SJ Bill's Memories From a Beatty Street Picture, The Burg
SJBill wrote...
Mack, this is another "Where to begin?" image. You are at
Freudenmacher Alley and Beatty Street. From left to right,
the Hub Liquors parking lot used to be the back yard of
the Bijou Tailors building. Lots of businesses in the
neighborhood had the name Bijou (pronounced Bye-Joe!).
The buiding appears to have been expanded to include a
second floor over what was a one story pressing shop.
There was a steam pipes on the roof that had periodic
white clouds whenever the steam press was used.
Continuing on Baatty and across Genesee street is the
triple-decker where the Rosetti family once lived. In
the back yard, Mr. Rosetti built a tomato pie restaurant
that was pretty good. Unfortunately the restaurant did
not withstand the test of time. Mr. Rosetti moved out to
Pennington Circle and was selling pie into the '80s.
Across Beatty was the the old Paramount Bakery, which
is still a Hispanic bakery (Whoo hoo!). Coming back on
right side of Beatty Street - the yellow building with
the beautiful boarded windows was at one time a barber
shop belonging to Zoltan Kopczik in the '50s. The vacant
lot behind that was a feed store. This place catered to
the remaining horse and buggy owners and to those that
grew chickens and pigeons in backyard coops. Having a
chicken coop was leftover from WW-II, like having a
Victory Garden. Some were pretty elaborate. There were
a few Burg residents grew and flew messenger pigeons
for food and fun.
Thanks for this SJ, its great:)
6 comments:
I loved it when my uncle "thinned" his coup and they would make a noodle soup.
Evenings always had the pigeons racing around the neighborhood and you got to know whose flock was in the air.
Sadly there was a disease associated with the pigeon droppings and the city stopped issuing any new permits.
With the new wave of Hispanics came fighting birds and I even saw a pig being raised in a basement on Mill Hill. The town was changing.
Skip
HI MAC....SJ AND SKIP MENTIONED PIGEONS. WELL, MY FRIEND AND NEIGHBOR ON MOTT ST. AND LATTER GENESEE ST, PETE GALFETTI, WAS A CHAMP IN RAISING PIGEONS. AND ALSO, I RECALL THE PARAMOUNT BAKERY AS BEING RUN BY ANOTHER NEIGHBOR ON MOTT ST. IN THE 30'S. IT WAS AN ITALIAN BAKERY AT THAT TIME. BEST REGARDS.
Back when life had simple pleasures I was in envy of a few of the kids in the neighborhood that had coops.
There was competition among the local clubs to get the pigeons back to the area.
They were homing/racing pigeons and they had a band. There was some elaborate gizmo that put a time on the band on the leg when the bird was released somewhere out in Pennsylvania or the pines. Then it was "clocked" back in when and if it made it back to the coop.
Skip
SJ's mention of the remaining horse and buggy owners brought back one more and it took awhile to come back.
Into the early 1950's you would hear a call accompanied by the clop, clop of horses hooves ... "Bring out your dead, bring out .... (just kidding, that was from a Monte Python movie wasn't it?
"Rags and bones, rags and bones, bring your rags and bones"
That was the sound of Jake The Ragman and his trusty horse with blinders. Yes indeed there was recycling back then. He made his way all over Wilbur and was always seen heading towards the Burg so I'm certain his route took him to those parts.
The rags went for cloth and the bones for fertilizer and I believe soap making? We had tar buckets for recycling then. I remember my uncle burning off the tar in a cloud of black smoke so we could use the bucket. The ice man may have used a horse drawn wagon too but my memory of Jake is clear. To a five year old a horse clopping along was :)
skip
Since my father was a roofer, he was the source of most of the tar buckets in our immediate neighborhood. His brand of choice was Barrett, still in business since the 1920s.
The burning-clean of the tar bucket was a ritual known to many in the back yards on Haggerty and Freudenmacher Alleys.
Freudenmacher Alley was one of the preferred covert routes to/from home when leaving Harrison School or the side EXIT doors of the RKO Broad. Some movies they played at that place were so bad a kid could not sit through them.
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