Jewish delis once helped define New York's neighborhoods, but they are now disappearing across the city. Soaring rents have made it harder and harder for the old institutions to survive, with Manhattan costs in particular having skyrocketed. In the Bronx, just one deli remains, its owner saying simply that they are the last one left.
The decline is all the more striking given how widespread these establishments once were. At their height, there were more than 3,000 Jewish delicatessens across New York. They were a fixture of daily life, found throughout the city's neighborhoods in numbers that are almost impossible to imagine in the New York of today.
The delis were never just places to eat. They were not simply restaurants but gathering places, woven into the social fabric of the communities around them. People came as much for the company and the sense of belonging as for the food that was on the menu, turning a meal into a daily ritual.
That role was especially strong in one part of the city. The deli really developed in the theater district, where the diners became gathering spots for artists, actors and audiences. The rhythms of the stage and the crowds it drew helped turn these eateries into something close to community hubs for the people of the theater world.
Some of those delis became landmarks in their own right. Their lineage runs from Reuben's in the 1920s to the Stage and the Carnegie delis in the 1930s. Each became part of the story of New York dining, their names recognized far beyond the blocks they occupied and tied to a particular era of the city.
The delis were also bound up with the glamour around them. They were imbued with the glitz and the glamour of the celebrity culture of the Times Square area, itself home to the theater industry. Jewish New Yorkers were extremely involved in that industry, as actors, comedians, writers, producers and theater owners.
For all that has changed, the surviving delis still carry a sense of history. The Jewish deli can be seen as a living connection to the past, with the menus having generally remained a constant even as the city around them transformed. That continuity is part of what makes the loss of so many of these places feel so significant.