The tale of New York City mayoral indifference to the plight of small business owners as described by Jen Rubin in a Friday op-ed piece in The New York Times struck a chord in me (https://nyti.ms/2vjst86).
Just as Rubin’s dad unsuccessfully sought municipal assistance and relief to forestall the gentrification-based elimination of affordable commercial rents on Broadway’s Upper West Side that was forcing independent shopkeepers to close, my father tried in vain to thwart New York University’s transformation of small apparel manufacturing factories along Broadway north and south of Houston Street into apartment lofts, some for student housing but many for wealthy tenants.
From the 1950s through the early 1980s, my father operated a lingerie factory on Broadway, shifting its location whenever his lease would expire, from 718 Broadway near 8th Street down to 692 Broadway (the old Tower Records building) to 683 Broadway to 611 Broadway at Houston Street (where Crate & Barrel now occupies the ground floor).
There was a whole community of moderately priced lingerie makers. Nearby, Joe Buchwald had a factory. To me he looked like the character actor James Gleason, a mainstay of films of the 1930s-1940s-1950s. There was Dora the lacemaker, a short, full-bodied woman my father befriended, perhaps because she shared a name with his first love back in Poland before they both sought refuge from Hitler, he to America, she to Australia. At the end of the day, and whenever the factory had to be moved to a new location, there was Sidney, a red-cheeked, always smiling, independent trucker with beefy hands and a fondness for my dad that overlooked his shouting to be quick and make his delivery to the Railway Express drop-off point a few blocks away so his slips and panties could be transported to stores across the country without incurring a late shipment deduction from the invoice.
NYU was the landlord for several of the buildings where my father leased whole floors. Back then NYU converted many of the buildings to loft apartments or studio space for artists. Doing so effectively put out of business many of the small lingerie manufacturers who for decades operated in the area.
When it was 611 Broadway’s turn to be converted, my dad organized a march on city hall to protest the city’s silence as jobs were sacrificed in the name of gentrification. All the rally did was get him a few seconds on the local news, Channel 7, I believe. He moved his factory to Brooklyn, into the Howard Bros. building just south of the Manhattan Bridge. By then, in the mid-1980s, the lingerie business was not strong, nor was the T-shirt business he has transitioned into. He was losing about $1,000 a month.
In his mid-70s, he couldn’t abide the thought of losing money. My brother and I counseled against closing the factory. It was, we told him, better therapy than seeing a shrink. It kept him active and out of the house, meaning, not in our mother’s hair 24 hours a day. As she used to say, she married him for breakfast and dinner, not for lunch. They had worked together for some 30 years, he in charge of the factory operations, she in charge of the office. When he ventured into her sanctuary, decibel levels invariably rose. Now in retirement, she had no desire to have him poking around her domestic domain all day.
Despite our best efforts, he chose to close his business. All he could see was red ink.
