My grandparents lived in Brighton Beach (I was born in 1952), and visited this Barton's Candy Shop many times. There was also Loft's Candy Shop and Barracini Candies. What a wonderful treat, and a wonderful time!

Barton's transformed its image that year into a riot of color, as this fascinating article on an art website explains (and demonstrates in living color).

I do remember some candy stores having those huge boxes of chocolates...but this is over the top! I'd love to see this in color.

Next door to the candy shop, there's a sporting goods store, with the weights you'll need to work off the calories from all those empty carbs.

In those three stores, one could do all their Valentine's Day shopping in just a few minutes: Flowers, chocolate bon-bons, and a fresh basketball.

Purim was on March 11 that year, and the first day of Passover was April 10. The Jewish calendar operates with lunar months but keeps more or less in sync with the solar year (to keep the festivals in the proper seasons) by adding a "leap month" seven times every 19 years.

You can faintly make out the '50' on the door to the right so this must be the location. That cement step to the bottom left in the old photo is part of the elevated line staircase to the Brighton station of the BMT B & Q lines of today. You can see the staircase in the left center in this streetview from Sept 2013. Today Brighton Beach is the Russian enclave of New York City as evident from the signage.