The Little House on White Street
By Oliver E. Allen
The battered neon sign proclaiming “Liquor Store” that hangs from the side of the venerable Federal-style building at 2 White Street, together with the window lettering beneath it that advertises “Wines Liquors Cordials Imported & Domestic,” bespeak an era several decades ago when both that building and one that stood across West Broadway (the site is now a parking lot) were owned by a single family, the Hechts. The building on the other side of the street, at 3 North Moore Street, was described in last month’s Trib. Here is the story of the Hecht family’s tenure at 2 White Street.
Almost 200 years old and now a designated New York City individual landmark, 2 White Street was constructed in 1808 as the very proper residence for a prominent New York businessman and politician named Gideon Tucker.
A school commissioner and Assistant Alderman (the equivalent of a Councilmember today), Tucker was also the proprietor of the Tucker and Ludlum plaster factory, which was located nearby. Tucker was sufficiently well known to have his portrait painted in 1830 by the distinguished artist William Sidney Mount. (The canvas is now in the Metropolitan Museum.)
The building Tucker got for his money was a truly lovely two-and-a-half-story house with a gambrel (double-sloping) roof and two dormer windows, and with felicitous detailing. Note the dainty rectangular dentil blocks under the cornice, still elegant after two centuries. The neighborhood was filled with such buildings at the time, but now only this one survives in its original guise.
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As it happened, Tucker did not own the house for long, selling it in 1809. Over the next century it changed hands many times; for a while it was owned by a brewery, though whether beer was actually brewed there is not known. The building itself underwent few changes outside of some window treatments on the first floor.
In 1923 Jacob Hecht bought it as an investment.
Hecht already owned the bar and restaurant across West Broadway, which he purchased from a relative in the early 1920s.
During the 1920s and 1930s various commercial establishments occupied the ground floor of 2 White Street. In the late 1930s there was a shoe repair shop at the northern end, a cigar maker in the middle and a barber shop on the corner.
In 1941 Jacob’s son Leonard, who had been born above the family’s bar and restaurant across the street, took over the shoe repair space and turned it into a liquor store, which he ran for decades. |
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The whole Hecht family tended to be involved in the store. While Leonard was away in the service during World War II his mother, whom he called Nana, ran it, assisted by her sister-in-law Aunt Helen. Another family member helped out in the mid-1950s.
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It was very much a neighborhood institution, drawing customers from nearby textile establishments, Con Edison, Western Union at 60 Hudson St. and the Atalanta Building on Varick at North Moore.
In the 1950s Leonard and his wife noticed a sign in a Park Avenue liquor store advertising “two-fors”— two bottles for the price of one. It seemed worth trying and it paid off in increased volume. But sales were never huge: until the 1960s the cash register did not recognize totals above $99.
As the years wore on, there were changes to adapt to: starting in the 1970s there was greater demand for better quality wines. But some changes were less encouraging: in the 1980s the Transit Authority closed the subway entrance on West Broadway just below Walker Street, reducing pedestrian traffic past the store. So in the 1980s Leonard finally called it quits and closed the store. Now 91, he lives uptown. His daughter Eileen still lives at 2 White Street above what was a family enterprise for so long. |
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During the past dozen years or so a bar inhabited the ground floor space, calling itself the Liquor Store Bar because of Leonard’s old sign.
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Currently the space is unoccupied, and a For Rent sign sits in the window. But the fine old building endures, a repository of memories—and some of them can surprise us.
In the photo shown here that was taken in 1932, before the elevated railroad on West Broadway was torn down, a close look reveals a sign in the window of the barber shop on the corner.
It says Haircut 40 cents, Shave 20 cents. |
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