J&R Electronics Store

USA / New Jersey / Hoboken / Park Row, 23
 store / shop, building, historical layer / disappeared object
6-story building originally completed in 1909. Designed by Robertson & Palmer, it was built as a store and office building, with a 2-story limestone base above a granite water table, and buff-colored brick upper floors with horizontal limestone bands between the floors. The building is triangular shaped, with a 1-bay angled corner at the intersection of Park Row and Ann Street. The top floor of this bay is round-arched, framing a clock face.

Since 1971, the building has housed the J&R electronics store, one of the major electronics stores in Manhattan. The business, which opened as a basement record store in 1971, has grown to occupy a series of storefronts on Park Row between Ann and Beekman streets. In 2014, the store announced it would be closing in order to begin a complete renovation and re-design of the building at 1 Park Row, with a new glass-and-metal facade, but preserving the iconic clock.
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Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J&R
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Coordinates:   40°42'40"N   74°0'29"W

Comments

  • Corner between Broadway and Ann street: P.T. Barnum's American Museum (1841-1865). Barnum, a 31 old showman from Connecticut, opened the museum in 1841. The was meant to exploit the shifting interests of the diverse people of New York. Barnum thought of the museum as a "collection of horrors or monstrosities... which appears to fascinate the vulgar gaze." Some popular attractions were: a knitting machine operated by a dog, a bearded girl named Annie Jones, and a 25" midget named general Tom Thumb. Barnum's theory was that people enjoyed being fooled so long as they got their money's worth. His goal was to reach a wide variety of people in his audience so he kept the museum open 7 days a week, 365 days a year. The museum brought together people of all different classes from all different parts of the city. Everyone was different from everyone else but they all could find one thing in common, an interest in the museum. Barnum exploited the "freaks of nature" (often just people with birth defects), alienating them from society, and by doing so brought together the rest of society.
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