Local businesses are acts of faith - an individual dream of creating a place that people will want to patronize, enriching the owners and community alike. This Photo of the Week shows one inventive owner’s novel idea to boost his business.
In early 1951, Ben Lewanda took over the Parkway Sandwich Shop, 4223 Fort Hamilton Parkway. Finding his custom lacked pep, he got the idea of installing a model train to travel around the periphery of his lunchroom and deliver the food. But he ran into a technical issue - the model trains of that time were too small to handle the freight. He approached the main manufacturer, Lionel, to help him solve the problem, and they brought some of the older, larger trains out of storage to do the job. Ben’s son, a civil engineer, helped to lay the track and installed a bucolic backdrop to complete the scene. Once the customers became accustomed to the commotion, they enjoyed the novelty of having their orders roll up from the counter to their table.
You can see the boisterous, if slightly macabre, branding of one house specialty - a nod to the atomic age - on a placard upper right:
‘B’ Bomb: It’s not an ‘A’ bomb, or an ‘H’ bomb, it’s Ben’s Bomb!
Wax crayon crop marks on the photo indicate that the paper never included this detail in the published story.
Out of curiosity, I researched the business in our city directories and was saddened to find a Business for Sale ad for that location in August 1952.
So, Ben’s Parkway was only in existence for a little over a year and a half - a sobering reminder that new businesses fail at a very high rate. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), as stated by Lending Tree, reports:
20.8% of private sector businesses in the U.S. fail within the first year. After five years, 48.4% have faltered. After 10 years, 65.1% of businesses have failed.
I tip my hat to those with the courage and creativity to buck these odds.
Interested in seeing more photos from CBH's collections? Visit our online gallery, which includes a selection of our images, or the digitial collections portal at Brooklyn Public Library. We welcome appointments to research our entire collection of images, archives, maps and special collections. Our reference staff is available to help with your research! You can reach us at cbhreference@bklynlibrary.org.
This blog post reflects the opinions of the author and does not necessarily represent the views of Brooklyn Public Library.
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