Grand Street No Longer Ideal for Hosiery

That Grand Street on the Lower East Side was once known as a sort of Hosiery Row, I did not know. But a reader writes in to say it was so, and that one of the old hands in the business, Friedman Hosiery, has just closed, and they are tearing the building down.

Above is a picture of Ideal Hosiery, which sits across the street from the late Friedman, and is still doing business.

But here's a big of weirdness. According to a New York Times article from 1996, the owner of Ideal is one Len Friedman, whose family has run the shop since 1950. So maybe the Friedmans are not so out of business as it would appear.