Ice skating at Rockefeller Center in the 1950s
It’s that time of year — the holiday season — which for me recall memories of rituals and traditions from my childhood in New York City. My family lived in Flatbush, a middle-class section of Brooklyn, where I went to school, but when I was five years old, my father would take me on subway trips to midtown Manhattan on just about every weekend. He often shopped for clothing at Rogers Peet, on Fifth Avenue and 41st Street. The store was part of a chain of men’s clothing shops that closed in the 1980s. There he would chat with Mr. Buckley, one of the salespeople from whom he always bought his clothes.
These trips became virtual rituals as, in addition to his clothing shopping, which bored me as a small child, we would also wander around the midtown area, where I learned to love the city. We almost always stopped for lunch at one of the nearby Horn and Hardart Automats, where you inserted a nickel or two into a glass enclosed case on a wall to retrieve a hearty sandwich.
These trips to Manhattan were especially charming during the holiday season with street vendors dressed as Santa Claus, the shops decorated with holiday ornaments and lights, and the streets enlivened with Christmas colors. Bryant Park, along 42nd Street, was especially active with would-be Santas dressed in red and green, and sporting white Santa wigs and beards, sometimes hawking various items, which my father studiously avoided buying. In January 2020, during what turned out to be my last travel prior to the Covid shutdown, while staying in midtown Manhattan for an American Historical Association conference, I enjoyed taking a nostalgic walk to Bryant Park.
One of our frequent stops when I was a kid was Rockefeller Center, which had in its midst an ice-skating rink, and we would stop and watch the skaters, often dressed in colorful Christmas attire. Years later, as a teenager, I learned to ice-skate and with friends would go to other rinks in Manhattan, as the one at Rockefeller center was usually too crowded and too expensive.
Some of these rituals, though changed, continue today. Almost all my family live in the Bay Area and every Christmas we gather for holiday brunch at the Palace Hotel’s Garden Court near Union Square in San Francisco. Passing by Union Square, we stop to see the ice skaters, which reawakens fond memories of my watching the skaters at Rockefeller Center.
Bertram Gordon is professor emeritus of history at Mills College. He is also an OLLI member, faculty member and volunteer. He can be reached at bmgordon@berkeley.edu.