Lenox Sports Shop
If you’ve ever bought a flatscreen TV on Flatbush Ave then you know exactly what it must have felt like to buy a brand new radio from Lenox Sport Shop in 1926. The store was located at 767 Flatbush Ave between Clarkson and (appropriately) Lenox Rd. They sold sporting equipment and electronics, including lightbulbs, fans, and radios.
Lenox Sports Shop advertising a fancy new radio in a Christmas advertisement (bottom right) in the Brooklyn Eagle’s Sunday, Dec 19, 1926 edition. As a copywriter, I have to admit I’m a little jealous about the amount of copy that was “du jour” on advertisements--compare to today’s tagline of 6 words or less. I also love how they sell the idea of a radio to the public: “If you have never experienced the fascination of turning dials and bringing in entertainment from all over the country, you have something unusual to look forward to.”
Brooklyn historian and photographer Eugene Armbruster took these photos of the interior and exterior of the shop at an unknown date, but probably sometime before 1926, since the radios shown here are all the “cabinet” kind (yes, those are radios) and not the smaller versions shown in the advertisement.
The Lenox Sporting Goods Store circa 1920s. Photo: Eugene Armbruster via the New-York Historical Society.
If you’re wondering if you can still see that Wrigley’s gum sign...you can’t. The entire building has been torn down. 😑 But the building at 769 Flatbush, here a butcher shop, is still intact. I snapped this photo of the ornamentation on the front.
More old Flatbush businesses….
The street corner of Rogers and Newkirk in the 1940s and today.