4. Fortunoff’s, 622 Livonia Avenue
Max and Clara Fortunoff opened their housewares store under the elevated train on Livonia Avenue in 1922. “Here was a store with a real difference,” Fortunoff’s website explains. “A vast selection of quality merchandise, attentive sales clerks, and remarkably low prices.”
The Fortunoffs’ children, Alan, Marjorie, and Lester, later joined the business. As World War II veterans returned home, housewares became such a successful business that Fortunoff’s expanded to eight storefronts along Livonia Avenue in East New York. This ghost sign on Livonia Avenue at Pennsylvania Avenue points the way to the shops.
Alan’s wife Helene introduced jewelry and watches to the business in 1957. “My husband’s interest was limited solely to silver gifts and flatware,” Helene told the New York Times in 2001, “and it was becoming apparent that that wasn’t going to be an important enough business for us. We wanted to offer more luxury products with higher value.” “It was a very poor neighborhood,” Alan told the New York Times in 1989. “The discount aspect of the business was the only way you could operate in that area at that time. If you didn’t offer value, you were out of business immediately.”
The jewelry business was a success but as East New York became one of the borough’s poorest neighborhoods, Fortunoff’s closed all its Brooklyn stores. The company followed its customers to the suburbs and moved to Westbury, Long Island, where it opened a superstore at Roosevelt Field. Further expansion followed, including a flagship store on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue, but in 2008 the company went bankrupt. The Fortunoff family reacquired the intellectual property of the company in 2009 and today sells jewelry online. Their backyard furniture line is also sold online and by other retailers.
