Do you know where in Red Bank the above photo was taken?
Send your answer (or best guess) to [email protected] by noon, Thursday, March 27. We’ll reveal the location the next day.
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Here’s the answer to last week’s “Where.” It’s got a really cool story to it.
Last week’s photo was the tiled entryway of the barber/shave parlor/stylist Old World Shaving Parlor, at 12 West Front Street. Inlaid in the tiling are the words “Rochester Clothes Shop.”
We hit the Red Bank Public Library’s Red Bank Register newspaper archives and found a July 17, 1918 report stating Joseph Finkelstein had started a clothing business at that address ten years earlier with Elmer Pope. The store, located at 12 West Front Street, carried Pope’s name until Finkelstein bought him out in 1923.
By 1924 articles identified it as the Rochester Clothes Shop. Things appeared to be looking up for Finkelstein. He had his own shop and was building a new stucco home on Throckmorton Street.
Then the paper reports, he died suddenly in the winter of 1924-25. The shop was sold to Simon Zvaifler of Newark, who continued to run it.
Based on the ad below others we saw, it looks like the place to go for holeproof hosiery.
But here’s the really cool part of this story.
Turns out, Old World Shaving Parlor owner David Fantigrossi is actually from Rochester, New York. Fantigrossi started working at the shop about 11 years ago and bought it from the previous owner about two years later. When he first came to the shop, the Rochester name, he says, “was the first thing I saw.”
“I figured it was a good omen,” he added.
Rochester native David Fantigrossi stands on the serendipitous tiles in the entrance to his shop, Old World Shaving Parlor.
Fantigrossi is a dapper dude. In his long overcoat, he looked just like one of the sharp-dressed men in the 1912 ad for the place we found in the archives when we got back to the office. It felt like ghosts were everywhere.
The photo of the tile entranceway prompted a few wayward guesses from the Wheresters.
One person thought it might be the Urban Outfitters building across the street, another guessed Garmany farther south on Broad Street. One person guessed it was Filoncino’s cafe by the train station. Another person guessed it was at 36 Broad Street, the building that houses Chocolate Works.
Thanks to those who wrote in.
Bill and Judy Fraser, Arlene Lospinoso, Chuck Stern, Stephen Kendrick, The Colmorgen Kids, Sue Noone, Phyllis McQuillan, Armand Crupi, Don Byck, Mary Warner
I hope I got everyone. Please email or text me immediately if we missed you at [email protected] or 848-331-8331. Your sharp eyes and hustle should be properly rewarded.
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