H.P. Lovecraft’s epic 1925 pursuit of a new winter suit, purchased with a well-timed Weird Tales payment and finally bagged at The Borough Clothiers on Fulton St., is detailed in I Am Providence.
But in Letters to Family Lovecraft tells of how he found another and earlier bargain suit, a suit so vitally needed after his clothes were stolen from his seedy Clinton Street room on the edge of Red Hook. The first of the two New York suits was found purely by chance. He was eating Italian at his regular “John’s” and, being with Sonia, he was given a window table looking onto the street. Casually surveying the scene across the street, “up one flight” he spied a bargain suit advert from the “Monroe Clothes” outfitters. (Vol. 1, page 305). Monroe was a big national chain, and in large cities had special “Upstairs Monroe Clothes Shops” where bargains could regularly be had. “A short flight to economy” was their slogan for these stores.
This reference usefully seems to gives a fix on where “John’s” actually was. Other mentions in the letters vaguely talk of the corner of Fulton and Willoughby Street, and the western end of Willoughby St and even “in Willoughby St.” (the latter said much later, though, recalling the 1920s New York days). There is indeed one to be seen about there, but on a closer view it is the “Marconi” and as it faces a park there is no way it could have looked across at a Monroe Stores…
Letters to Family definitely tells us that “John’s” was directly opposite a Monroe ‘upstairs’ store. The addresses for the New York stores are available, from about five years before…
* “587 Fulton, Flatbush” doesn’t fit the bill. On 1940s.nyc one can see there was a cafe somewhat opposite the location, under a “Chop Sticks” Chinese upstairs “bar”. But the cafe below is not named “John’s” and may be Chinese rather than Italian. It does not fit other aspects of the description.
* The other Monroe store address was located way to the west of Borough Hall and far from Willoughby.
* The “Fulton and Hoyt” Brooklyn address could therefore be Lovecraft’s “Monroe” store. This had been on the site since 1916: “Our Tenth Monroe Clothes Shop opens to-morrow at Brooklyn’s busiest corner, Fulton and Hoyt” (New York Evening World, 15th December 1916). And another newspaper ad usefully adds… “UPSTAIRS Above Mirror Candy Shop.”
On the 1940s.nyc map this takes one back a step from the very corner tip where Fulton and Willoughby converge, and where one would otherwise start looking along Willoughby. But no John’s can be seen along or very near to Willoughby on 1940s.nyc. The corner of “Fulton and Hoyt”, on 1940s.nyc (photos 1939-40), then looks more like the place to find a Monroe store. In the StreetView-like 1939-40 photos we see a place filled with shoe and clothes shops, some daytime cafes, an ice-cream bar and a (perhaps later) Automat. Still no photo of a place labelled either John’s or Monroe, for clear identification. Nor should Monroe be expected, since the company failed in December 1925 – June 1926 after being “dragged into bankruptcy” by a vexatious creditor. But there is a cheap looking “Lunch” place directly opposite where the Monroe upstairs store should be (corner of “Fulton and Hoyt”). The distinctive curved arches, seen on the building a little further down the street, can also be seen on the modern Google StreetView — thus confirming the site and direction of the 1939/40 picture.
Here it is glimpsed on the far right of the picture. It’s a baking hot day in summer. Two stand-ins for Lovecraft and Long appear to have just exited or are passing the “Lunch”. We can see the cafe is next to a “Chock Full of Nuts” ice-cream bar filled with young girls. There is a large hair stylist salon above.
And here it is as the combination of two close pictures, as best I can enlarge and colour it…
This is, incidentally, the oldest spot in “Breuckelen” (Brooklyn) which was a settlement first “established in 1646 in the vicinity of the present intersection of Fulton and Hoyt Streets”. Something Lovecraft would have known. The psychogeographers among my readers may perhaps take this as another bit of supporting evidence. Today the Lunch is the H&M menswear store at 497-501 Fulton Street, a wholly new metal-girder shell.
There is however a further bit of evidence to consider. Lovecraft offers another way to vector onto the location of “John’s”, in Selected Letters II…
… at twilight, I wended my homeward way, pausing at John’s Spaghetti place for my usual [30-cent] Sunday dinner of meat balls and spaghetti, vanilla ice cream, and coffee. Incidentally — not many doors away, on the other side of Willoughby St., I found a restaurant which specialises in home-baked beans. (May 1925)
This appears to be it, directly on Willoughby St. The window lettering “Home-made baked beans” can just about be read and that seems a clincher…
This must complicate matters, as “not many doors away, on the other side of Willoughby St.” is clear enough. And yet, so is the fact that “John’s” was directly opposite a Monroe Clothes store. The two facts appear irreconcilable. Also the rather seedy Willoughby St. does not look like a place to open a Monroe Clothes store, had an additional one been opened circa 1921-25. Anyway, for those who want to puzzle on the location further, here is the 1939 map with marking…
There is a final piece of the puzzle. When the official receiver was appointed for the Monroe Clothes bankruptcy in June 15th 1926, it was listed as located at “409-21 Fulton Street”. Was this a temporary consolidation address for the Brooklyn stock, after the failure of the chain? Or had it been there in June 1925 when Lovecraft fatefully glanced out of the window of John’s and saved his wardrobe from disaster? It is more or less “on the corner of Fulton and Willoughby”, but I can find no evidence of a move or a new branch, and in pictures the location appears to have been that of the Citizen newspaper offices. It may be that the address is actually the HQ at the Manhattan end of Fulton Street, across the river.
Of course, Lovecraft’s habits shifted a little as the summer waned. In the fine Autumn weather (Kirk’s diary says it was a lovely New York ‘Indian summer’ for a few weeks) Loveman and Leeds tipped him off to two places where one could get a good 25-cent spaghetti dinner, and his occasional patronage of these new places and others was perhaps aided by John’s upping the price of a dinner from 30 to 35-cents. There was a long nationwide coal strike starting, and it sounds from his Letters like everyone was putting up prices in anticipation of an expensive 1925-26 winter. His landlady also jacked up the price of the room. January 1925, you’ll recall, had seen New York’s worst snow-storm in living memory, and many including Lovecraft were likely expecting another freezing winter. In the Autumn/Fall he tried to restrict his spaghetti meals to Sundays-only, if he hadn’t already done so, as he anticipates the cost of his room’s oil heater during the winter. At this time his letters talk of snacking and staving off hunger, as he worked, by the occasional consumption of stale left-over Kalem Club crumb-cake or rather more tasty boxed cheese ‘Tid-bits’…
For meals in his room, the cooling weather meant he could re-introduce bread-and-cheese. There was no such new-fangled thing as a fridge in a cheap Brooklyn lodging house in 1925. He states he then took his meals off home-made ‘newspaper’ plates, and he appears to have been eating straight out of cold cans. The 35-cent Sunday meal at “John’s” would have seemed a feast by comparison.
