Overlooked No More

The 'Overlooked No More' obituary feature of the NYT is one of the most interesting features that highlights obituary writing. By selecting a subject, man or woman, who passed away decades ago—often many decades ago—whose passing wasn't thought much of then, if it was thought of at all, and in effect now writing the obituary they might have received, the NYT editors have filled in some history that until now has been long forgotten.

Like any obituary, these pieces are always interesting, and like anything else, some pieces have more resonance than others. To date, the most recent one about Back Number Budd, to me is very interesting. It almost solves what to me was a bit of mystery as to how did the 18th Street side of the a

window of Pete's Tavern in the early 1960s display the front page of a very yellow, faded front page of a newspaper announcing, in a very large headline, the assassination of president Abraham Lincoln?   

Since Pete's Tavern has been in the same location since 1864, and Lincoln was killed in 1865, it is possible that the owners of the Tavern pasted the front page to the window the day after the assassination, and it remained there for nearly 100 years when I first saw it in the very early 1960s. We'll never really know.

Or, did the owners at some point after the assassination feel the need to establish how long they've been in business, and at some point in the latter part of the 1800s buy a copy of a front page from April 16, 1865 from Back Number Budd? Who? Back Number Budd, the subject of the latest 'Overlooked No More' installments.

Back Number Budd was Robert M. Budd, an enterprising Black man who saw a market as a teen-ager in selling back issues of newspapers to Union soldiers during the Civil War. It seems the need to scratch the itch of nostalgia is not confined to any era. And when a soldier wanted to read about a past battle he might have been in, Back Number Budd was there to sell what perhaps had originally been a 3¢ copy of a newspaper for $3.

He grew up in Washington D.C. and after the war he worked at a Philadelphia newsstand, and later came to New York to open his own newsstand in the early 1880s in Greeley Square in Manhattan. 

Greeley Square is a triangular park nestled between 32nd and 33rd Streets, bordered by Broadway and 6th Avenue. It sits south of the more well-know Herald Square on the northside of 34th Street, made more recognizable to people these days as being where Macy's department store is and where the Thanksgiving Day parade ends. A large statue of a seated Horace Greeley is in the park that no one really looks at. Greeley was of course the founder and the editor of the New-York Tribune.

How appropriate. The newspaper publishers of the day had moved uptown from Printing House Square downtown by City Hall and the Manhattan entrance to the Brooklyn Bridge. Herald Square was where The New York Herald had moved, published by the founder and editor James Gordon Bennett.

Interesting to note that the obituary describes Budd's place at Greeley Square has having a gaslit basement where he stored his papers, an inventory that would eventually reach 2 million copies. A subway line and PATH trains are under Greeley Square now. There is still a street level newsstand at these entrances.

Back Number Budd was eventually forced to move from Greeley Square because of rent increases. Gentrification is not confined to any era. His inventory eventually reached over 6 million copies. Warehouses he rented just over the East River in Queens suffered fires, and much of Budd's inventory was lost. He was however still in business until he passed away at 81 in 1933. 

There is no mention where his newspapers went after his demise. They were probably scooped by the New York public library, or some such entity.

So, did the owners of Pete's Tavern get their Lincoln assassinated front page from Back Number Budd? As anyone who might have a decent memory from reading these postings knows, my grandfather's flower shop occupied the front of Pete's Tavern when it was a speakeasy during Prohibition. The first 8 feet or so of the store was the Royal Flower Shop, then the speakeasy entrance was behind the refrigerator that everyone knew about. Apparently, the Royal Flower Shop wasn't the only flower shop of that era to act as a front. Flower shops for some reason were favorite fronts for speakeasies.

My father used to tell me he would come into the flower shop after grammar school, get up on a stool and wind the huge regulator clock that is just to the left of the entrance. The clock is still there, but it's been cannibalized by an unscrupulous repairman and hasn't worked for decades. At least that's what the current owners tell me whenever I stop by, which these days isn't often.

After prohibition the flower shop moved to 202 Third Avenue, one block east of Irving Place and 18th Street where Pete's was, and still is.

That shop was at 202—and my first memory of the family business—until 1956 when it moved from the southwest corner of 18th and Third to the northwest corner at 206 Third Avenue, where ii remained in the family until 1975 or so. It remained a flower shop for a while, but is now come sort of coffee café. (Not a Starbucks.)

I save newspaper clippings, and sometimes whole papers, but I'll never be a Back Number Budd. And I know my wife has her eye on some boxes that she knows I'll never get to again. Fire is not likely to be the cause of any inventory loss. It will be my wife.

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