Dubrow's was the site of the movie Boardwalk

Henry and Dorothy Jablonski's daughter, Elaine, sent me a TON of photos taken from when the 1979 movie Boardwalk was filmed there.  It featured the actor Lee Strasberg playing an employee of the Dubrow's on King's Highway - I believe that's him in the photo above.  I've started uploading the photos at the Buzznet site where I store copies of the photos.  Check back often, because it's going to take me a while to upload all the pictures.

But I'll post some of the best photos on the blog, as well. As you can see, there's some great shots of Dubrow's, including some more photos of the famous murals at the King's Highway location.

Photo of Paul Tobin

This is a pretty decent photo of Paul Tobin, who along with my grandfather Irving Kaplan managed the Manhattan Dubrow's for many years. He is the son of Max and Minnie Tobin; Minnie was one of Benjamin Dubrow's five children.  It's from the Daily News, March 21, 1985, so it's about the impending end of Dubrow's that happened a few month after this article was written. We learn who Dubrow's accountant and lawyer was through this article: Marvin Margolis.  He's quoted just before the article is cut  off.

What's interesting to note is that if you compare this article to the one I posted in the last entry, it becomes obvious that the previous article didn't use a current photo of Paul Tobin!  Look at the change in how much hair he has now and how much he has in the previous photo.

The man on the right is part of another story about a different Manhattan eatery.

Matzo Ball is Over

This article, sent by Henry and Dorothy Jablonski, is dated by hand "8-3-85."  In tiny print under each of the photos it says "Bill Stahl Jr Daily News", which tells us what publication this article is from and who took the photos.  The top left corner is a picture of co-owner Paul Tobin, and the couple on the right is captioned "Edie and Sammy Bergholz came from Florida for final meal."

Some excerpts from the article:
"'It's the last of the old time cafeterias; they're all gone now,' said photographer Joe Perulli, 74, a photographer who was a fixture at Dubrow's for 25 years. 'I came in 10 to 12 times a day, whenever there's a lull. There's always someone nice to talk to,' Perulli said." 


"It was a sort of meeting place, social club, and retirement home for the cutters, pressers, seamstresses, and salesmen who populated the warehouses and office towers of the Garment District." 


"According to co-owner Irving Kaplan, Dubrow's customer total dropped from 5,000 to 3,500 customers a day. Kaplan's partner, Paul Tobin, Benjamin Dubrow's grandson, said the massive eatery with more than 8,000 square feet of floor space and 380 seats took up too much expensive Manhattan real estate. Tobin and Kaplan agreed to sell their lease so the owner of the property could sell to Philip Pilevsky of Philips International Holding Company...who planned a three-level shopping arcade."

Of note is that the article appears to contain two factual errors: It cites the opening of the first Dubrow's as being 1932, but I believe the first one opened in 1929.  And later it says that the Manhattan Dubrow's opened in 1953, but it in fact opened in 1952. I know this second one is an error because there are New York Times articles about a robbery at the Manhattan store in 1952.

Irwin Dubrow's obituaries

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Another news clipping sent by Henry Jablonski and his family.   Of note: The Cafeteria Employees Union, Karen Horney Clinic, and the Board of Trustees for Camp Madison all send their condolences.

Simon Botwinik's Death

In this post and also in this one, my great aunt Ruthie and first cousin once removed Joe Adler offer oral history about Simon Botwinik, i.e "Simon untha nose." Now, Hank Jablonski has sent me the death notice for Mr. Botwinik, who apparently passed away in 1990.

The Last Cafeteria

From New York Magazine, October 16 1983: "They were places to kibitz and nosh and argue the fate of the world. And now they're almost gone..."

Dubrow's newspaper clipping

Well, Henry Jablonski and his family have really come through! As promised, his children came home to visit for Easter and helped Mr. Jablonski and his wife upload 32 pictures and articles about Dubrow's, which they they sent to me. What a treasure trove! Here's the first of the bunch.

Dubrow's cleaning crew

Here's the picture of the 1940 cleaning crew which Henry Jablonski refers to in the interview I conducted with him. He says that he is in this picture with his father - he started his career at Dubrow's as a boy and worked as a dishwasher. His father (Henry Jablonski Sr) was a counterman.  

Mr. Jablonski is the the young-looking boy who is fourth on the right.  His father is not in this picture.  The hand-written caption on the picture also names Mike Nagreski (spelling uncertain) and Pete Kolody and "German chef."  

Interview with Henry Jablonski, Part 3

This is the third and final installment of the interview I conducted with former employee Henry Jablonski.  Parts one at two can be found in the two previous posts.

Eve: So in terms of the people and the environment at Dubrow’s, what did you like best and what did you like least?

Henry: Well, first of all the people who worked in Dubrow’s in those days, were more elderly people.  Today, you go to most fast food stores, it’s mostly young people, or people between jobs,  ahh, school or something. The workforce is altogether different.  It was family people, lot of men like my father who raised his family, many many people I know had families, but today, it’s different, it’s a different story.

Eve: Yeah, it’s interesting, just like many generations of my father worked there, it sounds like multiple generations of your family worked there, your father, you, your son…

Henry: Yeah, other people I know, I also kept in contact with,  in the years after I left Dubrow’s, of course they’ve passed away now,  they were all family people…they wanted me to work in New York, I said, no, I didn’t want to go on the subway anymore, I had enough, so I got a job with the food service for colleges,  on the island, that’s what I was doing, when I retired.

Eve: Are there other specific people you remember from your time working at Dubrow’s?

Henry:  George Dubrow, and Pop Dubrow, for instance,  and there was an elderly gentleman, a very nice gentleman,  I remember him.  He had a driver, I remember he used to drive him, named Joe Hackett.  He drove, we called him Pop Dubrow,  he came to visit my family once, um, we moved to Queens and um,  it was right after the war, and it was summertime,  I was going to take the week off to paint, and uh, get the house in shape,  wallpaper the house,  George Dubrow said,  “no, I need you in the store,  he says, I’ll take care of it,.  So he sent a painter, a wallpaperer in,  my whole house painted and wallpapered.  He took care of it. He was good that way. 

Eve: What was the driver’s name again?

Henry: Hackett. Joe Hackett.  He drove Pops Dubrow all around, wherever he wanted to go,  until he passed away.  Cause Pop’s problem was, one day he couldn’t eat.  Forward’s newspaper, the Jewish newspaper,  caused it,  fell off the chair I understand, and he hurt himself, and ah, then he started deteriorating. 

Eve: That’s Benjamin Dubrow you’re calling Pop?

Henry: Old man Pop. 

Eve: I don’t remember him referred to by that name? That’s Benjamin Dubrow?

Henry: That’s what we, that’s what we…George, Georgie got killed in an automobile accident, that you know, in Florida, right?

Eve: I did know about George’s accident, yes.  So Pops Dubrow was George’s father?

Henry: Right, and he had no seatbelt on, there were no seatbelts in cars in those days, the door opened up and he fell out onto his head.  In fact, after that, I was in the Air Force, and I had a seat belt harness, memorbilia, so I put a seat belt in the front seat of my car.

Eve: So was there anything you didn’t like about working at Dubrow’s?

Henry: No….no,…it was…if I didn’t like it I wouldn’t be there, I would have done something else.  Near the end, it was getting real hard, when Paul took over,  the Eastern, I mean the King’s Highway store,  he had a lot on his mind, I can understand, the store was going down,  King’s Highway, his problem, New York…he was originally in the stock market,  he didn’t want to work in the restaurant,  he wanted to get away from, causing the debts in the family, Max Tobin, and George, and he ended up with the stores, more or less, and they had problems…

Eve: Yeah,  the impression I got was that the reason my grandfather got in was to help Paul Tobin out.

Henry: Right, right…he didn’t want that line of work.  That’s the impression we got. But he couldn’t help himself.

Eve: So after Dubrow’s, you said you left because you didn’t want to go to Manhattan, and you went to college cafeteria?

Henry: Yeah, cafeterias were dying out.  There were a lot of cafeterias, I could mention a lot of names, but they all passed on, one by one,  I was looking for a job and there were no more cafeterias, really,  end of the line so to speak, and of course around that time I was sixty years old, they were looking for young people to work in fast food places and I wasn’t interested in that, and uh I got a job at Lackland Food Service on the, on the Long Island, I used to take care of the colleges, like Queens College and Adelphi and things like that.  I worked at these colleges until I retired.

Eve: Is there any restaurant today that resembles Dubrow’s?

Henry: Not to my knowledge.  The only thing, the food, you might see at a banquet , you might see something like that.  But you gotta remember, this food was made like banquet styles but for a poorer clientele, without all the fancy trimmings and extra expense. There’s no stores around like that anymore. At Dubrow’s, everything came in, when you ordered like a meat, a whole half a cow was coming, or fish, a whole halibut, a hundred pound halibut. So you had the butcher, or somebody who knows how to cut the meat up. When I went to work for the colleges, everything came in packages. In boxes and packages all cut up.  So it was altogether different.  And the preservatives, that was another thing that was different.  Everything was frozen with preservatives,  and canned. I think that’s part of the trouble today, all the food is sold in little packages and prepared, and a lot of preservatives, and you wonder sometimes why people are getting sick, getting diseases, more than in the old days. In the old days everyting you had was fresh.  It was a big difference.

Eve: Are there other memories of Dubrow’s or other people you wanted to offer some stories about?

Henry: Yeah, 1940…the only time the stores were closed, you know, when they had Jewish holidays,  they closed, you know, overnight and we had to clean the whole store, top to bottom. It was the only time we ever closed. 

Eve: Those pictures of the cleaning crews were great. So was one of those when you were a dishwasher? 

Henry: Right, right, the first one, when I was a dishwasher there. Later on, after I came back from the service, the war,  I wasn’t looking to be,  I was a mechan - I went to school,  that’s why I worked at Dubrow’s while I went to aviation school as a mechanic, and I got my license as a mechanic, and then of course the war breaks out, and uh after the war there were so many mechanics and of course the aviation industry wasn’t going good, it was nothing doing, everybody, and I worked at Dubrow’s before, so I worked at Dubrow’s, never thinking I’m going to end up at Dubrow’s because I want for the fireman’s test, I passed the test for firemen in New York City but my cousin got hurt as a fireman so my wife said no, look for something else.  So years went on before you knew it and that’s the way it went.

Eve: Well, this has been great, as I said I may be in touch in the future with further questions.  Thank you so much.

Henry: If there’s anything else you want to know, just call. I’d be glad to tell you.

I did also get his permission to pass his information on to Marcia Bricker Halperin, who is continuing to work on getting a documentary made about Dubrow's and Brooklyn.

I love what he said about the value and uniqueness of having fresh made food, available for the masses at cheap prices.  It's what Michael Pollan has been on a mission to promote today - yet it seems we used to have it, and have lost it in the past fifty years.

Interview with Henry Jablonski, Part 2

Here's some more of the interview I did with Henry Jablonski.  This picks up where Part 1 leaves off.  

Eve: So how did you come to work at Dubrow’s? you said you started off in high school?

Henry: Oh, my father, for many years,  many years ago earlier, one of those pictures I think is 1940,  I’m there as a young boy, my father is there, my father worked in cafeterias, for many years.

Eve: What did your father do?  What was his name?

Henry:  Same name as mine, Henry. I was junior.  He was a counterman. Those days, you know cafeterias,  well I’ll explain cafeterias to you,  you think of food stores today,  they have a pretty bad reputation, everybody thinks cafeterias have bad food or what have you,  but the days of Dubrow’s and other cafeterias,  you gotta remember, it’s like home cooking, you can’t get food like that today, only in banquets or maybe a fancy hotel someplace,  like Dubrow’s, both Dubrow’s had all the carving stations,  all kinds of meat, pastrami, corned beef,  what do you call it, round cow,  it was carved right in front of you,  put it on your plate, the girl down the line would ask you what vegetables you want, It was a real meal, a home cooked meal, so to speak. Today, you don’t have that.  All the meals you get today are fast food,  all packaged and everything else, in those days, everything was more or less made fresh, the potatoes were peeled fresh, even the orange juice, we used to squeese oranges, we didn’t have Tropicana and things like that.  But the only trouble was, all these stores, cost, in those days, when labor was reasonable, you could afford it, we had a baker, a chef,  a butcher, besides your ordinary, uh,  people that work in these stores. 

On Eastern Parkway, it was so popular on a Sunday,  we had to let people, people waiting outside, when one of them came out, we had, uh, we had a doorman to let people in and out for awhile. It was a heyday.

Eve: Do you remember why Eastern Parkway closed?

Henry:  The neighborhood changed, after the war, a lot of people were there,  for instance, a lot of people you wouldn’t know but you know, doctors, actors,  businesspeople,  like Sam Levinson, but these people started moving out to Long Island after the way,  all these towns sprouted up, people moving away, getting away from the crowded tenements I guess,  moved out to these reasonable houses, out to the island,  the neighborhood changed.  It changed, and new people started moving in, and it was Central America or colored people moving in, I remember one time someone came up to George and George said,  “what can I do?  I can’t do anything about it.”  The neighborhood changed.  Eastern Parkway, you wouldn’t know it, but in those days, it was, they had trees and benches,  people used to sit there and read and talk, and talk and read,  no fear of being mugged or anything.  And in the end, neighborhoods change.  A little while ago, a couple years, I don’t know how many years, I heard they had abandoned cars on the street,  benches were broken up, and it deteriorated, so business went down.  That was Eastern Parkway,  for King’s Highway, it was also a business area, it was nice, but then they opened a big shopping center down further in Brooklyn,  and the business went that way.

Eve: What do you remember most about the experience about working there?

Henry: Well, what can I say, I remember in its heyday, when that part of Brooklyn was very nice,  then over the years I see it deteriorating in front of me,  first one store, then the other store, it was very depressing, after a while. But the country changes, so that’s the way it is today. 

Eve: Now, you mentioned that you actually served in the military as well? What years was that?

Henry: Yeah, the Air Force. ‘40 to ‘46.

Eve: What do you remember about the food at Dubrow’s, since it was all about the food?

Henry: The food was good.  All homemade, you can always remember the meats were all, the dairy, we used to make this rice pudding, the kugels,  things like that, it was made fresh,  You can’t find it any place today, I’ve looked for it. Or danish,  that’s another thing. We used to make danishes, with butter and everything else,  people used to know what time the danishes were ready and come out to buy it.  Today you buy danishes, boxed to serve, they don’t taste the same.  People today don’t realize what food used to taste like.  Fresh foods. Cause everything has changed so much. 

Eve: I’ve been very impressed by how many people remember very specific foods from Dubrow’s…

Henry: Another thing we used to do, when it came to Thanksgiving, we had Thanksgiving of couse, and at Eastern Parkway, we used to take orders at Thanksgiving, for dinner, not like today, in those days, “what time for you want your dinner?” 3 o’clock, 2 o’clock, it didn’t matter, anyway we’d have turkeys, made fresh about that time and all the vegetables are hot and fresh and the pie was just freshly baked, so when you took it out and took it home, it would, you would leave it right in the box, took it right home, so the person didn’t even have to heat it, and today, you go to Boston Market or some place, and they’re made ahead of time, it’s not the same.  Food’s not made the same way anymore.

Interview with Henry Jablonski, Part 1

I did a phone interview with Mr. Jablonski on March , 2010.   I am almost done transcribing it, but I thought I would go ahead and start posting it, probably over the course of three or four posts.

Eve: So the first question is, how long did you work at Dubrow’s?

Henry: How long? All together, about thirty years.  I worked there, eh, 1940…I was going to high school,  dishwashing, you know, for the summer,  and when I graduated I worked there for awhile,  and I was going to go to school and then a war broke out and I went into the service,  I didn’t go back to Dubrow’s until after the war, so in 1947, and uh, worked there until it closed.  Eastern Parkway closed, and then I worked at King’s Highway,  I didn’t work in New York, my son worked in New York, one summer. 

Eve: What was your son’s name?

Henry: Greg. Greg Jablonski.  They had another store called, they had a bakery, called Dubson’s. Interesting store, because it was a storefront, second story,  a floor down, and it had high ceilings, carved ceilings, and at the far end of the store was a big window so you could watch the bakers bake things…I’m not sure exactly what happened,  George got killed or something, turned it over to Adler or something and then they ran the Eastern Parkway store, but I think the bake shop and the Eastern Parkway store, we had a bake shop there until the end,  for the holidays and stuff like that.

Eve:  So did you work on King’s Highway until it closed as well?

Henry: Yes,  over on King’s Highway, for Mr. Tobin.  I worked for Mr. Tobin until he passed away. 

Eve:  Max Tobin?

Henry:  Yes, and his son, Paul Tobin…I do recall around that time, I was going home from work one day and I suppose I was mugged in the street.  I was in the hospital for a month or so and I came back, and this movie they made, Boardwalk, sort of a racial movie I guess, with all the college kids running around in that area, it wasn’t very popular,  but I have the whole review of the movie, which I will send you if you’re interested, when my sons come back for the holiday. 

Eve:   I definitely would like to see that.

Henry: Yeah, what was interesting about that was the entrance to King’s Highway store had a curved glass window,  you know, pretty much all the glass you see if flat, you know,  plate glass, well this plate glass was curved, expensive, so in the movie they, I guess these kids had to break this window,  I sort of forget for what reason they had to break this window,  it was in anger or whatever. So the movie company had to take this plate glass window and put over it this phony window that looked like the real thing,  so the window that was broken in the movie was not the real window, but a phony they put up.  It was a very expensive, curved window, from the floor to the ceiling. It was more or less based on the Dubrow’s family, I mean, they didn’t mention the names, but it was Janet Leigh and…I sort of forget the other people.

Eve:   So what positions did you work at the various stores? You said you were a dishwahser to start…

Henry:  Oh, I was a manager, when I was a kid I was a dishwasher, when I was in school.  I was a manager of both stores.  Assistant manager, manager, you know, there were a couple managers. Day manager, night manager,  we split shifts.

Eve:   So of both King’s Highway and of Eastern Parkway?

Henry: That’s right.  

Dubrow's at L.A. MoCA

I visited the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles today and guess what I stumbled upon?

This photograph was taken by Garry Winogrand, who was born in 1928 in New York and died in Tijuana, Mexico in 1984. It was titled "Kennedy-Nixon Presidential Campaign, New York, 1960."  I snapped this photo of it with my cell phone, but the resolution is no good.  However, here is the website for a gallery where the photo is shown in more detail, and it even says it's for sale.  I contacted the gallery and was told it costs $9600 (yikes!) but the curator did email me a copy of the photo.  Please do not re-distribute this photo without contacting the gallery directly for permission.

Dubrow's cleaning crew

Another photo from Henry Jablonski: This one is from the Eastern Parkway Dubrow's cleaning crew in 1950.  Dotty Jablonski notes that Dubrow's was closed on the day of the photo because it was a Jewish holiday.

New York Governor at Dubrow's

A little more information about Henry Jablonski.  I am going to schedule a phone call in the coming weeks, but for now here's what I know: 

Mr. Jablonski was born on October 4, 1922.   He worked at the Eastern Parkway Dubrow's from 1947 to 1973, and then at the King's Highway Dubrow's from 1973 to 1978.  

This photo was taken in the 1950's, and the caption says "Simon Stark Mrs. Dubrow Harriman."   However, with the help of Dotty Jablonski I learned that the man in the center of this photo (and in the previous photo) is none other than former New York Governor W. Averell Harriman. He served as governor from 1955-1958.  

Group shot

This is another photo from Henry Jablonski, who it turns out was a manager at both Eastern Parkway and King's Highway.   The captions indicate that the woman sitting in the left corner is "Mrs. Dubrow," which either refers to Rose Dubrow (Benjamin Dubrow's wife) or Fannie Dubrow (George Dubrow's wife).  My guess would be the latter, which would make her Irwin Dubrow's mother.   The Asian man behind her is Nick Yang.  The man on Nick's left is Irwin Dubrow, and the man in the right corner of the picture is Henry Jablonski himself, along with Phil Podell.  The man at the center of the picture is listed as just "Harriman" but turns out to be a former New York governor.

There's obviously a number of people in this shot who aren't named.  Can anyone identify any of them?  If so, add a comment and let us know.

Photo of George Dubrow

Here's another photo from Henry Jablonski's collection. The caption underneath says "Julius Steinberg George Dubrow" -- so I am not sure who the other man is or who the woman behind the counter is.  If anyone out there know, add a comment please.  I'll also be updating these posts with more information from Henry's wife as I get it.

The man in the suit is George Dubrow, and this photo was taken in 1950.  I think he looks a lot like Benjamin Dubrow.  If you click on the "family" tag beneath this post you can find an older post with a photo of the whole Dubrow family, which shows how much George and Benjamin looked alike.

Pastry counter at Dubrow's

I was contacted by Dotty, the wife of Henry Jablonski, who was a manager of Dubrow's for 30 years.  She sent me some truly amazing photos which I will be posting here one by one, while I try to get more stories and information from her and from Mr. Jablonski about the photos and about his experiences.  

I'm guessing this photo is from the Eastern Parkway Dubrow's, since that's what the card in the corner says.   While some of the photos included labels for some of the people, this one did not.  

What does Brooklyn need next?

Found this little blurb in New Yorker magazine (Feb 2, 2004):

THE BIG QUESTION
Borough Haul
The Nets, a top Zagat’s pick, maybe even Miranda—what does Brooklyn need next?

Nell Campbell, performer: “Paris—the city, not the hotel heiress. We’ve got a lot of French folk here; why not bring the whole goddamn city? Besides, we need some older architecture.”

Marty Markowitz, Brooklyn borough president: “Bring back Ebinger’s Bakery, Jahn’s Ice Cream Parlor, and Dubrow’s Cafeteria. If not, I’ll settle for Trader Joe’s and the Queen Mary II.”

Mike Albo, writer: “Maybe a flowery communal space with acoustic guitars and brambles and pot for everyone who doesn’t like sports. And thirteen more Starbucks?”

John Turturro, actor: “One thing we need no more of is power plants.”

Gavin Mcinnes, co-founder, Vice: “A half-decent jukebox in Williamsburg? All there is now is Janis Joplin, Morphine, and Santana.”

Pardon the makeover

I was noticing that in the old Blogger template the posts were getting really squished together.  Besides, it's been 5 years since I started this blog, it was due for a makeover, right?

Let me know what you think. It looks so different I'm a little unsettled. Too weird? Should I keep it or try another one?

Miami Dubrow's listing

This is a listing from Info: This Week in Greater Miami.  It calls itself "an official publication of the Miami Beach hotel association" and this listing was in the Vol. 1, Number 1 edition, dated November 18, 1950.  The text reads:

"Dubrow's Lincoln Cafeteria  330 Lincoln Road  58-271  Miami Beach branch of the New York chain. Nationally famous for the most tempting hot sandwiches, cold plates, and steaks and chops. "

Photo of Miami Dubrow's

This photo was sent to me by my cousin, Joe Adler. He received it from Ray Fisher, who took it in February of 1952. This is a rare photo of the Dubrow's Cafeteria in Miami Beach. It was located in what is now a hot area of Miami Beach. Back when I was a child and visiting my grandparents, I would walk down Lincoln Road to get to the beach. There wasn't much there then - including Dubrow's. The last Dubrow's to close was the Manhattan location, and that was in 1985, when I was only 12.