Monday Night ONT - November 9, 2026 [TRex]

Good evening Horde. Welcome to the Monday overnight thread. The bar is open and the refrigerator has been freshly re-stocked with Rootbeer.

Welcome to the Monday night ONT which means vintage overnight fun and games. Pull up a chair and join the fun. Good will offerings of amusing puns are encouraged. Be nice to your fellow commenters and AoS contributors. Pants are optional. Trolls prohibited. This ONT is a Tucker, Candace, Megyn, and Bill Kristol free zone. Fauci is still fair game.

[Top photo: Herald Square, 34th and Broadway, Manhattan - Berenice Abbott photo - 1936]

The Monday ONT has dialed up the wayback machine with very random results. This is the 1930s New York edition (with public domain photos courtesy of the New York Public Library).

Will the Monday ONT always have a wayback machine theme? I'm a dinosaur with a small brain and short arms. I can barely tie my shoes. Don't make me predict what the future holds.

Horn & Hardart Automat at 977 Eighth Avenue in Manhattan (between West 57th and 58th Streets near Columbus Circle) - Berenice Abbott photo - 1936.

Horn & Hardart introduced the Automat concept (originally German) to the U.S. in Philadelphia in 1902 and to New York in 1912 (first at Times Square). The chain grew into the world's largest restaurant company at its peak. The last New York Automat closed in 1991.

The building with the Automat at 977 Eighth Avenue no longer exists.

Blossom Restaurant, 103 Bowery, Lower Manhattan (between Grand and Hester Streets) - Berenice Abbott photo - 1935.

Broome Street, Numbers 504-506, Manhattan (northwest corner of Broome Street and West Broadway in what is now SoHo) - Berenice Abbott photo - 1935.

The buildings no longer exist.

Fulton Street Dock: Manhattan Skyline (or Fulton Street Dock, Looking West, Manhattan / from Pier 17) - Berenice Abbott photo - 1935.

Gasoline Station, Tenth Avenue and 29th Street, Manhattan (what is now the Chelsea / Hudson Yards neighborhood of Manhattan) - Berenice Abbott photo - 1935.

A & P, Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company, 246 Third Avenue (between East 20th and 21st Streets) - Berenice Abbott photo - 1936.

The store occupied the ground floor of a tenement at 246 Third Avenue, one block east of Gramercy Park. At the time, A&P was the world's largest grocery chain (about 15,500 stores nationwide by 1937, including 119 in Manhattan). Looks to be a bagel shop today.

Frank Lava, Gunsmith, 6 Centre Market Place, Manhattan (between Broome and Grand Streets near the Lower East Side / Little Italy / Chinatown area) - Berenice Abbott - 1937.

A number of gun shops once lined the street. They were neighbors to the massive Police Headquarters across the way at 240 Centre Street. The business was founded around 1850 (by Eli Parker). Frank Lava was a third-generation owner who continued operating it into the 1960s.

Jefferson Market Court, Southwest corner of Sixth Avenue and West 10th Street, Manhattan - Berenice Abbott photo - 1935.

The courthouse ceased judicial use in 1945 and faced possible demolition. It was adapted as a New York Public Library branch, reopening in 1967. It remains the Jefferson Market Library at 425 Avenue of the Americas (Sixth Avenue). The Sixth Avenue El was demolished in 1939.

Mori's Restaurant, 144 Bleecker Street, Manhattan - Berenice Abbott photo - 1935.

Placido Mori, an Italian immigrant from Florence, opened the Italian restaurant in Greenwich Village in 1883/1884. It grew from a small bar and eatery into a well-known spot that survived Prohibition and the early Depression. In 1920, Mori bought the adjoining building and added a unified facade with columns and penthouse. Mori died in 1927. The restaurant closed in 1937 and the corporation filed for bankruptcy in early 1938.

Today, it looks like the ground floor has a stationary/shipping store and cannabis dispensary with apartments above. The columns at ground level remain.

Newsstand, East 32nd Street and Third Avenue, Manhattan - Berenice Abbott photo - 1935.

Zoom in on some of the magazines:

Park Avenue and 39th Street, Manhattan - Berenice Abbott photo - 1936

Visible towers include (from left to right) 10 East 40th Street, 22 East 40th Street, the Murray Hill Building, the Lefcourt Colonial Building, and the Lincoln Building.

Who was Berenice Abbott?

(July 17, 1898 - December 9, 1991) - American photographer that grew up in Ohio before moving to New York City. She moved to Paris in 1921 to study sculpture. In 1923, Man Ray hired her as his darkroom assistant. He taught her photography and she quickly developed her own skills. She opened a portrait studio in 1926 and gained recognition for sharp, psychologically revealing portraits of writers, artists, and expatriates. She met Eugene Atget and, after his death in 1927, acquired a large portion of his negatives and prints, rescuing them from obscurity and later promoting his documentary work in Paris.

She returned to New York in 1929. She received support in 1935 from the Federal Art Project (part of the WPA). She produced roughly 300 photographs for the project. A selection appeared in the 1939 book "Changing New York" which is where the photos for this post come from. The work is regarded as a major documentary record of Depression-era New York.

From the 1940s onward she focused on scientific photography, inventing ways to visualize physical phenomena (magnetism, motion, etc.) and illustrating physics textbooks and popular books, including work for MIT. She wrote guides such as "A Guide to Better Photography" in 1941. In the 1960s she moved permanently to rural Monson, Maine.

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posted by Open Blogger at 10:00 PM

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