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The high ceiling lofts feel more SoHo than Lower East Side, though the view of Seward Park High School to the north and tenement bricks from the terraces facing south easily reorient you. This freshly painted blue building gracing Grand Street between Essex and Ludlow Streets originally housed a piano showroom and warehouse before the Sunray Yarn factory took it over, and now it has been reborn as a luxury co-op with million dollar apartments awaiting tenants. On a recent sunny Sunday afternoon, just as I was passing its doorway, I ran into Michael Lewis, a true-blue, life-long Lower East Side guy—a rare breed nowadays. Lewis, a middle-aged man with his hair tied in a ponytail under a baseball cap, was carrying a basketball; he had been shooting hoops at the refurbished Seward Park basketball courts nearby, now frequented mostly by Asian teens. I know Lewis through the Lower East Side family business connection. The Lower East Side used to be a like a small town—everyone knew each other. For generations, our families had stores a block apart, and now we’ve both made our homes in the neighborhood not too far from the blue building. The Lewis family operated a ladies clothing store in a building on Orchard Street just south of Grand; mine ran a dry goods shop on the corner of Orchard and Grand. In the mid-90s Lewis phased out his family’s store converting the upstairs’ warehouse into upscale rentals and the storefront into a gallery displaying his mirror-shard sculptures. Lewis made the transition from old-world Lower East Side merchant to new-world Lower East Side real estate entrepreneur as the neighborhood fabric changed from a wholesale/retail center to an artist’s haven. When the area started showing signs of becoming the next SoHo, there were few signs indicating that business would pick up. So, in 1998, my family quietly closed its shop doors. Every time I pass the decorating store in its place it always seems strange. The Grand Dairy opened right after WWII ended and was the first restaurant in the area with air conditioning My great-great-grandfather
Harris went from being a pushcart peddler to a wholesale/retail
storeowner when he opened H. Eckstein and Sons in 1916. My great-grandfather
Meyer and his brothers ran it until my grandfather David and his
brothers took over the family business after they returned from
the service during WWII. (My mother and brother worked there up
to its final days.) Eckstein’s sold women’s, men’s
and children’s clothing, as well as linens and undergarments.
Mounds of jeans were piled in the basement, and since the store
had no dressing rooms, people would try things on behind stacks
of Wranglers and Levi’s. Shelves of brown cardboard boxes
stuffed with underwear lined the walls; to get a pair, a salesperson
would climb wooden ladders precariously affixed to a bar just below
the tin ceiling. I remember spending Sundays there as a kid—I
once scored an imitation snake-skin wallet I found stashed between
the Dr. Denton pajamas (with “feet”). It was usually
so crowded that the only person who could see and talk to me was
Ben, the short man who worked in the sheets department, whom everyone
referred to as “the midget.” |
