Brooklyn Shopping

The big downtown department stores were not the only shopping options in Brooklyn in 1946. Every neighborhood had a shopping street, usually the street the trolley or bus ran down, with small independent specialty and clothing shops and movie theaters, The shopping streets also had a lot of chain stores like Vim's or Davega's, which sold sporting goods and electronics; shoe stores like Thom McAn's, Regal, Red Cross and Miles; Loft's Candy; Busch Credit Jewelers; Ebinger's or Hanscom bakeries; Woolworth's, Grants, Kresge's and other five-and-dimes, mixed in with barber shops, butchers, fishmongers, produce stands, dry cleaners, tailors, Chinese hand laundries, ethnic food stores and, candy stores where you bought your newspapers, cigarettes, comic books and maybe grabbed a grill cheese or egg cream at the counter. There also were drug stores, cafeterias, restaurants, delis, taverns and, in the more upscale neighborhoods, maybe a beauty parlor.

Grocery stores included chains like A&P and Bohacks as well as smaller mom and pop operations. The grocery chain stores were a lot smaller than present day supermarkets and didn't have parking lots. The first of supermarket in the nation, King Kullen, had opened in 1930 in Jamaica, Queens, but the Depression and the War slowed their spread and in 1946 most neighborhoods did not have one yet.

The stores on Flatbush Avenue to the east of Midwood stretched for miles; there was a Sears Roebuck on the street. Pitkin Avenue in Brownsville was a major commercial drag; Fortunoff's sold pots and pans at discount prices in several stores strung along nearby Livonia Avenue. In Midwood, King's Highway on the southern boundary was a neighborhood shopping destination as was J Street and Nostrand Avenue.

Loehmann's had a special place in the heart of bargain hunters in 1946. The flagship had been on Bedford Avenue for more than twenty years. Frieda Loehmann, a former department store buyer, saw a business in selling samples and overstock at discount prices. She had a fine eye for quality and strong bargaining skills. While Loehmann's was an icon of Jewish Brooklyn, the Loehmanns themselves were German-American Lutherans from Ohio who at one time had lived above Frieda's first basement store on Nostrand Avenue. Mr. Loehmann was a musician and clothing merchant. Frieda's Bedford Avenue store was ornate with banquettes in striped zebra fabric, like the El Morocco night club, fur covered chairs, tassled chandeliers and baroque tables. She held court on the second floor landing seated on a throne-like gilded chair. She dressed in black, dyed her hair red and had a lollipop pat of rouge on each cheek. She was unapproachable and was said to have cash stashed in her garter or boottops for her visits to the Seventh Avenue showrooms to pick up merchandise. Occasionally she would walk on to the selling floor to chastise customers who mishandled the merchandise.

Loehmann's had no dressing rooms. Men were supposed to sit on the gold chairs on the landings while their wives stripped to their undergarments and tried on clothes on the selling floor. The best stuff was in an upstairs room where one-of-a-kind designer samples were set aside for special customers. The lower floors had more ordinary goods. In this time of continued clothing shortages, it must have been a tough business to maintain. In any case it was a unique establishment, unlike the widespread discount chain that now bears the name.

You didn't have to go to a store to shop. A lot of vendors plied the streets,