The Joe Edelstein Journal

People, Places and Memories as Told to Bill Warner

Audio Interview With Joe Edelstein (92) About Symphony Road Arsons in the 1970's

Symphony_road_gardens

This is the site of 60 Symphony Road, a building that Joe Edelstein lived in in 1945. It was later burned to the ground in a wave of arsons in the 1970's that centered on Symphony Road. Joe has been working an article about the arsons. Take a listen to this 3 minute interview with Joe.

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Symphony Road Area Where Arsons Occurred (view full map)

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Aerial Photos Showing Buildings Lost to Arson (click "aerials" on this Bing Map)

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Symphony Road today, including new buildings. Click for street view in Google

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This 1938 map shows the original buildings that were still there in the 70's

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The dark overlay shows current buildings. Any areas that allow the original map to show through without shading indicate where fires have taken the buildings, or where new buildings have a different building footprint.

Audio and Photos: Searching for Joe's Grandparents House in Charlestown; A Newspaper in Germany; The Cuyahoga County Coroner

Very often when I call Joe, he wants me to look things up on the web. He has a photographic memory for names, dates, places, and events, so its usually very easy to find what he's looking for. In this call, he asked me to look up his grandfather's house in Charlestown, a newspaper in Germany, and the coroner of Cuyahoga County, Ohio. I was able to find them all

I didn't do so well on the recording here. I think I had the microphone pointed towards the phone too much, and that meant you can't hear me as well as you should.

Here are the results of the search that I did for Joe. Now I'll print these results and send the in postal mail. He still doesn't like to start up his computer and use it without some help.

Looked in the 1875 Boston City Directory for Braude and found this:

Title: The Boston directory, embracing the city record, a general directory of the citizens, and a business directory for the year commencing July 1, 1875.
Document ID: tufts:central:dca:UA069:UA069.005.DO.00020
Author: Sampson, Davenport, & Co.
Date: 1875
Date of Publication: 07/21/2004

Braude

Braude Bennett, cigar manuf., h. 67 Border

Looked in the 1905 Boston City Directory for Braude and found this:

Title: The Boston directory containing the city record, directory of the citizens, business directory, and street directory with maps for the year commencing July 1, 1905.
Document ID: tufts:central:dca:UA069:UA069.005.DO.00015
Author: Sampson & Murdock Co.
Date: 1905
Date of Publication: 05/13/2004

Braude

Braude Jacob furrier bds 7 Poplar

Braude Joseph agent h 7 Poplar

Braude Louis clerk bds 7 Poplar

Braude Louis shoemaker 296 Main Chsn h 293 do

Searching for detailed maps of Charlestown. Found these from www.wardmaps.com  (great site)

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Braude's shoe shop would have been at the corner of Sullivan and Main. There was an elevated train there at the time.

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Zooming in, we see a building coded yellow on the map at 293 Main. This means a wooden building. Note that there are three bay windows. Now let's look on Google Street Maps:

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And there it is, the three bay windows. Almost certainly the building where Louis Braude lived. His shoe shop was across the street at 296 Main, which didn't show up on the 1912 map.

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Looking across the street, we see that there are now apartment buildings. The buildings from 1912 are gone.

Using the Boston Atlas, which can show current and historic layers, we see this view:

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The grey buildings are oiginal, and this the background is the 1892 Charlestown map by Bromley. Everything in yellow or pink is a buiding in 1892. You can see that virtually none are still there. 

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When we zoom in on 293 Main, the outline is different. There used to be three wooden buildings side by side, and now it looks like one large building. Hard to tell for sure if 293 is original. But clearly, just around the corner on Sullivan Street, there is an original building from 1982. Let's look on Google Maps.

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There it is, the brown one. Similar bay windows. I'd bet that 293 is original, but its been "renovated."

Looked in the 1925 Boston City Directory for Braude and found this:

Title: The Boston Directory for the year commencing July 1, 1925. Embracing the city record, a general directory of the citizens, and a special directory of trades, professions, with an almanac..."
Document ID: tufts:central:dca:UA069:UA069.005.DO.00005
Author: Sampson & Murdock Co.
Date: 1925
Date of Publication: 04/13/2004

Braude

Braude David treas E Bottomley Co 90 Wareham h 5 Esmond Dor (Son of Louis and Ida; brother of Lena Braude)

Braude Harry (Esby Co) 45 Arch radio and (Shepherd & Braude) do h at Winthrop (Son of Louis and Ida; brother of Lena Braude, went to MIT)

Braude Jacob (Braude & Novoselsky) 564 Wash rm 603 h 361 Walnut av Rox

Braude Louis shoes 1999 Wash Rox h 25 Gaston do

Braude & Novosclsky (Jacob Braude, Israel Novoselsky) furriers 564 Wash rm 603  (Joe says Jacob was son of Louis; hit by an automobile in Charlestown)

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Here we see Louis Braude's new location for his shoe store. 1999 Washington Street, in this 1931 map. But notice that only the big building on the right has a building footprint shadow from today. The rest is vacant land.

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This is the Jim Rice ball field in Roxbury.

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This is roughly the view. No more shoe store.

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Joe asked about Pirmasens Germany because he wants to write to the newspaper there.
Here is a link to the Pirmasenser Zietung, translated (kindof) into English by Google. And here is their mailing and email addresses:

Adolf Deil GmbH & Co. KG 
Chess Street 1 
66954 Pirmasens 
Telephone 06331/80050 
E-mail verlag@pirmasenser-zeitung.de

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Joe worked here in 1944, I think. He mentioned Dr. Elizabeth Balraj:

Dr. Elizabeth K. Balraj, the Coroner of Cuyahoga County from 1987 to 2007 recommended that Dr. Miller succeed her as Coroner when she resigned from office on July 31, 2007. Dr. Miller was appointed Interim Coroner by the Board of County Commissioners on August 2, 2007, and elected to his first full term of office on November 4, 2008.

Contact Information:

Cuyahoga County Coroner's Office
11001 Cedar Avenue
Cleveland, OH 44106
(216) 721-5610

Audio Recording and Photos: Bill and Joe (Who's 91) Discuss Twitter and Blogging; Joe Talks About His Brother Maurie

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The photo above is from 1951, and was taken at a place called Appleby Village on Cape Cod. Joe is in the center, with son Gunnar (no a captain for American Airlines) on his lap, and daughter Elissa (my wife) on the far right. Joe's wife Gudren in on the right. I'm not sure who the other two people are.

In this segment, I try to explain to Joe that people really are listening to what he says, but you'll see that he's unconvinced. My explanations of blogging and Twitter also don't go over very convincingly. 

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Joe talks about his brother Maurie, who was six years younger than he. Maurie died at age 42. He had four young girls. Joe was 48 when Maurie. So his death is now almost 44 years in the past. But as usual, Joe remembers amazing details, including the company Maurie worked for: The Dead River Company. It is still in business today, after more than 100 years. Click below to hear our conversation. It's 8 minutes long.

Joe Talks about 25 Gaston Street - Neighbors

This is our second interview. I'm still working out the audio recording setup. This time I used http://tapedeckapp.com/ and the Logitech microphone from my video camera. You'll hear occasional clipping on the audio when Joe talks. I later turned down the gain.

Joe talks about his house. Big house with lots of rooms. And about his various neighbors.

25 Gaston Street, Roxbury - where Joe grew up
31 Gaston Street, Roxbury - Joe's grandfather, grandmother, uncle

One side was Johnny Kaufman - father died of typhoid fever. Other side - people we never met. They kept to themselves.

Fred MacGuire - baseball player for Boston Braves
Dr. Di Robertas - too streetcar. He was a GP
Up the street - Sumner Hagler. Lives near Chicago. Lived there 50 60 years now.
Down the Street - Izzy Harris - still living at age of 91 or 92. Basketball player
Dr. Hyman Schwartz - dentist. My dad helped him to get started.
White's - store on Blue Hill ave. Only store name I remember.

Stores on Blue Hill Ave. Butcher shop, fish store. No supermarkets. Mostly Jewish. Italian doctor. Polish bath near my grandmother's house.

------ Web Searches From Names Joe Mentioned  ---------

Looked up Fred Macguire: http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/m/maguifr01.shtml

Also found this: http://wapedia.mobi/en/Freddie_Maguire

Frederick Edward Maguire (May 10, 1899 — November 3, 1961) was an American professional baseball player and scout. The Roxbury, Massachusetts, native attended the College of the Holy Cross and was a second baseman who played six years in Major League Baseball: 1922-23 with the New York Giants, 1928 with the Chicago Cubs, and 1929-31 with the Boston Braves. He played 618 games with a .257 batting average, .322 slugging average, and a .289 on base average.

He is the only player to be the Triple Crown loser loser more than once; this happened in 1929 and 1931. A Triple Crown loser is one who finishes last, among those qualifying for the batting title, in the three Triple Crown categories.

Maguire was also a longtime scout for the Boston Red Sox.

Izzy Harris: Found this on Google:

[PDF] 

Team Faces Brown in Dual Meet

File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - View as HTML
when they meant runs. Izzy Harris,. Tufts 1935-36 basketball captain, ... the BostonUniversity game, which was rained out last Tuesday, ivill be ...
tech.mit.edu/archives/VOL_055/TECH_V055_S0135_P004.pdf - Similar

 

 

Joe Talks About the Very Early Days; Broken Foot from Rollerskating

Joe and I started out talking about the conference that I had just finished running. http://web.me.com/masstlcwebmaster/MassTLC_2009/Welcome.html

Born in Roxbury, MA. Small obstrtric hospital. Mom was Lena Braude. Dad Samuel Edelstein. Born in Rovno in the Ukraine. He told me that when he was a kid. My father and his mother came over to the US probably around 1898 or 1899. Approximately. Settled in the South End. My father went to public school, and then Tufts Medical. He became a GP. Practiced at home. Then office on Davis St in South End. Then on Newbury St. across from the Ritz Carleton. 

I was the first child of the whole family. Braude and Edelstein. All the others came after me. I lived at Gaston Street till I was 19. My mother died that summer. 

Joe broke his foot rollerskating.

(Note from Bill: Too hard to transcribe...will just write some notes to let people know what's in here.)

People Mentioned:

Mom: Lena Braude
Dad: Samuel Edelstein
4th Grade Teacher: Miss McCarthy
Surgeon came of: Maurice Barron - came to the house to put on a cast - no xrays; knew it was broken.
Brother: Maury Edelstein
Sister: Annette Edelstein

An Audio Journal with Dr. Joseph M. Edelstein, MD; Recorded and Transcribed by Bill Warner

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Joe Edelstein is my father-in-law. He is 91 years old, and he has the amazing characteristic that he can remember virtually every person and date from his whole life. Who was his second grade teacher? Who was in his fifth grade class? Who were his colleagues in Pittsburgh and Wierton, W. VA? This journal is meant to create a connection between Joe and the many people he remembers. Maybe this record will re-ignite some long lost memories for people.

As for me, I find it fascinating to talk with Joe and listen to his always vivid memories. I hope to share them here, both in partial transcription, and in audio.