The. Matchcover Storyteller

This is a well preserved example of a matchcover some you find very collectible — the “dine and dance” variety of covers. There are several different stock designs; I do like this one. I don’t collect but appreciate those of you who do.
This 20 strike is from the Ohio Match Co. in Wadsworth, Ohio, maybe a half hour from the site of the RMS convention next August, in Richfield!

The Polish National Home of The City of New York was established on New York’s Lower East Side in 1920 (there had been another in Brooklyn since 1914) . The area had been predominantly German since before the Civil War. The property itself had been built in 1833 and gone through a series of uses as a music hall and then in 1888, a ballroom, Arlington Hall. It may have had a richer history then, hosting a president (Teddy Roosevelt), a publisher (Hearst) and even a gangster shoot out!

As near as I can figure, dining was downstairs in “The Dom”, the Polish word for “home”; dancing was upstairs.. The full name of the hall was “Polski Dom Narodowy”.and it hosted Polish social organizations. Jazz legend Charlie Parker lived nearby in the early 50s and ate at the Polish National Home, listening to polka music on the jukebox.

The Polish National Home thrived until 1964. When the 3rd Avenue elevated was demolished in 1955, artists started migrating away from the by now-gentrified Greenwich Village, seeking cheaper rent on The Bowery. By 1960, realtors had given the area the name “The East Village” change was happening..

The place got a new owner in 1964. He kept the Polish restaurant, but renamed the upstairs “The Dom” and music gradually transitioned to jazz and pop. Andy Warhol exhibited there in the 60s and within about a year, The Dom was the epicentre of “New Bohemia”

A Polish National Home exists today in Greenpoint in Brooklyn in a building appropriately named “The Warsaw”…