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1910 Brooklyn
BROOKLYN 1905 -THE STORY BEGINS
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Imagine growing up with the last name Hirshleifer! The concept could strike fear in the heart of any elementary school kid. Think about it. You’re sitting in second grade, having been asked to write a composition about Thanksgiving. Before starting, you’re supposed to put your name on the top line. But it’s not easy to fit your name on the top line. And by the time you scratch out the final ‘r’, the rest of the class is already coloring in their turkeys. Other indignities follow. You receive letters addressed to the likes of ‘Ms. Hinschleifer. Is it me or does that sound like some paleontologist-type who accompanied Livingstone across the African sub-continent? No one spells your name right. No one pronounces your name right. To everyone around you, you and your name are nothing more than an annoyance – an impediment to their efforts to move seamlessly through their day, an obstacle in their attempt to complete their tasks with as little thought, challenge or interruption as possible.
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JACOB HIRSHLEIFER IMMIGRATES FROM ROMANIA
But there’s more to the name than length. Indeed, its eleven-letters in length is matched by its longevity. For the name has a rich history that takes us back to 1870, to the small town of Trembovla, in what was then Romania, later to become the Ukraine. It was there that Jacob Hirshleifer was born in 1870, the second eldest to a father who had a small leather business. When his father died at a young age, Jacob moved, with his mother, to Rotoshany, Romania and then to Czernovitz, Austria, where he married, started a family, and eked out a living as a fur merchant.
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The 1880’s was an oppressive time for the Jews of Eastern Europe who were subjected to systematic persecution by Romanian authorities and by many neighboring governments. Jews were denied the right to own real estate or to practice their professions. Jewish businesses were shut down. Jews were restricted from bearing children until the age of 24, and were made to suffer restrictions and indignities that rendered their lives untenable. Many Jews sought refuge in the United States and Canada, and it was under this likely scenario that Jacob brought his family to America in 1899, finding a home in Brooklyn.
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J. HIRSHLEIFER FURS OPENS ON MANHATTAN AVENUE
Settling in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, along with a large number of other southern and eastern European immigrants, Jacob established a fur store, J. Hirshleifer Furs, at 25 Manhattan Avenue, the center of Greenpoint’s business district. It was a time of merchants selling their wares – fruits and vegetables, seltzer, milk, tin, among other things – from horse-drawn wagons, vaudeville and silent films, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, and horseless carriages for the elite. Paved in cobblestone, with maroon and cream colored Brooklyn City Railroad trolley cars running down tracks in its center, Manhattan Avenue developed into a thriving commercial area, and Jacob’s business flourished.
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Open from 10:00 am to 10:00 pm Monday through Saturday and from 10:00 am to 6:00 pm on Sunday, the store carried ready-made furs, which Jacob bought from the fur market at 30th Street in Manhattan. Moderately priced at a cost of $500, $600, and $700 apiece, the furs offered a handy alternative to the much more costly custom-made minks and persian coats which were available in Manhattan. The business prospered, and Jacob grew wealthy, having his own automobile and driver, sporting a fur fedora, and living in an apartment on Marcy Avenue, the walls of which were lined with silk.
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Thereafter, Jacob purchased a low-rise two story taxpayer at 51 Manhattan Avenue, a few doors down from his fur shop, and relocated both the business and his family there. With the shop on the ground floor, he lived with his wife, Rose, his son, Hyman (Herman), and daughters, Lena, Minnie, Yetta and Kitty, on the first floor of the building. Over time, Herman began to work with Jacob in the business, leading Jacob to rename it J. Hirshleifer and Son. In 1924, at the young age of 54, Jacob died, leaving the 27 year-old Herman to run the growing business with Herman’s new wife who shared his mother’s name, Rose.
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HERMAN AND HIS WIFE, ROSE, CONTINUE TO DEVELOP THE BUSINESS
At the time, most furs were purchased on installment, and Herman would regularly do business at the office of Perman Installment Company, located around the corner from J. Hirshleifer. There, Herman met and was taken with the strikingly beautiful Rose, who worked in the office. Rose was similarly smitten, describing Herman as good-looking and having a fine reputation, the Hirshleifer name having by then become well-established in the neighborhood.
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An incredibly energetic and intelligent woman, Rose immediately took to the business, and began to expand its offerings by selling cloth coats and suits along with furs. By trolley, she’d travel to the cloth coat market at 37th Street in Manhattan and purchase goods to be sold at the store in Brooklyn. A woman of action, she took charge, doing anything and everything that had to be done, and, in fact coming to dominate the business for the next sixty years. For Herman, who by all accounts, preferred the less cerebral work of gambling at the track and playing cards with his friends, the marriage was ideal.
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An incredibly elegant woman with an imposing presence, Rose commanded attention wherever she traveled. Described as regal, stunning, and even foxy, Rose was meticulous in her grooming and appearance, and in her work ethic, which would daunt the most puritanical of Puritans. Self-reliant, resourceful, industrious, pragmatic, independent, hard-working and frugal are the adjectives that come to mind when remembering Rose. Called “RH” by everyone, she ruled the store with firm authority, attending to every detail of the growing business, herself working in the alterations department ‘finishing’ garments, and crocheting her famous afghans which she would send as gifts to her favorite customers, in celebration of the Jewish New Year, the birth of a new grand-daughter, or some other special occasion. She welcomed her customers personally; she knew their children and their families; she knew about their lives, about their successes and disappointments.
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Rejecting the excessive lifestyle of her father-in-law, Rose was the queen of frugality, using a large black U-shaped magnet to pick pins up from the floor so that they could be re-used in the alterations shop. Alteration tags would have to be filled out in pencil, so that they could later be erased, and used again. A car service was unheard of, when mass transit, be it the trolley or bus could take her wherever she had to go – and if she couldn’t get there by public transportation, then it was a place she really didn’t need or want to get to. Rose was green before green was green.
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Two children were born to Rose and Herman, Jack in 1925 and Paul, in 1928. Jack had no interest in the business, instead focusing on his academics, in which he truly excelled, eventually attending Harvard University and then the University of Chicago where he received a Ph.D. in economics. Eventually settling in California, Jack had a long and illustrious career in the field of economics, and is one of the founders of the school of economic thought today known as information economics. But that’s for another story.
