The Markovici papers

The Markovici Family

Standing: Mike, Aaron, Rebecca and Louis

Seated: Al, Sally and Jack (he had the same expression when he was old)

Union Square in the 30's

I Love New York

Though my father was poor growing up, he always told me that NYC was a great place to be, even without money. He learned to play piano at an early age. (I don't know how my grandparents managed that) His parents were all for education and he and his brothers were all for being as American as possible. Coney Island, baseball, Central Park and movies were the big deal.

Sometimes after school he would deliver flowers and get a few pennies. The movie admittance fee was a nickel...so if you had two cents, you waited around to see if some kid would come along with three cents. If you had three cents you were king.

His family consisted of mother and father, sister Sally, Louis, Mike, my father and Al (the youngest..born in America) The boys did well and ended up as a psychiatrist, business man and musician and Sally married a guy with some dough. Only my father chose a lowly profession, ART. For years, he told me, his brothers tried to persuade him to go into some business.

By the time he went to high school he decided that he would be an accountant. The school was Commerce High, whose big claim to fame was that Lou Gherig had gone there. The art teacher taught a little bit of cartooning and Jack was hooked.

Coming to America

[At the beginning of this century, my father, a cooper by trade, in search of a better job opportunities left Romania for England. With him were his wife, son and daughter. Two more sons were born in London; I was the youngest. Soon after, the family decided that America was much more “golden” than England and embarked on an old tub for Ellis Island. It was an agonizing trip according to my sister who is nine years older than I am. She remembers crowding, sleeping on open decks, heavy storms and seasickness. I was only two and spared the memory. As we immigrated from port to port, inventive immigration officials tacked on new endings to our name. Originally Marcovici in Romania, it became Markovitch in England and finally Markowitz at Ellis Island.

Ours was a typical entrance into the New World. For example the immigrant “greenhorn” has a fellow countryman living in the city as a real established New Yorker (perhaps for two months) who knew the ropes. The friend finds the greenhorn an apartment and helps him move in. Ours was on Allen Street, a narrow thoroughfare, always noisy and eternally dark, dominated by the elevated railroad (the el) Fortunately our tenement was six stories high. To escape the gloom we mounted the stairs to the light and sun on the roof. Typically tenement dweller adopted al fresco living where fire escape and roof became naturally air-conditioned sleeping quarters.

Luckily there was a glut of empty apartments in the city and one could move at will. Leases were no problem, there were none. We moved every year hoping to better ourselves, thus we progressed from a toilet in the backyard, to one on each floor, to one in the apartment. Bathing facilities were makeshift, the most luxurious being the kitchen washtub.

Our next move was to a gloomy bunch of rooms on Norfolk Street, again on the East Side. My few recollections of the place were a story about a grocery boy, who rather than go up and down stairs would jump from one window to a window in an adjoining building. Finally toppling, he was saved by the many clothes lines hung across the alley.

East Sixth Street was a move uptown but still in the slums. We now lived in a three-story brick house with a shared toilet on each floor, and wonders of wonders, the toilet had a window. These were the usual cramped quarters for a family of seven, which we’d now become. I addition we occasionally put up a cousin who had just come from the old country.]

This is what my father (Jack) wrote about his early memories of New York City.