Deciphering the brick facade of faded ads on a forlorn First Avenue tenement

The Chinese restaurant on the ground floor has shut its doors. Some apartment windows are blocked by wood boards. Graffiti mars the space below the roofline.

The tenement at 1205 First Avenue, at the corner of 65th Street, seems empty and abandoned. And the faded ads that once faced traffic heading uptown are in an equally sad state.

The Hertz ad is easy to decipher. But is that a second ad underneath it? “First look” is all I can make out. Toward the lower third of the four-story palimpsest, an entirely different ad seems to appear. All I can see are black letters.

I thought that finding an older photo of this corner would offer a view of the ads in a better state. The second photo was taken around 1940, and the facade of the building is tidy and ad-free.

My guess is that this building will be reduced to a pile of bricks in the not-too-distant future. Before it does, though, I’d love to know what the other faded ad or ads are struggling to tell us.

[Second image: NYC Department of Records & Information Services]