The Brooklyn Automat As It Was

I wrote recently about an old Automat sign that lingers outside a downtown Brooklyn building, now a discount clothing outlet called ABC.

Just a couple days after posting that, a friend of mine showed me a picture book of hers that has side-by-side photos of Brooklyn scenes today and many decades ago. Including in the array was a Fulton Mall shot of the very Automat I had been chronicling. Looks like it was a big mother.

The photo also reveals that the Wendy's next door to ABC used to be a Bickford's, another chain of the Automat era. I just know that Bickford's sign is lurking right behind the Wendy's facade. All I have to do is wait patiently for the Wendy's to die and for a construction crew to peel that smiling, freckled-faced girl's mug off the front.