The outside of the red brick apartment building at 49 First Avenue in Manhattan is largely the same as it was when Senator Serphin Maltese was growing up there in the 1930s and ‘40s. Looking up at the building recently, however, Maltese pointed out one thing that had radically changed about the place.
“My father was very unhappy when they raised the rent from $35 a month to $38.50 a month,” Maltese said, laughing. “Can you imagine what it would be now?”   
Maltese, the oldest of four children, can quickly recall the sights, sounds and smells of his old neighborhood at First Avenue and 3rd Street from more than 60 years ago. In the morning, the air would smell of freshly baked bread from the Sabrett hotdog store on the block, and the neighborhood kids would help themselves to the buns cooling outside. Baby carriages lined the street in front of family homes.
Across 3rd Street, his uncle had a barber shop. Next to it was his grandfather’s shoe store. On the other side was Maltese’s father’s upholstery store.  
The shoe store was a gathering place for neighborhood men and local politicians, but not because they were cobbling enthusiasts.   
“The reason we got to know so many politicians was that my grandfather had a giant wine vat in the basement,” Maltese said.



The wine vat turned the store into somewhat of a back-room hangout, Maltese said, with frequent games of poker and a game called “broom.”  
“Once in a while somebody would come in with shoes, and my grandfather would say, ‘No, I don’t fix shoes today,’” Maltese said. “The shoes in the window were all dusty. But he had all the implements of a shoemaker.”  
In all, nearly 20 family members lived within a few blocks, and the apartment at 49 First Avenue buzzed with a constant flow of family and the smell of Italian food. Italian was the only language spoken in the house—when Maltese applied to kindergarten, he was turned down because he did not speak English well enough.
“I spoke some English, naturally,” Maltese said. “I knew all the curse words, even as a little kid. But they refused to take me.”  
That year Maltese’s mother set down a new rule that everybody had to speak English. To help himself along, Maltese listened to radio programs.


Maltese clearly remembers the ethnic map of his old neighborhood. From 1st Street to 7th Street was Italian and Jewish, from 7th Street to 10th Street was Polish and from 10th Street to 13th Street was Ukrainian. Despite those demarcations, however, there was a sense of unity in the largely immigrant population.
“The neighborhood was very tolerant,” Maltese said.
He reflected on the diversity.
“You could very well grow up here and never speak English,” he said. “It was very insulated. There were people here that never went out of the neighborhood.”
The oldest of four, Maltese remembers venturing out of the neighborhood more than his siblings. He was often at the library on 5th Street, and was a member of a boys club on Ave A and 10th Street.
Politics permeated the neighborhood when Maltese was young. The Democratic club was around the corner on Second Avenue, and the local Democratic leader lived nearby. Politicians would go through the neighborhood giving out coal to poor families, and at Christmas they would pass out chickens, turkeys and hams.
But though the neighborhood might have been diverse, the politics were not.
“I cannot honestly remember meeting a Republican in my childhood, ever,” Maltese said. “Everybody was a Democrat.”
In his fifth year at P.S. 63, he was elected class president. At Junior High School 64 he was vice president of the student council. When he arrived at Stuyvesant, Maltese remembers standing out as a conservative Democrat among a more liberal student body.
Students would gather in Union Square to listen to political speeches and talk about the issues of the day.
“Everyone was much more liberal than I was,” Maltese said.


Maltese had more jobs growing up than he can count: delivering flowers, working in the local pharmacy, sorting mail at the post office during holidays, working the docks, sweeping up under the West Side Highway—he did them all.
“I guess we were borderline poor,” Maltese said. “We didn’t realize it, but we were. But I didn’t think it was a hard life. It was fun, actually.”
Other than the occasional game of dice being broken up by the police, Maltese largely stayed out of trouble. He was at the library much more than he was in the back alleys of the Lower East Side, he said.
“I was I guess a bit of a nerd,” he said. “I saved stamps; I saved coins. I still do. I’m still the same.”
Influenced by his teachers at P.S. 64, he briefly considered becoming a teacher when he got out of the Marines.
“I think they had a big affect on my life,” he said, recalling many of their names. “They spent so much time with the kids. It was unbelievable.”


While he has lived in Queens since the ‘50’s, Maltese still gets his knish from the same shop on Houston Street that he went to as a child. He occasionally stops in at Katz’s Deli, too.
Little else remains from the neighborhood of his childhood.  
“It seems colder,” Maltese said of the intangible feel of the neighborhood. “I don’t like the idea that it just looks like a commercial block now. It’s so different now, my perception of it.”