Fifth Avenue Flowers

Blooms on Fifth—Fifth Avenue in Park Slope, Brooklyn, that is—holds down a nice little storefront. Not an unique one; it's obviously a twin to the building to the right. But, unlike it's neighbor, it's managed to hold on to more of its original two-level storefront.

The store's website doesn't tell you much about the site's history. (What is it with florist websites, by the way? I have noticed over the years that they are uniformly anonymous and nondescript and offer nothing in the way of business history, even when the business is very old.) However, there is a line saying "Blooms on Fifth, Ltd. has been proudly serving the Brooklyn area for over 83 years." At this location? With that very-modern-sounding name? It doesn't say. But there's a chance that Blooms has inhabited the three-story brick structure since the 1930s. There was indeed a florist here in 1965—a gentleman named James Daniel—according to a New York Times account.