by Michele
Winitsky Palmer
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This
photo/oral history
is a tribute to the generation
who started it all, including
my father, Louis Winitsky.
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For over a
century, fabrics and Fourth Street have been interwoven.
Many of the Jewish immigrants who settled there around the
turn of the twentieth century were tailors or
seamstresses. Working long hours in sweatshops, they
produced the clothing that made Philadelphia the leading
men's apparel manufacturer in the world.
Other
Jewish immigrants on Fourth Street included peddlers who
hawked dry goods like fabric remnants, sewing supplies,
sheets and curtains. They worked out of pushcarts that
lined the streets, or from stands -- tables made of boards
and sawhorses -- that leaned against the storefronts.
Eventually, they opened up fabric stores, mainly in the
700 block between Bainbridge and Catherine streets.
Today, the
pushcarts are gone, as are many of the old fabric
establishments. Still, a number of them remain, along
with a new generation of entrepreneurs, and a new name for
the area -- Fabric Row. |
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Pushcarts on
Fourth Street, 1914
photo courtesy of the Philadelphia City Archives |
Known in
Yiddish as "Der Ferder" (the Fourth), South Fourth
Street was a bustling marketplace, a lifeline that ran
through the immigrant Jewish community, from Lombard
Street to Washington Avenue. Besides dry goods and
fabric businesses, it included dozens of kosher butcher
shops, fish stores, and dairy stores, plus hundreds of
fruit and vegetable carts and stands.
"Our neighborhood includes ... Fourth Street,
Philadelphia's closest approach to New York's lower East
Side, where we have the pushcarts, crowded streets and
pavements, the open air display of calico, candy,
pickles and fish for sale... Ours is an economically but
not a morally depressed neighborhood."
1914-15 Annual Report of
the Neighborhood Center, the settlement house at 422-28
Bainbridge Street
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One of the
oldest fabric related businesses still on Fourth Street is
Marmelstein's, a home decorating and bridal accessories
shop, which began in 1919.
"Actually, [the business] started with just a little
suitcase with thread, needles, thimbles... [My parents,
Abraham and Dora Marmelstein] had a stand. They were out in
all kinds of weather. They sold notions and trimming...
They lived at 769, 751, 733, then back to 751, then
eventually across to here [760]. So all of us have spent
our lives on this street."
-- Selma Marmelstein Buchsbaum, from an oral history
courtesy of The Philadelphia Folklore Project
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By the
1920's, many of the peddlers and stand keepers had moved
up the business ladder into dry goods and fabric
stores. Tailors and dressmakers came from all over the
city to buy fabrics from them.
Stapler's
Fabrics, which began on a pushcart, was already a well
established business. Like most of the fabric stores,
it was family run, with every member of the family
participating.
photo, right, courtesy of the Philadelphia City Archives |
Looking
north on Fourth Street, 1926 |
"The
entire family, including all the sisters, were in the
business. There were eight all together, and the whole life
revolved around that store. They lived up above. My father
would say he lived on the roof! But they ate and slept and
drank there. Everything was done in that store... [My
mother] met my father [there]. Her mother took her there to
have her clothes made, and that's how they met."
-- Susan Stapler
Because merchants lived above their stores, they often kept
long hours.
"We
stood open seven days a week, even till eleven, twelve
o'clock at night. We never went to sleep."
-- Viola Adler
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Looking
south on Fourth Street, 1936 |
Fourth
Street didn't feel the effects of the Depression as much
as other areas because people bought fabrics to sew
their own clothes.
"The fabric stores survived in the Depression. They
worked on a close markup. I'm not saying they made
fortunes, but the stores were busy... People couldn't
afford to buy clothes, so they made them.. If you didn't
know how to sew, you learned how."
-- Marvin Gomer
"There were always
customers on Fourth Street."
-- Samuel Goldberg
photo,
left, courtesy of the Philadelphia City Archives
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To further
promote trade, a business association was established.
"On
August 15, 1933, South Fourth St. Business Merchants
gathered together at the Talmud Torah, 314 Catherine Street
for the purpose of discussing the possibilities of an
Association for our purposes along south Fourth St. in the
vicinity of Washington Ave. to South St....
Upon motion duly made and
seconded, it was resolved that the body of men be known as
the South Fourth Street Business Men's Association."
-- from minutes of the
Association, courtesy of the Philadelphia Jewish Archives
Center
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For many
merchants, World War II proved to be more challenging
than the Depression. Because fabric manufacturers were
supplying the armed forces, it was difficult to keep the
stores stocked.
"I used to commute to New
York every day [to find fabrics]."
-- Samuel Goldberg
"We used to close a lot
because we didn't have the merchandise, and we weren't
going to pay black market prices."
-- Frances Winitsky
"You had lines of people
waiting for fabric."
-- Blossom Polsky Markind
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Fourth
Street in the forties
photo
courtesy of The Atwater Kent Museum |
Moreover, the stores had to close Tuesdays and Thursdays at
6 p.m. to conserve electricity. According to Gertrude
Zubrow Gubernick, her father, Nathan Zubrow, had a fire
alarm bell hooked up to a light switch in his store. At 6
p.m. he rang the bell as the signal for the shops to close.
Sometimes a storekeeper asked him to hold off ringing the
bell -- if he was in the middle of a sale -- or to ring it
early, so a non-buying customer wouldn't go to a competitor!
The war was hard on the Jewish merchants for other reasons,
too. They worried about their sons in the army, and about
the fate of relatives still in Europe.
"The Holocaust was an emotional
drain on my parents. They both had left large families
behind."
-- Selma Marmelstein
Buchsbaum, from an oral history courtesy of The Philadelphia
Folklore Project |
Fourth
Street, Post World War II
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After the
war, life on Fourth Street changed dramatically.
Post-war prosperity meant fulfilling the American dream
of a house in the suburbs. Merchants who had once lived
above their stores now commuted to work. Because of the
post-war building boom, people began buying more home
decorative fabrics. To go along with the trend, many
stores shifted their merchandise from dress fabrics and
ready-made curtains to decorative fabrics.
photo,
left, courtesy of the Philadelphia City Archives |
"[Everyone] had new homes and ... enough
money, and they wanted everything decorated."
-- Morris Shanfeld
"Most people went into
custom-made -- the heavy draperies with the sheers
underneath, wall-to-wall, the whole works."
-- Morris Kornsgold
"People
knew the name 'Silk Leaders,' so when we went into the
drapery business, [we] just never changed it. People come
in here all the time saying, 'Where are your silks?' "
-- Harold Pravitz
There was a new level of sophistication on Fourth Street
after the war. A few businesses expanded into wholesale as
well as retail trade. These included Rosenblitt's (
Roseline Fabrics) and Winitsky & Co. (Win-tex Fabrics).
Merchants like Samuel Goldberg went on buying trips around
the world. And in the 1950's, pushcarts were outlawed.
"[Some] people thought the end of the
world was coming when the pushcarts left...[Instead] it
really lifted the level of customer and sale on the street."
-- David Auspitz
"Fourth Street is still known
all over the United States... You build a reputation."
-- Samuel Goldberg
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photo, above: Phil Morgenstern (lt.) and Louis
Winitsky, partners in Winitsky & Co. and Win-tex
Fabrics, 724 South Fourth Street, on a 1950's buying
trip in New York. Their other partner, Max Rapoport,
was probably back on Fourth Street...
photo, left: Samuel Rosenthal sold woolens here
at 747 South Fourth Street from 1917 until the early
1930's when he moved his business to Fifth Street.
By then, Fourth Street was specializing in ladies'
silks and woolens, while Fifth Street specialized in
men's woolens. Rosenthal's is now a third generation
business. |
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Notes:
Unless otherwise indicated, all quotes are from oral
histories the author conducted from 1997-1998.
Family Finder:
Seeking information on
Leon H. Hahn: He was in the dry goods business in
Philadelphia before and after WWII. Contact Bill Meyers
at
BPMeyers@aol.com
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Were your
parents or grandparents in the fabric business on Fourth
Street?
The Fabric Museum would
be pleased to add photos of them and/or their store to
the Fourth Street Family Album. Send photos, comments,
and any questions to:
mpalmer@fabricmuseum.org
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