Hidden no longer: Historic neon shoe-store sign emerges from decades-long hiding in New York City
Barney's Shoes in Queens catered to women, offering "ladies shoes," the language dating it to another era.
With tens of thousands of storefronts spread across the five boroughs of New York City, the odds are in your favor that some of today’s bland awnings and uninspired signs are concealing historic gems.
In fact, it’s a guarantee that lurking all around us is a hidden museum of how New Yorkers once shopped. I’ve shared these kinds of finds before — one of my favorite being an old neon sign for a bagel shop in Brooklyn that briefly saw the light of day in 2014, the work of the innovative LaSalle sign shop. (See my photo and writeup here.)
But leapfrogging toward the top of my list of rediscovered treasures is the sign for Barney’s Shoes in Jackson Heights, Queens. It first caught my attention on a neighborhood Facebook group this week, and I knew I had to move fast to see it — and shoot it — for myself.
The sign appears to be made of porcelain enamel and was once graced with neon tubing. Remarkably, it is captured in a photo that was in the archive of the Alamy stock-photo service, and a high-resolution photo for newsletter use was available for $21.99, a worthy investment so that I could share it with you.
The photographer was a kindred spirit from another time, somebody whose photos I have long admired: Charles Phelps Cushing. His specialties included American Main Streets, and he captured a lovely scene here, on 82nd Street in Queens. It gives me chills to think a sign Cushing photographed in the 1940s was photographed by me this morning, and almost in the same spot, after being hidden for presumably decades.
Notice all the pedestrian and now extraordinary wonders Cushing captured in this photo, including the cars and truck; the woman admiring shoes in the windows, one hand on the baby stroller; the child in a cap riding a bike; and, of course, the neon-bedecked storefronts, the sumptuous plate-glass windows displaying their desirous goods, for the body and for the belly. Right next door was a retail outlet of the legendary Horn & Hardarts, the Automats that once dotted the city, the last of which closed in 1991. The Automats were recently celebrated in a must-see documentary that featured the delightful and, I hope, eternal Mel Brooks.
This is pure Main Street Americana, a subject that fascinated Cushing, who died at his home in the Bronx in 1973, aged 88.
I’ve been trying to piece together the story of Barney’s Shoes, and from what little I was able to glean in newspaper archives, Barney’s was a small chain that specialized in women’s shoes, with confirmed locations in Hempstead, on Long Island, and Jackson Heights, in Queens. There also was a Barney’s Shoes in Manhattan from at least the mid-1920s to the late 1940s that seemed to specialize in shoes for dancers and theater folks, but I’m not sure at this time if that store and the one you see here were connected.
The opening date of the Queens store is unclear, and could be sometime in the 1940s if we go by the caption in the Cushing photo: “1940s STORE FRONTS DECORATED WITH PARADE BUNTING MAIN STREET 82nd STREET JACKSON HEIGHTS QUEENS NEW YORK CITY USA”
A quick check of 1940s.nyc, which has mapped tax photos taken by municipal photographers in that decade, does not show an image of this address. Tax images from the 1980s are missing that address, as seen on 80s.nyc.
The Jackson Heights Barney’s was presumably in business well before Feb. 28, 1952. That’s when Newsday published an ad for the opening of a second Barney’s location in Hempstead, declaring that “the famous Barney’s of Jackson Heights” has opened an outlet on Long Island.
The Hempstead store was not long for this world, closing Feb. 23, 1957, almost five years to the day of its debut. The Newsday ad that announced its closure, below, referred customers to the Jackson Heights store. In the newspapers.com archive, the trail for Barney’s runs cold after that.
This experience is a reminder of why I always look under awnings. People think it odd when they see me looking where few ever think to, but when there’s history waiting to be uncovered, let people think what they wish!
(By the way, this has given me the idea to do a piece on these hidden finds just like this all over New York, and I’ll work that up soon!)
Please leave your thoughts in the comments, and if you know more about Barney’s, or have tales of other rediscovered hidden signs, please drop them below.
I’m grateful the sign for Barney’s Shoes is still there, and the existing business, a Colombian restaurant, on 82nd Street near 37th Avenue, has left it in place. If it does go, I hope it ends up in the hands of the New York Sign Museum, run by my friends at Noble Signs, who have done so much to revive the art of New York storefront signage. But I can only hope it stays right where it’s been all these years, but now out, free for all to see.
Thanks for reading! Please subscribe and consider upgrading to paid status — The Retrologist is a reader-supported publication. Much obliged!
It is likely that the decorative terrazzo flooring at each entrance is still intact and hiding under the current tile. Thank you for sharing all the information and the old photograph. The detail and subtle suggestive sales practices (i.e., the terrazzo designs pointing/directing people to walk through the front doors) are a fantastic time capsule of pedestrian-dominant shopping.
HA I was reading this and was like “I gotta tell the people at Noble Signs about this!” Hopefully they are on it.
The Sign Museum is great! I met the team through a mutual friend and got to take a tour of the collection after I told them about my girlfriend’s family history, with her Great Grandfather a sign painter in Jersey from the 1920s to the 1950s. Luckily, she had some photos we could share.