The Sturgeon King on Amsterdam Avenue since 1929: green awnings under the red and blue sign, sidewalk tables behind the green rail, the appetizing case on the right as you come in with the chalkboards behind it, the bakery shelves opposite, and through the doorway on the left the dining room with its New Orleans wallpaper, where the regulars hang. Moe's Chachkas, the merch MLow drew for the store, covers the front room walls.
Barney Greengrass opened his appetizing store in Harlem in 1908 and moved it to 541 Amsterdam Avenue in 1929. State senator and Tammany Hall leader James J. Frawley coined the title The Sturgeon King, and in 1939 the store shipped smoked sturgeon to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. A restaurant section opened in 1938. Barney's son Moe took over in 1955 and grandson Gary in 1982, and the store turned 100 in 2008.
Source · Barney Greengrass, Our History ↗
The three green awnings and the sign band, the sidewalk rail, the terrazzo, the glass appetizing case with its caviar and herring boards and the chalkboards over it, the formica tables, the bakery shelves, the doorway on the left, the faded New Orleans wallpaper, the green wainscot, the wall clock on New York time, the pendant globes. Mood: a table near the window. Everything is procedural geometry with painted surfaces; nothing is a scan or a photograph. The room is an interpretation, and it hangs the New Yorkers the census recorded at this place first.