A Stroll Down Madison Avenue, 1947
A Celebration of Small Stores
Returning to Fortune’s December 1947 portfolio on Madison Avenue, following the overview and history I sent out the other day was a six-page exploration of the many stores and establishments that made the street so special. Many of these businesses were already long-established by the 1940s—several over one hundred years old—yet few remain today. By my calculations, only two establishments continue in the same locations, while the few others remaining have moved and, for the most part, morphed. Brooks Brothers closed its historic Madison Avenue flagship (opened in 1915) in 2020 and is a shadow of its former self; Abercrombie and Fitch—now completely rebranded—closed its Madison Avenue store in 1977 after sixty years. Stationary engravers Dempsey & Carroll is still going, but now located on Lexington Avenue; Wilkes Pipe Tobacco is now headquartered in Massachusetts. Those that have lasted? The Persian Shop at 534 Madison as the family owns and lives in the building, and Frank E. Campbell’s Funeral Home, located at 1076 Madison Avenue since 1938 (Campbell founded the parlor in 1898). As Guy Talese told the New York Times last year, “…Campbell is the rare New York business that might never close, because it will never run out of customers—because everyone dies.”
Read this like a guidebook to the past—where, if you were suddenly deposited onto Madison Avenue in 1947, would you go for lunch, purchase lingerie or a tweed suit, pick up some fish for dinner? —as well as a celebration of the unique and specialized. With the original text in italics, I’ve added further context about many of the stores and places below—every time I looked up a business, I ended up down a deep rabbit hole of newspaper articles, family trees, and old advertisements, with it clear that each location was deserving of greater study. Maybe take this as a push to shop local and seek out unique businesses—and possibly research some of the long-gone stores and historic buildings around you. What was your coffee shop originally used for? Your favourite restaurant? Where was the most fashionable store in your neighbourhood forty, sixty, or eighty years ago? There are stories everywhere.
“A portfolio celebrating one of the world's choicest and most unpublicized shopping centers—Main Street to many New Yorkers.”
Fortune, December 1947. Photos by Fons Fanelli and Myron Ehrenberg.
FOR TWO WHOLE MILES OF ITS LENGTH, THE SMALL SHOPS of Madison Avenue offer a treat to the window-shopper. The variety is great. Children naturally gravitate to Young Books, above, whose windows suggest not only a remarkable juvenile library, arranged by age groups, but unusual toys (latex dolls looking especially like "real children") and a miscellany of youthful items ranging from quilts illustrating the history of polo to miniature black hatboxes, fashion-model style, for the weekending little girl. From the Casserole Kitchen its Viennese proprietor, Karl, for fifteen years head chef of New York City's celebrated 21 restaurant, will deliver delicacies ready to be heated and served at home. His specialties: baked, sugar-cured ham impériale (with black cherries); fowl in sauce piquante with cheese; baby duckling à l'orange. The price, plus vegetable, potato, salad, and rolls, is $1.95 a portion.
Casserole Kitchen appears to have been in business from 1942 to around 1972, with Karl’s son Bob joining the company after WWII and later taking it over. It was a celebrity and socialite favourite throughout its long life, with many women passing the fancy dinners off as their own (in the mid-60s, CK produced around 700 dinners a day in NYC). While researching I came across another “Karl Virag,” an outsider artist who created "The Decoupage House" in Galveston, Texas—it’s worth a look.
Among the Avenue's many small jewelers are Olga Tritt and Merrin, above and below, while on the bottom a passerby gazes at the precise display of Dempsey & Carroll, unique in the city in being exclusively stationers and engravers (not an adjunct to a jewelry house). Among their many services are private letterheads engraved with the portraits of favorite dogs.
Olga Tritt was definitely a fascinating character—and one I will likely need to return to. A concise biography can be found at the Antique Jewelry University; this aquamarine-and-diamond necklace she made for the Brazilian pavilion at the 1939 New York World’s Fair is spectacular.
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