED TN PARTICIPATING IN ASIAN SOCIAL FORU'-'1. .

KARACHI TO REG ISTER THEMSELVES BEFORE TOMORROW EVENING IN THE JNUSU OFFICE. .

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Friends. 19-01-2006 .

JNUSU congratulates student community for participating in large numbers in toda} 's Protest Demonstration thereb)succ~')':>l'ull) pressurising the administration to reconsider its der;ision regarding the new formula for con.... erung grades mto r~rccmage. Though the Vice Chancellor was absent, the administration has assured the Students' Union that it willlool.. mto the m,ltt~r again and send the formula to all the centres for review. No conversion formula will be implemented till next ALademtc Council meeting. We demand that the administration must discuc;s this agenda in the presence of the students· representmi\~.. Larlicr JNUSU had registered its protest with the administralion and launched an extensi\e signature campaign The agitated stuJl!nl community responded overwhelmingly and over 2000 signatures were collected and submitted to the admintstration b~ u dd~gati011 ofthe Union. This has sent clear signa Is to the administration that student community wiII not all ow i m piementati011 of any undemocratic and anti-student policy in this campus. ln the future JNU administration must follow the democt atic norms of decision making and culture of debate before taking any academic decision related to the future of the students. .

This is also to inform the student community that the administration has asked for opinions of Centres of ditTer~nt ~.:lwob regarding new rules and procedures of G SCASH latest by 31" Jan. 2006. It was after the immense pressure from the stud~nl community and other sect ions of our u n i vcrs ity that the administration put in abeyance the ne\\'1} rati licd rules "nd proco:d ure> nf G SCAS H and agreed to reconsider it. H0" ever, again administration is seck ing to reformulate the ruk> " ilhall\ having an~ consultation with JNUSU, GSCASH or other representative bodies of university communi!). \\ e \\arn th~ ad111i11istration aga inst any such move and appeal to the student community to rally behind J USU to defend the autonom' .1nd .

ch.:mo~ratic character ofGSCASH. .

Sd-1 Sd-/ Sd-.

Arani..

Fauzan Abrar,.

Dhananja~. Jt. CC\. J, l ~ll.

Gen. Secv. JNUSU.

V-P . .INUSll .

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