St. George Gardens Stores

78 Westervelt Avenue | also 72 Westervelt Avenue, 76 Westervelt Avenue, 74A Westervelt Avenue | New Brighton | built 1932

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.

1869
Florist Anton Schock starts a nursery with greenhouses on this site
Anton Schock bought three Westervelt Avenue lots from the heirs of Orlando Lee in 1869 and began building up a nursery and florist business on this site. By 1874 it held several greenhouses and a mansard-roofed three-story house, home to members of the Schock family through 1910. In the 1910s and 1920s florist B. De Meyer kept a nursery at the back of the property. All of these earlier structures were later replaced by the present stores.
Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission
1930
Samuel Gardstein designs a row of six Art Deco shops named for the old gardens
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In 1930 the Schock buildings gave way to a one-story commercial block by architect Samuel Gardstein for St. George Gardens, Inc. It holds six stores on a 111-foot lot, with terra-cotta piers and a parapet of stylized flowers, geometric shapes and lotus-leaf ribs. Blue-lettered plaques reading "Saint George Gardens Stores" recall the greenhouses that once stood here. The stores later received replacement aluminum-and-glass fronts and roll-down gates.
Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

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