It’s amazing how much ephemeral history jumps off of pages from old New York City Directories. My attentions gravitated toward the abundance of telephone exchange name-formatted phone numbers, but I also remember how lists and phone books in particular used to interest me so. I looked forward to the arrival of the phone book. I would sit at the kitchen counter and read the Yellow Pages, and the White Pages.
An arbitrary word assembles disparate entities almost completely at random, these individuals and businesses joined by nothing other than alphabetical proximity on the page of a telephone book.
This column from the 1953 New York City Directory illustrates how IDEAL as a business name cuts across everything from fur to photographic to nursing home.
