Bickford's: Dimestore Art Deco on Flatbush Ave

Bickford's was a chain of cafeterias that rivaled automats, popular from approximately 1920–1970. This Bickford’s on Flatbush Ave, now a Santander Bank, was a few doors down from Erasmus High School, and most likely a popular gathering place for students and their parents before and after classes.

The Bickford’s were all designed by the same architect, F. Russell Stuckert. The NYT called his façades "dime store Art Deco,” but I quite love this one and always keep an eye out for it when I pass.

Bickford’s is perhaps best known for showing up in Allen Ginsberg’s famous poem “Howl.” It appears in the first stanza, which begins, “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness…,” and goes on to say: “who sank all night in submarine light of Bickford’s.”

This 1940s tax photo shows Bickfords at its old glory when, fittingly, it appears to have had a bank upstairs.

Once a popular cafeteria on Flatbush Ave, Bickford’s is now a Santander Bank.