Gentrification Took Its Toll on Broadway

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.

Vertically Challenged and Red Ink

When you’re almost a foot taller than your wife, standing straight has its challenges. Unlike Fred and Ginger, we don’t dance cheek to cheek, even when Gilda wears heels. Where to hang pictures on the wall is a quandary. Her eye level is way below mine. Gilda raises the bathroom shade a mere 22”. I prefer a more comfortable 33”, so that I don’t have to bend over like a hunchback to peer outside.

My father used to tell his children to stand up straight and walk with shoulders thrust back so we wouldn’t bend over. I think he was reacting to the many hunched over men and women he saw in his youth in Poland. He didn’t want us to turn into hunchbacks. Eastern European Ashkenazi Jews have a tendency to suffer from scoliosis, a condition Gilda sees quite often among Hasidic patients who come to the spine surgery practice where she works. It’s a curable condition if caught early enough. 

I’m not really in danger of becoming a latter day Quasimodo, but I do sometimes envy those couples who are more vertically compatible.

Speaking of my father, I thought of him the other week when New York University received City Council approval to expand its Greenwich Village campus despite opposition from community groups and even members of its own faculty who feared the project would alter the character of the neighborhood. According to an article in The NY Times, “University officials argued that if they could not build on that parcel, they would have to continue buying up, tearing down or converting buildings, which would further damage the neighborhood’s character and infuriate residents.”

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). NYU was the landlord for several of those buildings. Back then they converted many of the buildings in the area to loft apartments or office space. 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 father organized a march on city hall. 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 polo 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. 

The Place

Today is the 100th anniversary of the Triangle shirtwaist factory fire. One hundred forty-six workers, almost all young Italian and Jewish seamstresses, perished after fire broke out on the eighth floor of a 10-story building near Washington Square in Manhattan. The scene of the tragedy, the Asch Building (how achingly onomatopoetic was its name), still stands. Now part of New York University, it has been renamed the Brown Building of Science.

You don’t need me to tell you the story of that fateful, horrific day a century ago and how the nation responded with a more vibrant labor movement and safety laws to protect workers. Over the last week there have been quite a few newspaper articles and TV memorials (among the best: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-mind-set-that-survived-the-triangle-shirtwaist-fire/2011/03/22/ABh20rEB_story.html#).

My brother, sister and I grew up immersed in the community of small apparel factories in the neighborhood of the Triangle along Broadway north of Houston Street. Among our earliest memories are our father’s Manhattan factories, beginning in the early 1950s with the one at 718 Broadway near 8th Street and ending almost 30 years later at 611 Broadway at the corner of Houston, with stops along the way at 683 and 692 Broadway (for reference points, 692 Broadway is the building that housed Tower Records; 611 is where Crate & Barrel has a store).

At its zenith, our father’s business of making half slips and panties, and later knit shirts, employed 60, all but two—James and Ricky—Afro-American or Puerto Rican women. He ran a non-union shop, never, to my knowledge, challenged by the ILGWU (the International Ladies Garment Workers Union). The union knew our father—and mother— ran an honest, fair firm. His workers stayed with him for decades.

Lucy. Salita. Eloise. Big Mary. I can still see them vividly in my mind, each one standing or sitting at her station. Lucy was the floor foreman. Salita affixed labels. Eloise sat at the end of the line, sewing lace to the half slips. Big Mary sat at the other end of the line stitching fronts and backs together. The factory would open around 8:30 am, the workers would leave at 4:30. Our parents would finally depart for home around 6. Little Mary would saunter in around 11:30, after sending her kids off to school, and maybe after taking a snort or two. She sat two tables down from Big Mary. She’d often take a break from her Merro sewing machine to rest her head on folded arms. I once asked my father why he tolerated her lax behavior. Because, he replied, she was the fastest sewer he had. She turned out more in the short time she worked than any of the “full-time” operators.

Operators. That’s what the women were called. The sewers got paid by piece work. The more tickets of each batch they collected the more they made each week. Our mother handled payroll. Payday was Wednesday, in cash, in small manila money envelopes, the type that opened from the top.

The factory, or as our family called it, “The Place,” was a bee hive of noise with sewing machines buzzing out bursts of stitches, tall upright industrial fans beating the stagnant air, street noises filtering in through open windows, and our father screaming to be heard above the machinery. He was always screaming, never really in anger, just screaming as part of his perpetual motion. And yet, in the late afternoon hours, when the activity started to die down, as he’d be hunched over a Merro machine trying to coax it back into life, he’d start singing a song. No song in particular, just a melody of contentment. More often than not he’d open up the old Coca-Cola machine and pass out drinks.

I have fond memories of visiting The Place. Though he offered three times my 1972 starting salary of $7,800 as a newspaper reporter to join him (equal to roughly $125,000 in today’s dollars), I couldn’t work for, not with, my father. Chalk it up to the age-old conflict between fathers and sons. Let’s leave it at that.