341 Grand Street: Site Of Grand Street Dairy Restaurant

The photo was taken sometime in the late 1940's. The view is Grand Street looking east towards Ludlow Street. The Dairy Restaurant (although I don't know that was it's incarnation at the time) can be seen at the extreme right. My mother is in the top row on the left. My aunt is seated in the middle. For more about that restaurant, an excerpt from a 1988 nytimes article

2 Waiters and Their Producer Dine at a Source of Inspiration By RICHARD F. SHEPARD Published: November 10, 1988 ''Enter, two Jewish waiters.'' Now what kind of stage direction is that in a script for the New York Shakespeare Festival? It may have been that Joseph Papp, the founder and head of the festival, was evading an answer. But more likely, he never heard the question above the gustatory din at the Grand Dairy Restaurant, Grand Street at the corner of Ludlow Street, on the Lower East Side. Mr. Papp was accompanied by Bob Dishy and Fyvush Finkel, who nowadays are bringing an inspirational interpretation of tray chic to their central roles as Jewish waiters in Hy Kraft's ''Cafe Crown,'' a play based on the old Cafe Royal, which for decades was the center of the Yiddish theater's off-duty life on Second Avenue. The play is being produced by Mr. Papp and his festival at the Public Theater. Frank Rich, reviewing ''Cafe Crown'' in The New York Times, called it a ''feast of Jewish waiter jokes and Jewish theater jokes, heavily laced with schmaltz.'' He particularly praised the waiters - Mr. Dishy, ''his expression so dill-sour that even his tufts of hair seem exasperated,'' and Mr. Finkel, ''sure to say 'You'll love it!' to any irritating customer who alights upon one of the less palatable daily specials.'' In Other Words, an Interview The lunch on Grand Street was intended to install the professional theater people in suitable ambiance amid real Jewish waiters for the purpose of discussing how the actors achieved a credibility so overpowering in their roles as waiters that the audience might have picked up a check were it presented. Mr. Dishy and Mr. Finkel, projecting a thinly veiled contempt for their customers, evoke a world now hovering on the brink of oblivion. Wearing black jackets, black bow ties and full-length white aprons, they display tympanic virtuosity when it comes to slamming plates on the table. They intimidate diners, kibitz at card games, dish out philosophy and invariably spill half the tea from the glass. The Shakespeare Festival is meticulous about training its performers in swordplay, with an expert on hand to teach the finer points of the epee. Did Mr. Papp hire a Jewish waiter to instruct Mr. Dishy and Mr. Finkel in their roles? Did he show them how not to meet the eye of a complaining customer, how to put the thumb in the soup to indicate that it is not too hot to slurp, how to bring the potato pirogi to a table that wanted chopped liver? Did a licensed instructor teach them the shuffle that assures room temperature by the time a hot dish reaches the table? Necessary but Insufficient The answer again proved elusive. After all, every waiter who happens to be Jewish is not necessarily qualified as a Jewish waiter....

some KVers' comments:

I walked by there yesterday with my wife and told her about the restaurant. Most embarrassing was cutting class and seeing your teacher there.

I remember the dairy restaurant very well from my Seward days. Used to take out a cheese danish and coffee every so often when I stayed late to edit the sports column of the Seward World. Those were the days....

1905 Map Of Grand, Forsyth, Hester, Chrystie Area

originally from the early days of pseudo-intellectualism Another Sanborn Insurance gem. A shout out to my nephew Jamie, whose U of Buffalo attendance provided digital library access. Here's a math tech integration activity. "If there were x number of synagogues on these y square blocks, how many synagogues would there be on z square blocks?' The spot where I placed an image of the real PS 7 was an empty lot. The front of PS 7 faced Chrystie Street. The area is now part of Sara Delano Roosevelt Park. In the 1896 Tribune, the school was described as the dirtiest school in the city. Behind the Grand Theater there are "Bowling Alleys and a Turkish Bathouse. I'll try to see who was playing at the Grand Theater. The hook and ladder company on Canal Street is still a fire house 100 years later. The Boarding Stable on Allen Street logically became a parking garage. BTW, SD stands for steel door.

283 Grand Street History

I forgot to include these in the thread about the recent fire at 283 Grand Street
283 Grand History
The connection to 283 Grand Street in the second article has to do with Joseph Pate, a resident of 283, who was arrested at the Dreamland Dance Hall on 125th Street.
a link to another post about dance halls
Prior to 283 being a tenement it was evidently the Columbian Meeting Hall. It was there in 1870 (the first article) that a Cooperative of Cabinet Makers met. The group appeared to be mostly German.

Grand Street: A Current View

290-294-grand-st
A previous post with a then and now view of Grand and Eldridge

Grand And Eldridge Street: 1928

 

This is diagonally across the street from where the April 11th fire took place in 2010.

Grand Street Fire: April 11, 2010, Video

from an account from the nytimes

Before City’s Worst Fire in Years, History of Neglect, By RAY RIVERA and COLIN MOYNIHAN
The building in Chinatown where an enormous blaze started late Sunday night had more than two dozen open violations for hazardous conditions, including missing smoke detectors, lead paint and other problems that signified a history of neglect, city records show.
Tenants had complained through the winter that they had no heat and that the building was riddled with mold and exposed wiring. At the same time, the owners had put the building on the market for the third time in five years with no apparent success.
Late Monday night, firefighters recovered the body of a missing 87-year-old man from the top floor of one of the three buildings where the fire had spread. Earlier, they had been unable to get into the building to search because of the danger of a collapse, but at 8:20 p.m., they found the body of a man identified by his relatives as Sing Ho.
At its peak, the fire was visible from across the East River. Hundreds of tenants were evacuated; it was a seven-alarm blaze, drawing some 250 firefighters to battle it. Fire officials said it was the largest blaze in the city in more than two years.
By the time the fire was under control, about 2:15 a.m. on Monday, some 200 people had been left homeless and dozens had been injured.
Two elderly men who lived in one of the buildings, on Grand Street, were treated for smoke inhalation and listed in serious to critical condition at Beth Israel Medical Center on Monday, said Firefighter James Long, a department spokesman. A Beth Israel spokeswoman said Monday night that the hospital had treated about a dozen people, and that all of them had been released except for one, who was in stable condition.
Investigators were trying to determine what started the fire, in which 33 other people were hurt, including 29 firefighters who suffered minor injuries. Officials said there was no reason to believe the fire was arson, but as of Monday evening, fire marshals had not been able to go into the rubble to search for clues.
Julie Chen, 26, who lived on the fourth floor of the building at 283 Grand Street, where the fire started, said, “I have everything up there.” Staring up at the smoldering hulk on Monday, she added: “I’m lucky I have a pair of shoes right now. I don’t know where to go.” Firefighters did not learn that the 87-year-old was missing until two women showed up at Councilwoman Margaret Chin’s district office about 3 p.m. seeking news about their father’s whereabouts.
“They went through every single hospital looking for him,” Ms. Chin said hours before the body was found. Mr. Ho lived on the top floor of 285 Grand Street with one of his daughters, who was at work when the fire broke out, Ms. Chin said.
In the chaos of the blaze, it took some time for the daughters to realize he was missing, Ms. Chin said. She added that the family had presumed he was dead.
Firefighter Long said the blaze broke out in the back of a store on the ground level of 283 Grand Street, a century-old, six-story building fronted by fire escapes. Pillars of flame shot over the rooftops as the fire quickly spread. By midnight, it had reached seven alarms, the first to do so since the Deutsche Bank building fire in August 2007, which sent plumes of smoke over ground zero and left two firefighters dead.
Ms. Chin, whose district includes the buildings, said 283 Grand Street and 285-287 Grand next door, suffered the brunt of the damage and would have to be demolished. The buildings are owned by Fair Only Realty, whose chief officers are listed variously in city records as Ralph Sherman and Solomon Scheinfeld, both at the same address in Flushing, Queens. They did not return phone calls seeking comment.
The owners put the buildings, which were home to two ground-level stores and 30 apartments, on sale for the third time in five years in December, asking $13.5 million, according to Central City Brokerage, which carried the listing. Before the fire, the asking price had been dropped to $9.25 million. Of the 30 apartments, five were rent-controlled, 23 were rent-stabilized and two were rented at market rate, according to the listing.
“Two of the buildings are in really bad shape,” Ms. Chin said. “There’s no roof; it’s really just a shell, so they’re going to have to tear them down.”
Also damaged in the fire were 281 and 289 Grand Street, fire officials said.
Ms. Chen, who paid $770 a month for a one-bedroom apartment on the fourth floor, said residents had become frustrated with the landlord. “In the winter time, in the coldest days,” she said, “we would have no heat, no hot water.”
Trash also piled up in the basement, she said.
After a number of complaints to 311, the heat would be restored for a few days, then vanish again, she said.
“Excuse after excuse,” she said. “Very frustrating.”
Chris Kui, executive director of Asian Americans for Equality, a neighborhood advocacy group, said his organization had heard complaints about the building where the fire started. “We knew it had a lot of issues,” he said.
On Monday, the group was trying to find shelter for the people who had lost their homes, many of whom were elderly, Mr. Kui said.
Chen Hui, who lived on the third floor of 283 Grand Street, was talking with his wife in China on a Web cam when he realized that he and his parents, who also lived there, had to get out.

103 Eldridge Street: Then And Now

I was at the Eldridge Street Synagogue yesterday. More on that later. It reminded me of this then and now set I had


In the summer of 1942 all over the city blocks were raising banners noting how many of their sons were serving. We mentioned this in two previous postings.
One on Madison Street
and
One on Mott Street