H eadlines
Joel Spivak Wants Your Old South Street Menus
L OCA L
JESSE BERNSTEIN | JE STAFF
ANY STORY ABOUT Joel
Spivak is necessarily a story
about the stories he’s collected.

You can’t quite understand
Spivak without knowing that he
was involved in the South Street
Renaissance, helping to stymie
the city’s plans for the potentially
South Street-killing Crosstown
Expressway back in 1970.

Nor can Spivak really be
understood without your
knowing that even within the
small world of non-academic
archivists and historians of South
Philadelphia, and specifically
of Jewish South Philadelphia,
he’s considered to be especially
devoted to the cause of preser-
vation. He’s written books
— plural — about the trolley
cars and subway system.

Above all, Spivak, 81, is a
man whose excitement can be
sparked and kept aflame by a
horseradish grinding machine
owned by a curbside vendor
named Abie Kravitz, dead
since 1976.

Spivak, founder of the
not-quite-a-museum that is
the South Street Museum, is
celebrating the 50th anniver-
sary of the South Street
Renaissance and the defeat
of the Crosstown Expressway
this month with a new
project. Though he’d hoped
to celebrate in person as he
and his friends have done in
the past, that was out of the
question this year; instead,
he’s embarked on a targeted
project, collecting stories and
ephemera belonging to the
Jewish families and Jewish
businesses that populated the
South Street area in the ’30s,
’40s and ’50s.

One day, he hopes to have
a small storefront to display
the old menus, business cards,
photos and whatever else you
might have in your attic, but
for now, he’ll present what he
can find on his website, along-
side the stories he hopes to
collect. “There’s a whole lot
of interest in the history of
things,” Spivak said. “But
I really wanted the personal
stories from family members,
because they could actually
talk to me about the guy who
owned the deli at the corner of
Sixth and South in 1947.”
Spivak was an architect and
Name: Samson Wealth Management
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Depth: 3.62 in
Color: Black
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A typical Joel Spivak find: a photo of South Street in 1974, with trees planted by members of the South Street
Renaissance Photos courtesy of Joel Spivak
builder around South Street for
decades, which helped to develop
his interest in digging deeper
into the area’s history. And
more than a spur to his spirit of
inquiry, it was a way to collect
the debris of yesterday, a practice
he began almost immediately
after he began building.

In the stores he renovated,
he found a gold mine of photos,
newspapers, phone books,
business cards, playbills, adver-
tisements and much more.

As part of the South Street
Renaissance, he had a lot
invested in the idea that South
Street was a place that needed
to be preserved, in one way or
another; in the ’70s, that spurred
him to create the South Street
Museum, “which is technically
a museum I made up in my
mind, that I’ve had in a few
Fol low The
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8 OCTOBER 15, 2020
JEWISH EXPONENT
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Joel Spivak is collecting stories of Jewish South Street.

places,” Spivak explained. It’s
been displayed in public inter-
mittently over the years, and
online for a while. Its papers are
now owned by the Historical
Society of Pennsylvania.

Through the subsequent
decades, Spivak never left South
Street, as the fortunes and
character of the street changed,
changed and changed again.

Since the beginning, Spivak
has noted the neighborhood’s
Jewish element, even aft er the
Abie Kravitzes of the world
went the way of the dinosaur.

Th us, this new project was born,
out of interest and necessity.

If you’re interested in sharing
your story, visit joelspivak.com.

David Mink, who knows
Spivak through their mutual
association with the Jewish
Genealogical Society of Greater
Philadelphia, said that it was
clear from the fi rst time he met
Spivak that he was a “pretty
singular guy.”
“He’s a lot older than you
think he is,” Mink said, “and
incredibly k nowledgeable
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM and dedicated to this town,
dedicated to Philadelphia, and
also to the old Jewish commu-
nity.” Mink himself is part of
that old Jewish community; as
the former owner of the Sansom
Street Oyster House (now just
Th e Oyster House), he’s the
bridge between the original
owner (his father Sam Mink)
and the current owner (his son,
also named Sam Mink).

Harry Boonin, a local retiree
and author interested in many
of the same subjects as Spivak,
appreciates that Spivak has
“boots on the ground,” talking
to living, breathing people, and
not just collecting objects.

“He really wants to preserve
the area, and he’s doing it from
the street,” Boonin said. “And
instead of being appointed by
the mayor or some committee
to be on the committee and
help out the committee and go
to meeting rooms, he’s more of
an outside guy.” ●
jbernstein@jewishexponent.com; 215-832-0740
MEN 11.22.2020
11:30AM EDT
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