The Battle for Gotham by Roberta Brandes Gratz Read Free Book Online Page A

apartment building and let it be known that all tenants eventually would have to move to make way for university expansion. Urban renewal, then as now, helped educational institutions expand campuses through eminent domain, the taking of private property for a loosely defined public purpose. Bobst Library, a hulking sandstone library designed by Philip Johnson, was built on the site.
    As if losing our apartment and my father’s plant were not enough, underworld forces were muscling in on small businesses, like my father’s on Eighth Street, making it increasingly difficult for business owners like my father to remain independent. The primary site for Larry Brandes Dry Cleaners was centrally located on Eighth Street, at MacDougal. Eighth Street is the Village’s equivalent to a Main Street.

    1.2 “L. Brandes Cleaners” was my father’s store on Eighth Street, circa 1930s or 1940s, with delivery truck parked in front. Eighth Street BID.

    PUSHED TO LEAVE
    The combination of Robert Moses Urban Renewal and the underworld shakedowns made our departure inevitable. So we moved to Weston, Connecticut, the neighboring town to Westport. My father, having sold what he could of the business in the city, opened in neighboring Westport one of the first cash-and-carry dry-cleaning stores in a Connecticut shopping center. My sister, Paula, was working for a New York advertising agency, and she created a newspaper campaign that started weeks before the opening, playing on the theme of “city to suburb.”
    No pick-up and home delivery service was offered in the new store, as had been done in the city, but same-day service and on-site shirt laundering were possible that hadn’t been in his city stores. The store opened in 1953, and I eagerly worked there after school and Saturdays, starting by assembling hangers and eventually waiting on customers.
    “Hand-finishing” (a fancy term for ironing) was a service not usually available in dry-cleaning stores. My father introduced that service in Westport. Katie, a woman who worked in the West Third Street plant, commuted from Harlem to Westport to continue working for my father. He picked her up every morning at the train station. Amazingly as well, two of the pressers, Al and Phil, who lived in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant and also had worked on West Third Street, commuted from the city every day to continue working for my father. They were ardent Brooklyn Dodger fans; my father and I were equally ardent Yankee fans. During games—especially pennants and World Series—the store was wild with cheers and jeers. Customers came second.
    I remember being fascinated at how many customers knew my father from the Village. “Are you the same Larry Brandes, dry cleaner, that used to be on Eighth Street?” they would ask. They were former city customers, now new suburbanites seeking the same greener pastures as my father. Greenwich Village residents were moving to Westport. The exodus to the suburbs was gaining momentum. We were witness to and participants in a phenomenon that would change the face of America.
    Weston, where we moved to, was a small-town adjunct to the larger, better-known Westport. I went to junior high in Weston but high school in Westport because Weston did not yet have one. My father’s store was in Westport.
    My father dreamed of building a year-round house. We had the land. Our summer cottage—no heat or winter insulation—was on the site. That tiny two-bedroom house was an expression of family creativity. My father built closets, installed windows where only screens had been, and created a small but efficient kitchen. My sister painted Peter Hunt designs on cabinets and closet doors. My mother sewed slipcovers and curtains. I helped “drip” paint the floors with my mother and sister à la Jackson Pollock. That cottage was demolished to make room for a year-round split-level house, the popular housing design of the 1950s.
    Weston, in the heart of Fairfield County,