Guss' Pickles

listen to ‘Guss Pickles’ on Audioboo

an excerpt from a nytimes' article on Guss'
The author is related to Marilyn Altman and Goldie Daniels, the Guss girls, who are heard above.

I know it’s unseemly to brag about one’s illustrious family lines, but sometimes a historic turn of events invites the opportunity to name-drop. Some of my closest friends don’t even know it, but I’m related to Jewish royalty (by marriage, I should clarify, but still). My brother married into pickles — Guss’ Pickles, to be specific, the famous Lower East Side institution that announced this week that it would soon leave that neighborhood for the lower rents and enthusiastic pickle purchasers of Borough Park, Brooklyn. The New York blogs have been outdoing themselves in fits of nostalgia about this loss of lingering history on Orchard Street. But for my brother’s mother-in-law, Marilyn Altman, and her sister, Goldie Daniels — the Guss girls, as they were known back in the day, along with their late sister, Elaine — the news about the business, which they sold in 1979, came as a shock. It was also an excuse for them to come in from New Jersey, where they both live, share some old stories about their father, Isadore Guss, and, in Goldie’s case, wolf down some of the half-sours she loves so well. After greeting the current owner of the shop, Goldie, blond and petite at 71, in a gold watch and gold hoops, instinctively situated herself in back of the barrels, the vantage point from which she had sold so many pickles to long lines down Hester Street, the store’s original location. “I ate more pickles than I sold,” she said, dipping a pan — a schissel, she called it, Yiddish for pail — into a barrel. “I loooove pickles.” She took a bite and rolled her eyes. “It’s like my heritage.” Of the three daughters, only Marilyn, the baby, now 65, was deprived the privilege of working at the store. That’s what you get for dropping a yo-yo in a pickle barrel and thinking maybe no one would notice. Goldie, however, worked there until she had children. If her mother had thought a woman could run a business, Goldie would have taken it over after her father’s death in 1975. Those days holding court behind the barrels as the whole neighborhood stopped by were some of the happiest of her life. “You just talked to everyone,” she said, and it was easy to see how that worked. As she chewed her pickle, a man with his daughter contemplated the barrels, and suddenly they were all four in animated conversation about the Great Wall of China, from where the father and daughter had just returned. What did they think? Wasn’t it fabulous? When Marilyn went, she’d worn the wrong shoes, wouldn’t you know it, kept sliding backward the whole time.

There Used To Be A Bakery Here: Gertels

A video I put together back in 2007, just prior to Gertels' closing. It was on 53 Hester Street. Kadouri Import was at 51 Hester and a tile factory was at 55. Many of the images came from this nytimes article :
An excerpt:

No More Babka? There Goes the Neighborhood By JOSEPH BERGER
 Gertel’s, the legendary bakery on Hester Street on the Lower East Side known for its Jewish treats like rugelach, babka and marble cake, has closed its doors. The closing is one more change in a string of changes on the historic Lower East Side, where hundreds of thousands of immigrants from Russia, Poland, Romania and Italy established their foothold in America and set up hundreds of dry goods and food shops that until recent years gave the area a characteristic pungency. But those shops are being replaced by hip boutiques and voguish restaurants, and only a few survivors, like the Russ & Daughters appetizing store and Katz’s Delicatessen, are left. Opened in 1914, Gertel’s, at 53 Hester Street near Essex Street, closed on June 22. A few days earlier, a sign had been posted, warning customers and passers-by of what some consider a culinary disaster. This writer’s father, who during his retirement worked part-time on the Lower East Side as a salesman in a dry goods store, J. S. Hosiery, would bring home challahs and cakes from Gertel’s, and they were always eagerly welcomed by his wife, grown children and their families. Gertel’s hung on even as its neighbors, like a store that sold dried fruit out of burlap bags, shut their doors. ....... On the tenement blocks nearby live Web designers, fashion photographers, makeup artists, and even some lawyers and stockbrokers who find this gritty, though gussied-up neighborhood to their liking. Some of them are grandchildren and great-grandchildren of striving sewing machine operators and hatmakers who fled the railroad flats with their airshafts and bathtubs in the kitchen for the fancy precincts of, yes, the Bronx and Brooklyn......

 Another story about the closing from lost new york city
ny curbed has links to several stories about what replaced Gertels.
Gertels still lives as a wholesale bakery and has merged with the Delancey Brand (so-so)

Quite by chance, I found them in Harlem, while wandering the air-conditioned aisles at Fairway. They wore the Delancey brand, and I almost didn't notice the Gertel's name, printed in much smaller type. (Via email, a representative for the food market stated that Gertel's "joined forces" with Delancey Bakery, a longtime Fairway supplier, less than a year ago.)
Fairway also carried Gertel's-baked, Delancey-branded sugar bowties, seven-layer cake, marble cake, cinnamon and chocolate swirls, cinnamon babka, Russian coffee cake, mini black-and-whites, and a hamentashen assortment, but with little hesitation I gravitated toward the chocolate rugelach.

I must confess as much as I miss the great food of the lower east side I was never a big fan of Gertels.
I much preferred Savoia's on Catherine Street.

Grace Hartigan and 49 Hester Street

hartigan-49-hester-st

11 Hester Street 1896

This block is now incorporated into the Seward Park housing site, completed in 1960 . It would be just east of the intersection of Suffolk and Hester. An 1891 real estate map would show a coal yard just north of the address. An up close view would show J. Smith selling watches and jewelry at number 11 and a man viewing a candy display featuring what appears to be boxes of candied balls at 5 cents a box. Some of the young boys are wearing civil war era hats also known as cheese-cutters due to its narrow, sharp brim. It evidently was popular at the time. In 1891 five barrel lots of rock candy went for 7 cents a pound.

Norfolk And Hester Streets: School Demolition 1931

This is across the street from the previous photo. The demolition was required due to the 6th Avenue subway construction.

22-24 Norfolk Street, near Hester Street: 1932

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.

"Out of The Night There Came A Lady "

With the story on the Lee family and its connection to PS 42 on Hester Street, I'm posting here some 2006-7 stories related to the school from pseudo-intellectualism
Ms. Rizzo requested some digital resources on Harriet Tubman so it looks like the Holly Near version of Walter Robinson's song will be dusted off again. Likewise "out of the night" appeared Gail Carson Levine. Well, not really. I sought out Ms. Levine. I wanted to share the work the kids were doing with her book. I thought she would appreciate the attempt to match the story with its real world locations. I also wanted to share the similar experiences of my father and hers, the Sephardic Jewry link, and Uncle Hy's connection to PS 42. Remarkably, after reading my blog, she thought I was cogent enough to return my call and we had a nice conversation. Coincidentally, her residence upstate is not too far away from where I destroyed my brakes last week. Synchronicity, zeitgeist, who knows? If the classes of the two schools manage to get together to celebrate "Dave At Night" Gail said she would join us and that would be great. I wonder how many Tweed and other DOE bureaucrats it would take to coordinate such an effort. Probably 3 or 4 meetings, a few retreats and a 200 page manual would be involved. Here's part of an interesting interview with Gail by Cynthia Leitich Smith: Gail Carson Levine on Gail Carson Levine: "I was born and grew up in New York City. I was a child in the 1950s, not very long after World War II. My neighborhood in northern Manhattan, Washington Heights, was a haven for refugees from Hitler, and German was spoken on the streets as often as English."The city was a wonderful place to be a kid. Every July 4th, my friends and I would walk to middle of the George Washington Bridge and watch the Macy's fireworks over the Hudson River. On weekends we might walk a mile uptown to the Cloisters, a medieval museum. Other times we'd walk a mile south to two other museums. When I was eleven, I was allowed to travel on the subways on my own, and then New York City was my oyster! In the winter, friends and I would ice skate in Central Park. In the summer, we'd picnic and swim at the beach two hours away by subway--for thirty cents each way!" You can find the rest of it here

Dave At Night

With the story on the Lee family and its connection to PS 42 on Hester Street, I'm posting here some 2006-7 stories related to the school from pseudo-intellectualism
The main character of this book attends PS42 on Hester Street. Here's a portion of the review: "In Dave at Night, Newbery Honor award– winning author Gail Carson Levine brilliantly describes in gritty detail an orphan’s journey from loss to fulfillment. Fans of her previous novel, Ella Enchanted, might be surprised at Gail Carson Levine's departure from the world of fantasy with her realistic new book, Dave at Night. Inspired by Ms. Levine's father's experience in the Hebrew Orphan Asylum in New York, this is the story of eleven-year-old Dave Caros.The year is 1926. Dave’s beloved father is dead, and his stepmother doesn’t want him. Only the HHB will take him in. Hebrew Home for Boys. Hell Hole for Brats. Dave is tough, a troublemaker. He can take care of himself. If he doesn’t like the Home, he’ll run away and find a better place. Only it’s not that simple. . . .This stunning new novel by Newbery Honor award–winning author Gail Carson Levine takes Dave from the poverty of the Lower East Side of New York City to the misery of the Hebrew Home for Boys to the hope and magic of Harlem during the Harlem Renaissance. It tells a tale of terrible loss and hard-won gains, of cruel relations and kind strangers, of great poverty and great wealth. Most of all, though, it tells a tale about the power of friendship." Here's the first few chapters as a slide show. I'm on my way to whole book. What's great about this book is that it has an audio version. Here's a segment as an mp3.

Unce Hy and PS 42

With the story on the Lee family and its connection to PS 42 on Hester Street, I'm posting here some 2006-7 stories related to the school from pseudo-intellectualism
I mentioned on 1/13/06, about a month before his passing, that my Uncle Hy attended PS 42. Many Sephardim, such as the tenement Museum Confinos also did. Here's an excerpt from a recent rememberance piece from the sephardiccouncil.org: "Hy Genee, the spiritual leader and president of Kehila Kedosha Janina, the Romaniote synagogue in New York City, passed away on February 13, 2006 at the age of 83 leaving the 100 year old congregation in tears. Kehila Kedosha Janina was founded by Greek Jewish immigrants in 1907, and named after the city of Janina (Ioannina), from where they came. The dignified old synagogue built in 1927 at 280 Broome Street remains, it is the only Romaniote synagogue in the Western Hemisphere. In addition, it stands as one of the last old synagogues on the Lower East Side of New York City, still in operation.Although it is often called Sephardic, the congregation that Hy led for many decades was made up of Romaniote Jews. These are neither Ashkenazic nor Sephardic Jews; they are Jews with their origins in ancient Greece, arriving there after the destruction of the first Beit HaMikdash (Temple) in Jerusalem. They have their own nusah (rite), an orthodox tradition similar but different than the Sephardic tradition. Similarities between the Romaniote and Sephardim indeed exist, because both groups spent hundreds of years together while Greece was under Ottoman Turkish rule. Yet, the Greeks are proud, and rightly so, of their unique traditions." I hope my Uncle can forgive me for being such a lapsed Jew, Actually, in his generosity of spirit he always did. Here's the full article