Downtown Brooklyn

A&S was the main attraction in a cluster of major department stores, including Namm's, Loeser's (pronounced LO- zhurs), Martin's and Oppenheim-Collins, that stood in 1946 where the decidedly more down-scale Fulton Street Mall now stands. The Brooklyn stores were all major advertisers in the Sunday News the week before Easter. (More details on the Sunday News Brooklyn section advertisers here)

Downtown Brooklyn also was home to several large move theaters including the RKO Albee, the Fox , the Metropolitan, and the Brooklyn Paramount. These theaters usually got movies just after their downtown Manhattan runs had finished and before they hit the neighborhoods. The Paramount sometimes also had live stage shows like the movie palaces on Times Square. Frank Sinatra performed there.

On April 14 “Gilda,” starring Rita Hayworth was playing at the Fox and the recent Academy Award-winner “Lost Weekend” was at the Paramount. The suspense thriller “The Spiral Staircase” was the main attraction of a double-bill at the Albee, while Clark Gable and Greer Garson starred in “Adventure” at the Metropolitan.( More on these movies and other playing the neighborhoods here).

Downtown Brooklyn also had penny arcades and open-front stands that sold franks and watered down fruit drinks, just like Times Square. The Fulton Street El had stopped service in 1940 and was torn down in 1941, opening the street to sunlight. The trolleys and electric buses were still running but would be phased out over the next few years.

Downtown Brooklyn had venerable restaurants like the original Joe's--Mimi Sheraton particularly liked the roast turkey piled on thyme-scented dressing with giblet gravy, mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce-- and Gage & Tollner's as well as lunch counters for a quick, cheap meal. According to Elliot Willensky, the countermen at Nedick's were sullen while the light-skinned African-American counterwomen at Chock Full O'Nuts were genteel and polite and handled food with tongs and plastic gloves. The Chock Full O' Nuts were spartan and featured cream cheese and walnut sandwiches on raisin bread, brownies, cakey whole wheat donuts, thin lobster salad sandwiches and it's "heavenly coffee." They had a no-tipping policy and had begun as nut stands in the mid-1920s, becoming one of the first fast food places in the 1930s..