Guest blogger Charlene (Powitz) Gelber recalls Central Park Avenue in Hollywood Park. It was really like the country, because we had the TB sanitarium on one side and the Boys Parental School across the street. There were no houses across from us and it was beautiful.
If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you know milestones of this magnitude are few and far between in the history of Hollywood Park.
A parade of stars once swept through the doors of 610 N. Fairbanks Court in Streeterville. Lines formed around the block to see the likes of Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Milton Berle, Sophie Tucker, Jimmy Durante, Tony Bennett, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Jr., and Bob Hope performing at the Chez Paree supper club.
It’s not New York, it’s not a diner, it’s not an image of urban loneliness, but Allan Zirlin’s photograph of Segal’s Shoes at the corner Lawrence and Sawyer reminds me of Edward Hopper’s painting, Nighthawks. Zirlin shot this photograph out a car window sometime in the 1950s.
