45 Year Old Posters Surface on Harlem Wall

Photo by Joe Schumacher

As an old building at 117th and Frederick Douglass Boulevard in Harlem gets renovated, some pieces of the past are surfacing. Joe Schumacher recently discovered these three old posters, one for a supreme court judge election in Manhattan and the Bronx, another unidentifiable one, and finally one for British Invasion band the Dave Clark 5's performance at the now-closed Paramount Theater. What a nice urban archaeology find! Allegedly the DC5 played the Paramount around the time of one of their many appearances on the Ed Sullivan show in early 1964, just before the theater closed—making these posters about 45 years old!

UPDATE: The blue poster is most likely for the Johnson, Humphrey, Kennedy campaign, as pointed out in the comments.

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By Jen Carlson in Arts & Entertainment on March 16, 2009 2:56 PM

Comments [rss]

Kevin Walsh

Here are some concert posters that got uncovered at Herald Square a couple of months ago.

http://www.forgotten-ny.com/SLICES/herald.poster/poster.html

Kevin Walsh

Like Mister Ed, I never speak unless I have something to say!

www.forgotten-ny.com

Kevin Walsh

Just saw this. I'll have to get up there. I believe you can still see remnants of campaign posters and ads from the 1950s at the old Tenement Museum site at Orchard and Broome. I found them in 2005 so they are likely deteriorated by now...

http://www.forgotten-ny.com/SIGNS/tenementmuseumsigns/posters.html

Manitoba

Wow - those are great. Nice pictures too. I wish I had taken pictures of the posters I described at Broadway/Lafayette - I think I was afraid of getting beaten up by a cop, but they're still there for anyone wanting to photograph them.

Anyway, nice work as always.

Spirit of 76

Where's Kevin Walsh of ForgottenNY? He would love commenting on this. Haven't seen him on Gothamist in a while. Have the vapid trolls driven him away?

r1b2

The Dave Clark 5 poster is already up on eBay.

jchez

In 2001, a section of the A train station at 181 was sealed off with a metal barrier to make a separate room for the MTA workers. Left behind on one of the walls is a billboard for the Stallone Movie, "Driven". It's yellowed but without a scratch.

Wait 12 more years and it'll be an archaelogical urban treasure to be talked about.

Manitoba

If you go to the Broadway/Lafayette station after midnight during the week, sometimes when they're cleaning the middle level (the "waiting" area above the F/V, etc, but below where the 6 lets out), they leave the doors open, and you can see that what's behind the doors used to maybe be part of a platform. Anyway, the people who work there have either decided to leave up a bunch of old subway platform posters or they don't care, but there are some pretty amazing 70s movie and radio advertisement posters in there.

There are some other abandoned platforms like that around the city with old posters, but Broadway Lafayette has the best-preserved ones. Finding neglected posters in neglected subway areas always reminds me of Planet of the Apes.

jibbly

Which doors are you referring to? I would love to see this stuff.

Manitoba

If you got to the mid-level at Bway/Laf (the area with columns with flashing bases), there's a door on the SW end of that level (next to stairs leading down to the uptown trains). When they clean, sometimes they leave it open. There's also a door on the north end of that level too, near the stairs leading to the Blkr exit and downtown 6.

Don't think about going too far in to the doorway, though; they have cameras all over that level, so don't think about stealing the posters either.

I think there's a poster for Sat. Night Fever in one of the hallways; I remember one for a radio station as well, but don't remember which one. It's more likely the doors will be open once it gets hot and they're cleaning (again, usually after midnight)