2841 Broadway (Thursday Doors)

I like to follow a trail. This one began with a doorway and took me to Paris décollage, Zohran Mamdani, cupcakes, dumplings, and taxis via 1920 fashion with a few odd detours along the way.

It started with a photo of an empty storefront I’d taken for no particular reason: 2814 Broadway, August 2025 on an  unprepossessing block between West 108th and 109th Streets.  The entrance was plastered with frayed political posters, the sort of thing you see on light poles and kiosks in New York or any European city where political factions fight it out with graffiti and glue. 

Paris and Street Art

It also reminded me of Jacques Villeglé (1926–2022), the French artist best known for his torn-poster décollage made from street ads. His work evokes a tattered, layered record of cultural memory – images literally ripped from public space.

“In the 1930s, the poster was called the newspaper of the street… What I understood then was that posters, as an art form, would keep evolving, and there would always be something new to explore.” – Jacques Villeglé

Born in Quimper, France, Villeglé began collecting materials in 1947 during a stay in Saint-Malo, where he stripped posters from the Atlantic seawall. Over time he developed his distinctive method of assembling weathered, layered fragments, creating a ripped visual archaeology of contemporary French culture.

Zohran Mamdani

The entrance at #2814 shows torn and fading election posters promoting then Democratic candidate and now mayor elect Zohran Mamdani. This area of Manhattan was part of his childhood territory. He graduated from Bank Street School for Children just three blocks north before high school at  Bronx Science where he started a cricket club.

From Banking to Noodles

Until late spring,  2814, had been a branch of Santander Bank. It was vacant throughout the summer. 

Today, #2814 is back in business as a location for  Xi’an Famous Foods. The chain previously had a branch nearby at West 102nd Street and Broadway, which closed in July 2020 due to COVID.

Apparently, it specializes in Shaanxi province cuisine, including hand-pulled noodles, spicy cumin lamb burgers, and dumplings.

Xi’an is the capital of Shaanxi province in north-central China. and was once a terminal point on the Silk Road.

But this all got me wondering about what other businesses had operated at this location. What was the history of 2814 Broadway? A simple search uncovered that before it was a bank it was a bake shop.

The Cup Cake Craze

Remember when cupcakes were all the rage? 

In 2011 Crumbs Bake Shop opened  a store at 2814 – part of a wildly successful chain of cup cakeries. At its height in early 2014, Crumbs had more that seventy locations across twelve states and Washington, D.C.

The fad faded and – for a variety of reasons – the company collapsed. 

And for the year before that from December 2009 – it was Crystal Gourmet. If the Yelp reviews are accurate, it’s not a surprise that the business did not last long. 

At some point it was a 24 hours sub shop. The ad at left if from the Columbia Spectator, September 2007.

The Trail Goes Cold

These Google Street View snapshots capture the commercial churn of the last fifteen years.

May 2009: 2814 is for rent – between Verizon to the north and RadioShack to the south. Both have since vanished, along with the coin meters.

July 2011: Crystal Gourmet appears.

August 2013: Crumbs Bake Shop.

August 2014: Empty again with Joe’s Organic Market to the south.

September 2015: Santander Bank moves in, Verizon still present to the north, and 2816 to the south is vacant.

May 2016: No change.

October 2017: Still Santander, with Popular Bank next door – an era when banks seemed to colonize every block.

May 2019: Verizon gone; 2810 for rent. Popular Bank has updated its signage.

August 2021: Claremont Hall’s sales office moves in. Popular Bank gone; premises for rent.

July 2022: Santander flanked by Clare Hall’s renewed frontage and Jake’s Convenience, with a window sign announcing a Grand Opening and a Covid testing tent on the sidewalk.

August 2024: Claremont Sales is closed, and 2810 and 2814 are for rent, Joe’s Organic Market to the south.

But what about before all that?

The Astor “Taxpayer”

The story begins with real estate magnate John Jacob Astor IV who owned the 2810–2818 Broadway block between West 108th and West 109th Streets. In 1908 – four years before his death on the RMS Titanic – Astor commissioned architect C. H. Cullen to design a “taxpayer,” the term for a modest, often temporary low-rise structure meant to generate enough rental income to cover property taxes. The resulting building cost Astor $15,000 to construct, the equivalent of roughly $528,000 in 2025 purchasing power.

Before this, the block already housed small shops:

• M. Mantis, men’s haberdasher at 2810

• Norwich Lunch at 2812

• Laskey & Co., florists at 2816

• McRae & Co., grocers at the north end

• Silverman’s Cigar Store around the corner at 256 West 109th Street

The specific early history of 2814 is murkier. According to an ad in the NYTimes Henry Greenberger sold Sasso olive oil for medicinal and table use here in 1913 before going bankrupt. James Meehan held the certificate in 1916; Frank A. Wernert in 1918.

The single-story structure held five stores along Broadway and one on West 109th Street, providing immediate, dependable revenue from ground-floor retail. Spanning about 101 feet along Broadway and extending 92 feet deep, it exemplified the speculative commercial development common in the neighborhood during the early 20th century. The IRT subway was now operating and this section of Broadway was expanding rapidly. 

Allie S. Freed and Alphen

By 1920, however, it had an upscale, if short-lived, tenant in Alphen, a fashionable dress shop owned by Allie Samuel Freed. Freed – born in Nashville, a CCNY graduate – is  listed in contemporary documents variously as a lacemaker and novelty-company employee.

Alphen operated as a retail outlet at 2814 Broadway with premises on the ninth-floor at 45 West 34th Street and locations in Trenton and Washington D.C. His wife, Frances Webb, born in Sheffield to Polish-German parents, served as company secretary.

Alphen targeted the growing women’s college market at nearby Barnard College and ran spring pop-up outlets at Vassar and Wellesley, advertising in all three college publications in 1920.

Here’s a sample of the ads that ran in the spring of 1920.  And just look at those prices! Some college women had money to spend!

A typical ad in The Barnard Bulletin promoted a satin dress “for the formal college teas and luncheons that break up the spring semester,” priced at $52.75 – that’s about $854 in 2025 dollars. 

To give some perspective – Barnard College planned to raise tuition from $200 to $250 in 1920–21; the average woman teacher earned $1,000 a year, and the average American income was not much over $3,000 

Moving On

Alphen appears to have been short-lived, but Freed moved on to other ventures.  In 1924 he was a founder of the Luxor taxi company, which collapsed after three years. He then became president of Paramount Cabs, a far more successful enterprise.

Frequently quoted as an industry spokesman, Freed was described in his 1938 New York Times obituary as both a philanthropist and a housing expert.

At the time of his death, Freed’s Paramount Properties had recently completed a 30-acre planned community called Buckingham, in the Washington D.C. suburb of Arlington, Virginia.

Freed’s widow Frances left Harvard University a large endowment that funds the Allie S. Freed Professor of Government and Allie S. Freed Professor of Economics.

Step Lively, Jeeves!

It’s a Paramount cab that features in the wild and over-the-top shoot-out chase scene in the 1937 America movie Step Lively Jeeves starring Arthur Treacher. 

I’ve only seen a Russian language dubbed version.

Unless you are fluent in that language  this a very odd way to experience a film.

Jeeves is naive and gullible fool. Bertie Wooster, the Drones, the aunts and the cow creamer do not feature. No wonder it was released on April 1st.