Joe Jr. Before It Was Joe Jr.

I happened upon an item in an old August 1937 edition of the New York Times:

Jacob Kaufman and his wife, Ida, proprietors of a pharmacy at 482 Sixth Avenue, were held in $10,000 bail each yesterday by Magistrate Ford in Felony Court on a charge of suspicion of grand larceny after Irving Mendelson, Assistant District Attorney, declared they had been connected by the police with four men accused of having stolen jewelry and clothing from women.

That's the address of Joe Jr., the longstanding diner that closed for good recently. The Pharmacy was called Kay Laboratories.

For Those Heartsick Over Joe Jr.'s Closing

During all the Sturm and Drang surrounding the closing of the beloved Greenwich Village diner Joe Jr. last week, I was surprised that no one mentioned that there's another diner of the same name on Third Avenue and 16th Street.

Both diners were once owned by the same family but operated independently. (No one has yet discovered the identity of the diners' namesake.) The two have had nothing to do with each other for some decades. But the remaining Joe Junior (which spells out the name for some reason) has much of the same classic diner-ish appeal as the deceased Joe Jr. For those aching for their lost Village diner, they may want to give the remaining, estranged sibling a try.