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January 1943. "Italian-Americans on Lower East Side of Manhattan. Ice vendor on Mulberry Street." Nitrate negative by Marjory Collins for the Office of War Information. View full size.
My dad who was a torpedo pilot in WWII in the Pacific sported a kind of "flight jacket" in leather with insignias just like this one.
Cigarette in one hand - Kerosene cans on the cart. What could go wrong?
Definitely Robert DeNiro’s father!
Approximately the same spot. The building on the right, St. Michael's Russian Chapel, and the wall still exist. In the same block as The Basilica of St. Patrick's Old Cathedral. This is where Mulberry intersects Prince Street. Hard to tell about some of the other structures due to scaffolding but I suspect many are the same.
On Antiques Road Show they'll tell you that jacket would have an auction estimate of a hundred times what this gentleman paid for it. With the gorgeous tones of the nitrate negative, you can feel how soft that leather is. I guess there were still a lot of iceboxes on Mulberry Street in 1943.
As close as I can figure, our iceman is making a delivery to 261 Mulberry Street, which is behind him. He is facing The Basilica of St. Patrick's Old Cathedral, which is flanked by a cemetery on both sides, behind the wall. The near building with the pointed windows is part of the cemetery. The next building with pointed windows is gone.
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