Butler's Gorcery/Meat Market and Mother's Dairy at 704 and 700 Brookline Boulevard.

We've made mention many times about how Brookline Boulevard was like an outdoor mall, with stores and shops that catered to most every need of the local residents. A person could ride up to the boulevard on the trolley, do all of their shopping and catch a ride back home.

Photos that capture most of Brookline Boulevard on January 17, 1933, show how diverse the shops were in the commercial district, especially the abundance of grocery, meat and dairy markets, pharmacies, bakeries and confectioneries. The photos show no less than fifteen grocery/meat/dairy markets (four of which were Atlantic & Pacific stores).

Grocery/Meat/Dairy Markets

  
Scheiners Quality Market and an Atlantic & Pacific Store at 972 and 970, and an unknown market at 956 Brookline
Boulevard. The two storefronts on the left were later merged to make Kunst's First Class Bakery.

  
A Kroger Grocery/Meat Market and an unknown market at 944 and 940 Brookline Boulevard.

  
Bilsings Meat Market and an Atlantic & Pacific Store at 934 and 930 Brookline Boulevard.

  
An unknown market and Reisacher's Market at 924 and 804 Brookline Boulevard.

  
An Atlantic & Pacific Store and an unknown market at 758 and 748 Brookline Boulevard.

  
An Atlantic & Pacific Store and Clover Farms Grocery/Meat Market at 618 and 504 Brookline Boulevard.

Pharmacies and Confectioneries

  
Brookline Pharmacy and Alm's Pharmacy at 502 and 822 Brookline Boulevard.

  
McClaren's Pharmacy and Tepper's Confectionery at 948 and 954 Brookline Boulevard.

Bakeries

  
A conversation outside an unknown bakery and Bruener's Brookline Bakery at 546 and 706 Brookline Boulevard.
A third bakery was located at 906 Brookline Boulevard but not pictured.

In addition to the stores shown above, some of the other businessed included two gasoline stations, a bank, shoe stores and repair shops, a clothing store, two theatres, several barber shops, two beauty salons, a bowling alley, a plumber, a hardware store, real estate agents, three dry cleaners, two laundry shops, doctor and dentist offices and, of course, the firehouse.

These photos show the boulevard from Queensboro to Pioneer Avenue only, and are all of the lower commercial side. There were other businesses and markets on the other side of the boulevard and even more beyond Queensboro Avenue, like Neuser's Market at 1049 Brookline Boulevard.

One of today's popular businesses that were conspicuously missing from the photos were the bars. In January 1933 prohibition was still in effect, so any bars at the time, or speakeasies as they were called, would have been clandestine operations, and rumor has it that there were a few within the confines of the community. When prohibition was repealed in December 1933, the bars made a quite a comeback.