The folks at Carroll Gardens Diary do a mighty fine profile of Smith Union Market [353 Union Street]:
CGD: I’m going to call Smith Union Market (on, you guessed it, the corner of Smith and Union) our very own “corner store.” You can’t miss it. That red and white lettered sign and storefront – iconic, in my opinion – has been doing business for 65 years now. (Some items in the store have been there for 65 years, too.) It wouldn’t win the prize for “most inviting,” especially compared to the shinier places that move in and attract the buzz, but there really is no denying that this corner’s got character. And that’s with or without the actual characters loitering outside day in, day out.
This is Vinny Taliercio’s corner.
It wasn’t always though.
Placido Scopelliti was Vinny’s mother’s father. He and his family lived on Cheever Place in Cobble Hill, but he was from Reggio Calabria in Southern Italy and he specialized in wholesale meats. Big into real estate at the time, he bought three corner buildings in Brooklyn. It was 1945 and all of them would begin operation as meat markets. There was a store on Rogers Avenue in East New York, Henry and Degraw in Cobble Hill, and Smith and Union in Carroll Gardens. He had seven butchers employed, delivering all over, as far away as Staten Island. Business boomed.
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