Ralph and Alice Kramden lived in Bensonhurst! (to live, authority)
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Kramden's lived at 328 Chauncey St in Bushwick part of Brooklyn. The show incorrectly puts it in Bensonhurst, even assigning the phone number exchange BEnsonhurst 0-7741.
The address of 383 Himrod St, was given to Alice in the Babysitting episode (with above phone number), which is not close to the Kramden's Chauncey street address despite instructions given as being "only a few blocks".
Bushwick from the 1800's through post WWII years was largely white/European (Germans, Italians, etc...), fed by easy access once the Els and later subway system plus the once plentiful jobs (mostly industrial including large numbers of breweries), that once were in the area. By the 1970's social changes began affecting demographics. Whites fled and in their place came African-Americans and Latino/Hispanic (mostly PR). Final nail in the coffin was the famous 1977 blackout and looting which followed. What whites remained in the area along with many businesses packed up and left.
Working to perhaps lower middle class then Bushwick suited the Kramdens more than Bensonhurst. Ralph and Alice lived in an old cold water tenement flat with a ice box and little other mod-cons besides electricity and indoor plumbing.
thank you for clarifying the Bensonhurst - Bushwick thing, for years I never understood why they said it was Bensonhurst where they lived because clearley Chauncey street was Bushwick, as I do study geography and maps. I live in Bensonhurst also, well Bath Beach to be technical, and all our streets are numbered, and then we have our Bay streets as well....
I was watching "The Honeymooners" and they mentioned living in Benson hurst. What kind of neighborhood was that in the 1950's and what is it like now? Just curious.
And Alice's mother lived in Canarsie.
[Ralph and Alice lived in an old cold water tenement flat]
One quibble,
There was the episode where Ralph played the super and scalded himself while trying a plumbing repair. So maybe they had hot water.
My favorite outdoor sculpture in the whole City is the Ralph Kramden bronze statue outside Port Authority.
[Ralph and Alice lived in an old cold water tenement flat]
One quibble,
There was the episode where Ralph played the super and scalded himself while trying a plumbing repair. So maybe they had hot water.
My favorite outdoor sculpture in the whole City is the Ralph Kramden bronze statue outside Port Authority.
Meant "cold water flat" in that it was barely above old tenement buildings of old that didn't offer hot water, not literally.
The Kramden's apartment looks like something barely above what you'd see in a Jacob Riis pictures.
Mind you knew and still know more than a few people living in Yorkville, East Village and Lower East Side in apartments not that much different than the Kramden's. Yes, they have hot water but the bathtub is the kitchen sink and the WC is crammed in to a space carved out. If you look hard enough you can find where the central bathroom for each floor was located.
Mind you knew and still know more than a few people living in Yorkville, East Village and Lower East Side in apartments not that much different than the Kramden's. Yes, they have hot water but the bathtub is the kitchen sink and the WC is crammed in to a space carved out. If you look hard enough you can find where the central bathroom for each floor was located.
Yep. My first apartment in the city was a railroad flat on East 82nd between 2nd and 3rd, and my cast iron clawfoot tub was in the kitchen. Didn't have a shower until I attached one. My toilet was literally a "water closet" - just a tiny space like a closet off the bedroom with only room enough for a toilet - and it had no door (I hung a curtain in the doorway). About half of the upstairs apartments didn't have their own WCs, and had to use one located in the hall, shared with someone else, so I was one of the luckier ones. No, this wasn't as far back as you might think - I moved in there in 1984.
During the 1980s, a few other friends of mine also lived in similarly set up apartments on the UES - with tubs or showers in the kitchen. One had his WC down the hall. He lived on 2nd Ave. above a store near the Comic Strip and IIRC, had no stove, just a hotplate - it was a really crappy apartment. I think there were about 6 units in his building. The other guy I knew lived in the low 70s somewhere between York and the FDR. His apartment was actually kind of nice, with an exposed brick wall, but the shower enclosure in the kitchen was on some weird platform so you had to step up about three steps to get in it.
In the early 1990s, I dated a guy who lived in a tiny apartment on York between 75th/76th. Yes, shower in the kitchen, small WC behind it (at least in his unit, not down the hall). His apartment had two entrances, one to the kitchen and the other to his living/bedroom. I had a feeling that his unit had originally been a communal kitchen for other tenants, but wasn't sure. It was obvious that the building's management or owners had cut up and re-arranged the apartments a few times over the years.
When I first moved to the UES in 1983, I was renting a room in a 2-BR apartment with 4 other people, and our very narrow bathroom only had a clawfoot tub and a toilet - no room for a sink. We all had to brush our teeth in the kitchen. That was 95th St. off of 1st. I used to laugh when I told people I lived on the UES and they'd raise their eyebrows as if to say "swanky!" Never mind that I was around the corner from Projects - they just had no clue that apartments like mine and my friends' were all over the neighborhood - and I bet there still are a few.
Yep. My first apartment in the city was a railroad flat on East 82nd between 2nd and 3rd, and my cast iron clawfoot tub was in the kitchen. Didn't have a shower until I attached one. My toilet was literally a "water closet" - just a tiny space like a closet off the bedroom with only room enough for a toilet - and it had no door (I hung a curtain in the doorway). About half of the upstairs apartments didn't have their own WCs, and had to use one located in the hall, shared with someone else, so I was one of the luckier ones. No, this wasn't as far back as you might think - I moved in there in 1984.
During the 1980s, a few other friends of mine also lived in similarly set up apartments on the UES - with tubs or showers in the kitchen. One had his WC down the hall. He lived on 2nd Ave. above a store near the Comic Strip and IIRC, had no stove, just a hotplate - it was a really crappy apartment. I think there were about 6 units in his building. The other guy I knew lived in the low 70s somewhere between York and the FDR. His apartment was actually kind of nice, with an exposed brick wall, but the shower enclosure in the kitchen was on some weird platform so you had to step up about three steps to get in it.
In the early 1990s, I dated a guy who lived in a tiny apartment on York between 75th/76th. Yes, shower in the kitchen, small WC behind it (at least in his unit, not down the hall). His apartment had two entrances, one to the kitchen and the other to his living/bedroom. I had a feeling that his unit had originally been a communal kitchen for other tenants, but wasn't sure. It was obvious that the building's management or owners had cut up and re-arranged the apartments a few times over the years.
When I first moved to the UES in 1983, I was renting a room in a 2-BR apartment with 4 other people, and our very narrow bathroom only had a clawfoot tub and a toilet - no room for a sink. We all had to brush our teeth in the kitchen. That was 95th St. off of 1st. I used to laugh when I told people I lived on the UES and they'd raise their eyebrows as if to say "swanky!" Never mind that I was around the corner from Projects - they just had no clue that apartments like mine and my friends' were all over the neighborhood - and I bet there still are a few.
From Third Avenue going east, yes Yorkville was and still is filled with those old tenement apartments! You find or at least found more the further east you go towards East End, but things are changing.
Many of these older buildings have been sold and or money is being poured in to gut renovate (vacated) apartments if not the entire building.
Funny you should mention the Comic Strip. The building on corner of East 81st and Second has been torn down and will be redeveloped into luxury housing. One block down half of Second Avenue between East 81st down to and around the corner of East 80th also has been torn down for a similar reason. New York
Meanwhile around the corner on East 81st 316-318 were sold, vacated of tenants and will be torn down for luxury housing: 316-318 E 81st Street, NYC
A few doors down 336 East 82nd has largely been emptied of older tenants and the lobby, common areas along with apartments totally renovated. You probably remember the building as having white brickwork, that has now been done over to red. 336 East 81st St. in Yorkville : Sales, Rentals, Floorplans | StreetEasy
Around the other corner (East 82nd) the former home for unwed mothers sold and packed up and left. That building is being redeveloped into luxury condos. On the other side of the street once you pass the public school many of the brownstones have been sold and reconverted back into private homes.
The blame and or cause for all this activity of course is the Second Avenue subway.
Ralph Kramden drove a bus up and down Madison Avenue (it is a one way today so buses are south bound along Fifth Avenue, and north along Madison Avenue), so wonder how he got back and forth to work?
Much would depend obviously where the bus depot was located, but it certainly wasn't in Brooklyn.
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