Russ & Daughters
179 East Houston Street | Lower East Side | built 1900
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The city photographed every building for its tax records around 1940 and again in the 1980s. NYC Municipal Archives.
Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.
- 1920
Joel Russ moves his appetizing shop to 179 East Houston Street
Joel Russ, a Jewish immigrant from Poland who arrived around 1905, started out selling Polish mushrooms carried on his shoulders and then from a pushcart. In 1914 he opened a storefront, J. Russ International Appetizers, near here, and in 1920 he moved the business to 179 East Houston Street, where it has stayed ever since.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1933
Joel Russ makes his three daughters partners, creating Russ & Daughters
In 1933 Joel Russ made his daughters Hattie, Anne and Ida partners and renamed the shop Russ & Daughters. The shop has stayed in the family: it is now run by the fourth generation, Josh Russ Tupper and Niki Russ Federman, and in 2014 the documentary The Sturgeon Queens told the daughters' story.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1979
Mark Russ Federman leaves law to run the shop as the third generation
In 1979 the Russ daughters and their husbands were ready to retire, and Anne's son Mark Russ Federman gave up his legal career to take over the shop. He and his wife, Maria, ran Russ & Daughters for thirty years and built it into a New York destination even though the Lower East Side then had a rough reputation.
Source: shop.russanddaughters.com
- 2008
A PBS documentary, The Jews of New York, features three generations of the Russ family
In 2008 PBS aired The Jews of New York, a documentary that followed Russ & Daughters from its early years in the 1900s up to the present day. It featured the two surviving Russ daughters, Anne Russ Federman and Hattie Russ Gold, along with Mark Russ Federman, then the proprietor, and the next generation, Niki Russ Federman and Josh Russ Tupper. The third daughter, Ida, had died.
Source: Wikipedia
- 2013
Russ & Daughters wins the first Jewish Cultural Achievement Award given to a restaurant
The National Foundation for Jewish Culture names Russ & Daughters the first restaurant ever to receive its Jewish Cultural Achievement Award. The same year, former co-owner Mark Russ Federman publishes "Russ & Daughters: Reflections and Recipes from the House That Herring Built," with an introduction by food writer Calvin Trillin, who had profiled the shop in The New Yorker decades earlier.
Source: Wikipedia
- 2014
The documentary 'The Sturgeon Queens' premieres
A documentary titled "The Sturgeon Queens" traces the shop's history through interviews with surviving second-generation daughters Anne, then 92, and Hattie, then 100. It also follows the fourth generation, Josh Russ Tupper and Niki Russ Federman, who by then run the store their great-grandfather Joel Russ had opened at 179 East Houston Street in 1920.
Source: Wikipedia
- 2019
The Center for Jewish History opens an exhibition on the shop's story
The American Jewish Historical Society opened Russ & Daughters: An Appetizing Story at the Center for Jewish History on September 13, 2019, working with fourth-generation owners Niki Russ Federman and Joshua Russ Tupper. The show includes black-and-white family photographs of the original daughters, Hattie, Ida and Anne, and a poster from the Yiddish Art Theatre, whose stars Molly Picon and Aaron Lebedeff were regular customers. According to amNewYork's report, the Houston Street shop once stayed open until 1 or 2 a.m. to feed theatergoers from Second Avenue.
Source: amny.com
Further reading
- Russ & DaughtersWikipedia
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