Here former Trenton resident Anne Lewis recalls going to meet someone in “When the World Was Young,” the first of a series of Trenton “Cavell Avenue Memoirs” by her grandson, writer and teacher Erik Pyontek:
Bloomsberry Street sat at the edge of South Trenton, running along the river, cutting through the established Russian and Polish neighborhoods, and into what was known as Jew Town. Harry Harrold, a well-to-do businessman who was known to keep company with the governor’s circle of cronies, owned two full blocks of Bloomsberry Street, including ours…
To get to Harrold’s office, I would walk the length of Bloomsberry Street, past Kubczinska’s Bakery with its heavenly scent of rye and black bread invading the nasal passages of everyone within a quarter of a mile, past Cooper’s Drug Store where I went for leeches whenever there was a fever in the house, or cocaine powder when there was a toothache, past Kaplan’s Dry Goods Store, past Galinksy’s Junk Shop, Greenbauer’s Fruit and Produce, and the German beer garden at the side of Kushner’s Boarding House. Once I reached Market Street I was well into Jew Town, where the people at Katzenberger’s fish stand know me and always sent their greetings to my mother, where Mr. Feingold and his sons had their kosher meat and poultry store, where thirty of so fish, fruit, meat, and produce stalls line the streets along with scores of chicken coops, barrels of pickles, water-crackers, slated lox, cakes of cream cheese, and tubs of sauerkraut. Strings of smoked eels, whitefish, and sausages zigzagged like telephone wires from one pole to the next. It was here that the masses converged, especially on Saturdays, pushing and shoving themselves from stall to stall, counter to counter, booth to booth. It was here that I made good use of the Yiddish, Hungarian, Polish, and Russian vocabulary I learned from the children I lived among, and here that I leaned to breath into a handkerchief, especially during the hot summer months, to avoid the heavy smell of so many competing scents, namely of chicken, cow, and horse excrement.
Once I arrived at Warren, however, past the worsted mill and the horse stables, the fortress-like prison, and the Gothic brownstone police station, the scent of things began to change, as did the manner and look of the people on the street. It was here, at Warren Street, that I could put away my handkerchief and check to make sure my stockings were straight. Once I crossed the trolley tracks I’d be on the other side — the side that was quintessentially American. Downtown, with its beautiful stores and its beautiful people. Downtown, where people were too dignified to push and shove, and too refined to speak above a certain volume. Downtown, where the very best of America was put on display in the windows of a hundred or more department stores and shops, where billboards towered high above the rooftops proclaiming the affordability of the new horseless carriage, or the medicinal benefits of Coca-Cola.
Downtown Trenton before the Great War could be likened to Times Square in miniature, with its oversized pack of Fatima Cigarettes mechanically moving from side to side above the mirrored facade of the United Cigar Shop, and the orange-colored bulbs of the Taylor Opera House marquis reflecting off of the windows of the storefronts across from it. Downtown was a world all its own, a stimulating place where treasure loomed at every glance, and the possibility of a better life teased and inspired me.
And from “Scattered Dreams,” she shares her love of Trenton:
There were some who took quiet pride in the fact that Trenton was “mixed” city — a metropolis of languages and cultures so diverse and varied that a simple trolley ride from one end to the other was like a journey across continents. Every child of the city was groomed from experience to know at least something of the languages, foods, and customs of others, so that no matter where they might end up as adults, they’d always remember the bits of Yiddish, Italian, or Russian they’d learned on the streets, and identify the smells and tastes of its kitchens and market stalls.
For most, the condition was something of a gift — to be a citizen of Trenton was to be a citizen of the world, a privy to a most unique and remarkable condition.
The intersection of State and Broad streets in 1945.,
