Starting at 79th and Throop and going west to Loomis, on the south side of 79th Street was the Music Box, a store that sold records, on the southwest corner. (There had previously been a small grocery store there.) Next to it were 2 small stores, then there was a rather large non-chain grocery store, called Kalk’s, which was run at that time by Seymour Kalk, the son of Al Kalk, who had founded a grocery store along 79th Street in that neighborhood decades earlier. Kalk’s later took over and merged with the meat market next door, enlarging the premises to one larger store. There were many other stores along the blocks between Throop and Ada and Loomis. One of them was an early laundromat. Another was one of the first stores in the neighborhood to sell pizza; I think that later there was a store (maybe in the same location) that sold fried fish and other food, mostly for take-out.

On the north side of 79th Street and again going west to Loomis, there was a large 2-story building on the northwest corner of 79th and Throop, which housed a bowling alley on the second floor. There may have been an ice cream shop on the ground floor. A little further along were stores like Rausch’s flowers, Ann Liston’s children’s clothing, and Costello’s bar (which was a rougher place than most in the neighborhood, attracting a lot of recent Irish immigrants). I don’t have any clear recollection of what stores were on the north side of 79th between Ada and Loomis, except for a drug store on the northeast corner of 79th and Loomis.