Bickford’s

Bickford’s Revisited – Eighth Avenue – Midtown, NYC

Dec 15th, 2013

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Death (being edged to the doorway): Where’s a good hotel? What am I talking about hotel, I got no money. I’ll go sit in Bickford’s. (He picks up the News).” —Getting Even, Woody Allen

In 1921, the Bickford’s “lunchrooms,” as they were known, offered modestly priced fare and extended hours. Bickford’s architect was F. Russell Stuckert, who had been associated with Samuel Bickford since 1917. Stuckert’s father, J. Franklin Stuckert, had designed buildings for Horn & Hardart in the 1890s.

During the 1920s, the Bickford’s chain expanded rapidly with 24 lunchrooms in the New York area and others around Boston. A letter with a company stock offering stated, “The lunchrooms operated are of the self-service type and serve a limited bill of fare, which makes possible the maximum use of equipment and a rapid turnover. Emphasis is placed on serving meals of high quality at moderate cost.” A 1964 New York City guidebook noted:

Breakfast at Bickford’s is an old New York custom. In these centrally located, speedy-service, modestly-priced restaurants a torrent of traffic is sustained for a generous span of hours with patrons who live so many different lives on so many different shifts. – Wikipedia

Cooped Up? Feeling Low? Enjoy a Movie Today – 42nd Street – The World’s Greatest Movie Center – Times Square – Bickford’s

Dec 14th, 2013

by Frank.

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From Fading Ads of NYC (History Press, 2011) © Frank H. Jump

On the storefront before this fading ad is a Bickford’s sign. The shot of this fading ad was taken just a few months before the building (which served as the Times Square Visitors Center) collapsed from a water leak on December 30, 1997.

Bickford’s – Eighth Avenue & 34th Street – Nathan Tweti – Featured Fade

Jun 19th, 2012

by Frank.

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David W. Dunlap writes the following about Bickford’s:

If you lived in New York anytime from the 1930’s through the 1960’s, chances are you knew Bickford’s. They were up and down Broadway, on Fordham Road and the Grand Concourse in the Bronx, Nostrand Avenue and Fulton Street in Brooklyn, Main Street and Jamaica Avenue in Queens.

“Breakfast at Bickford’s is an old New York custom,” a 1964 guidebook said. “In these centrally located, speedy-service, modestly-priced restaurants a torrent of traffic is sustained for a generous span of hours with patrons who live so many different lives on so many different shifts.”

To say the least. The best minds of Allen Ginsberg’s generation “sank all night in submarine light of Bickford’s,” he wrote in “Howl.” The Beat Generation muse, Herbert Huncke, practically inhabited the Bickford’s on West 42^nd Street. Walker Evans photographed Bickford’s customers, and Andy Warhol rhapsodized about Bickford’s waitresses. Bickford’s make its way into the work of writers as diverse as Woody Allen and William Styron.[i]

“Death (being edged to the doorway): Where’s a good hotel? What am I talking about hotel, I got no money. I’ll go sit in Bickford’s. (He picks up the News).”

—Getting Even, Woody Allen

“How vividly there still lingers on my palate the suety aftertaste of the Salisbury steak at Bickford’s, or Riker’s western omelette, in which one night, nearly swooning, I found a greenish, almost incorporeal feather and a tiny embryonic beak.”

—Sophie’s Choice, William Styron

[i] Dunlap, “Old York,” New York Times, www.nytimes.com/2000/12/10/nyregion/old-york-look-close-this-ever-new-town-you-will-see-traces-past-peeking-through.html.