Store Front: The Disappearing Face of New York »

This is a visual tour so saturated with realism you can smell the knishes neatly displayed in the window of the Yonah Schimmel Knish Bakery, a visual tour comprised of hundreds of images of unique 19th and 20th century retail graphics and neon signs still in use and inspiring us to purchase to this very day. But for how long?

Are New York City s local merchants a dying breed or an enduring group of diehards hell bent on retaining the traditions of a glorious past? According to Jim and Karla Murray the influx of big box retailers and chain stores pose a serious threat to these humble institutions, and neighborhood modernization and the anonymity it brings are replacing the unique appearance and character of what were once incredibly colourful streets.

Store Front: The Disappearing Face of New York is a visual guide to New York City s timeworn storefronts, a collection of powerful images that capture the neighborhood spirit, familiarity, comfort and warmth that these shops once embodied. Almost all of these businesses are a reflection of New York s early immigrant population, a wild mix of Irish, Germans, Jews, Italians, Poles, Eastern Europeans and later Hispanics and Chinese.

The variety is immense from Manhattan's Yonah Schimmel Knish Bakery and Katz s Delicatessen to the Jackson Heights Florist in Queens, Court Street Pastry in Brooklyn, D. D'Auria and Sons Pork Store in the Bronx and the De Luca General Store on Staten Island. And as the Murray s stunning, large format photographs make patently clear, the face of New York is etched in their facades.

The New York Times - Steven Heller

If you're at all interested in the passing cityscape, this book is a documentary mother lode; if you're happy to see these joints disappear, it might at least kindle appreciation for them. The Murrays' photographs, however, do not romanticize these not very picturesque locales. The images are bright and crisp, though most of what the authors photographed was dingy and covered with graffiti; quite a few fronts and signs were falling apart or grungy to begin with. Yet it is in this state of decay that the stores hold a curious fascination—indeed, a raw beauty—for anyone concerned with vernacular design.