Murray's Lox Sees the Light

The Upper West Side's prized purveyor of smoked fish and other Jewish deli-cacies is finally free of scaffolding, an omnipresent precaution that can kill the street life it was put up to protect.

In New York, what goes up must come down, except scaffolding. These external structures protecting pedestrians from falling masonry, hardware and half-eaten pizza crusts are intended to be temporary, but the frameworks of steel pipes and corrugated platforms often outlast the shopping activity they were erected to safeguard.

Scaffolding can be disastrous for street life.

The tiny storefront of Murray’s Sturgeon Shop, an Upper West Side institution founded in 1945, has been obscured, on and off, for some 20 years. The scaffolding was a safety measure required by law whenever repair work was being done on the facade of the building overhead, or that of adjacent buildings. When one job finished, another one started. Occasionally, scaffolding was put up in lieu of expensive repairs.

The last of the scaffolding outside Murray’s was finally dismantled a few months ago, to great effect: The vintage neon sign, a beacon for discerning and deep-pocketed devotees of smoked fish and other Jewish deli-cacies, was bathed in the sunshine emerging over the Broadway apartment towers, from East Side to West.

The apartment building in which Murray’s sits was gleaming under a clear blue sky, its Art Deco stonework washed in late-morning rays. As I stepped inside 2429 Broadway, I felt happy for the countermen who meticulously trimmed the sturgeon and sliced the smoked salmon. The natural light flooding through the window would lift their spirits as surely as a good tip.

I was eager to congratulate owner Ira Goller and find out how he, his reliable cutters and his faithful customers had celebrated when Murray’s was lifted from the darkness.

Ira Goller, owner of Murray’s Sturgeon Shop

“The scaffolding was like an old friend that was here,” Goller confided. “It was great. It kept the sun off the window. It kept the snow off the ground. It kept the rain away. I miss it.”

You miss the scaffolding? Seriously? Had two decades of Vitamin D deficiency taken its toll? If you truly wanted to shade your front window from the sun, Ira Goller, and shield your doorway from rain, snow, wind and the odd bagel dropped from an eighth floor window, why didn’t you just roll out that awning? As a walkway covering it wouldn’t be mistaken for the arcades of the rue de Rivoli in Paris. But in this setting, the canvas would be more welcoming than corrugated sheets of galvanised iron, wouldn’t you agree?

Thinking back to my conversation with Goller, I may have overlooked the capacity of Manhattanites to accept and embrace challenging environments. The sociologist William H. Whyte chronicled the many ways New Yorkers adapted small corners of urban space to suit their routines. Were he with us today, Whyte would hardly be surprised to discover that removing the scaffolding from outside Murray’s had initially left people feeling disoriented.

“The scaffolding was part of the directions,” explains Goller. “When people asked, ‘where are you located?,” I would say ‘between 89th and 90th, downtown side of Broadway, under scaffolding.’”

These directions had charted weekly rituals followed since the beginning of the 21st Century. Locals who assumed they knew every inch of Broadway from 72nd Street to 96th Street were suddenly lost.

“They would drive by looking for the scaffolding,” explains Goller, “and keep driving until they found scaffolding, which could be five blocks from here.”

A few weeks ago I returned home to New York to visit my mother, who’s lived on the Upper West Side for 45 of her 94 years and loves Goller’s pickled herring. No other pickled herring will do. She’d be delighted to see me even if I wasn’t carrying two full shopping bags from Murray’s with me, it goes without saying. But I’m not one to take chances: I stopped off on the way for herring, whitefish salad, chopped liver, smoked salmon, homemade creamed cheese and a few other essentials.

When I came upon the Murray’s sign and window, unobstructed for the first time in memory, I was overcome, first with emotion and then with hunger. The experience felt new to me: Normally the hunger comes first and then, as I open a container of chopped liver, the emotion.

The memory of that moment I share with you now is enhanced in the knowledge that thousands of likeminded people, from near and not-so-near, would all be reacting as if they too had encountered the same dear, long-lost friend.

Goller is skeptical.

“People don’t look,” he says. “None of us do. We automatically do things by rote. If I asked any of our customers that have been coming here for decades what the address is, they wouldn’t know. They just know where it’s located. Murray’s is a destination. People come here because we’re here. No other reason.”

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Authors
Daniel Young