(PHOENIX CLUB BACKGROUND IN PHOENIX CLUB COLLECTION) COURTESY OF THE
RABBI LEO M. FRANKLIN ARCHIVES OF TEMPLE BETH EL, BLOOMFIELD HILLS, MI.
Looking Back
This photo pictures the g roundbreaking in 1905 for the Phoenix
Club, a literary organization started by a group of Detroit Jews for
members who wanted to “improve their minds,” and “it became
the playhouse for Detroit Jewry and a clearing house for all Jewish
social and philanthropic activities.”
From the DJN Foundation Davidson Digital Archive of Jewish Detroit History
42
December 20 • 2018
jn
Want to learn more? Go to the DJN Foundation archives, available
for free at www.djnfoundation.org.
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Mike Smith
for his New York Carpet World stores, always telling
viewers about an ongoing “gigantic” sale. Indeed, every
week, he told us about a bigger, better sale we would
not want to miss. Nusbaum did not limit himself to TV.
When I went into the Davidson Digital Archive, the
first advertisement for New York Carpet World that I
could find was in the March 24, 1972, issue of the JN.
Sure enough, the ad carried a photo of Nusbaum and a
personal message to all readers about the superior ser-
vice he offered customers.
But we did not know watching TV that Nusbaum was
a leader in Detroit’s Jewish community and in Israel. He
was, by all accounts, a great guy, a mentsh. Perhaps the
advertisement I found in the Aug. 21, 1981, issue of the
JN is more telling. In this ad, New York Carpet World is
offering one-half off scholarships for “Jewish Boys and
Girls to the Yeshivah Nursery Program.” ■
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I
read the recent obituary in the JN for Irving
Nusbaum. His passing was a topic of conversa-
tion and sadness among some of the folks I know.
Personally, I did not know Nusbaum and am sorry I did
not. But then, again, like many of us who have watched
Detroit television over the past few decades, we did
know him, at least a little bit.
Nusbaum was one of a group of entrepreneurs in
Detroit who eschewed the middleman, so to speak,
and directly engaged the public. If you watched any
late-night TV at all, certain individuals became familiar
to households across the city. There was Mr. Belvedere
(a.k.a. Maurice “Bud” Lezell) representing Belvedere
Construction, who told all of us listening, “We do good
work!” There was Woodrow W. Woody who owned the
Pontiac dealership in Hamtramck and told us that he
would personally greet us when we came to buy a car,
and he always asked us to “Please drive carefully.” And,
there was Irving Nusbaum.
Nusbaum appeared in hundreds of commercials
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