The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

Hey, you boys from Southie take a look at this one. A Very nice store label from the South Boston Graphophone exchange pasted to the middle of the "Kentucky Babe" side on a Columbia demonstration Record. You ought to make a bee line for 402 Broadway and gain access to the old storage room in the basement where you will undoubtedly find boxes and boxes of new old stock Columbia records, left there decades and decades ago when the place closed its doors during the great depression. I will bring this record to the next meeting and you can fight over who gets it!!

solophoneman wrote:You ought to make a bee line for 402 Broadway and gain access to the old storage room in the basement where you will undoubtedly find boxes and boxes of new old stock Columbia records, left there decades and decades ago when the place closed its doors during the great depression.

I’ll have to head down there with a camera and take a picture of the place. While Google Maps seems to believe that there is a 402 East Broadway, I believe that it is actually 402 West Broadway, which apparently is the home of the Broadway Cafe. I’ve never been there, although I’ve been past it a number of times.

No clue whether they have a basement or not.

Hopefully the sidewalks will still be clear tomorrow, and I can try to make it up there while there is still a decent amount of sunlight. I think that if nothing else, it might be interesting to have a couple of pictures of the location, although I really wish that I had a picture of when the South Boston Graphophone Exchange was there for comparison.

John would be able to tell you a lot more about how that area has changed than I could—I’m not an expert on the history of South Boston, nor am I even reasonably well informed.

Thanks for sharing the label with us!

— MordEth

and here I thought this was going to be a thread about that infamous Boston phono theft ring

Folks,

I ran across a reference to the South Boston Graphophone Exchange someplace a while back-I don't remember where or why-I posted something about it on "another board". I had a different address-435 W. B'way:

I wish I could remember where the old photo was and where I read the reference.

Regards,
John

So maybe at some point they moved their operation from 402 to 435 or vice versa, or is there in fact a Broadway as well as a West Broadway in South Boston?

To quote John, “From Broadway Station to Farragut Road, Broadway hasn’t changed since it was laid out, as far as I know.”

My guess was probably that they may have moved across the street at one point, but I don’t know very much about the history of South Boston.

And of course, I still need to make it down to take a photo of the Broadway Cafe (at 402).

— MordEth