Glorious Broad Street - Stapleton Again

   The commercial heart of Stapleton is always assumed to be located at Canal and Water Streets along Tappen Park.  Well that's probably accurate it neglects the stores that ran from Wright Street all the way up Broad Street to Van Duzer Street.  According to my map reading skills that's about 1/2 a mile.  Add to that Broad Street from Bay to Tompkins and you get another 1/4 of a mile.  There half of the latter was pretty much residential, but still, that's about a mile's worth of stores catering to the needs and desires of Stapleton's citizens.  Once you add in the Tappen Park surrounds and Bay Street, Stapleton probably had at least as much commercial property as Port Richmond did.  Now much is gone or pretty low rent stuff.  So it goes.

291,293 and 297 Broad Street at the corner of Targee - 1931

When I was a kid the building on the left housed a canine patrol.  Its logo was a snarling dog's head.  My sister's dance school was originally in the same building on the Targee Street side.  It was called "Charing's Dance School" (or something very similar)

                                            Broad and Targee, northwest corner - 1931

Same corner today - It was an empty lot even when I was a kid in the mid seventies - I remember doing a cleanup of it when I was in the Weblos or Boy Scouts which would have been around 1977.

Broad Street, east from Gordon Street - 1931

Today - the corner store was candy store with a soda fountain when I was kid.  I only went once or twice but my mom and sister went there a bunch when she went to dance classes.

Broad, Canal and Tompkins - 1931

Today - Back in the early nineties the pizzeria (and as long as I can remember the building in the foreground has housed one) was called "Two Crusts".  I don't get why but it did make us laugh when we ordered and they picked up the phone and said it.

Bonus Picture:  Cop contemplating the world - 1931