Middle and Fore Streets were the hub of downtown Portland commerce for much of the 20th century. Fore Street is the oldest street in the Old Port, and Middle Street (formerly King Street) was the key commercial artery for the city. In 1924, about three decades after Jews first began arriving in numbers, the yearly tax assessment showed that more than 30% of the properties on Middle Street were by then owned by Jews. This was a remarkably rapid move into property ownership for a small immigrant minority, most of whom had arrived with few material assets, did not speak English, and had little understanding of their new world.
In just one generation, some Jewish Portlanders became formidable merchants, dominating retail in downtown Portland in the 1930s and 1940s. Take retail furniture: this Trail includes just one example—the Novicks and Hub Furniture on Congress Street and then Fore Street (Stop M04). But we could add Youngs Furniture on Middle Street, Federal Furniture on Middle Street, Reliable Furniture (Stop M01) on Middle and then Cumberland Avenue, Lancaster Furniture on Middle Street, Potter’s Furniture on Preble Street, The Schultz Company on Plum Street, Romanow Furniture on Forest Avenue, and Enterprise Mattress on Middle Street—all were Jewish-owned businesses.
Jewish merchants also were prominent in other market segments, notably clothing (see Levinsky’s, Stop E01 and Bernard Shalit, Stop D02), hardware, auto dealerships and commercial real estate, and wholesale and distribution. Of the latter, one example was Nelson & Small. A family business founded in 1936 by Harold Nelson and his cousin Irving Small, and later run by their sons Kenneth Nelson and David Small, the company started as a furniture wholesaler and expanded into appliance distribution and commercial equipment.
From the earliest days, several Jewish-owned Middle and Fore Street buildings were owned by women, such as Bessie Zeitman (Stop M03). It is likely that to protect themselves in case of bankruptcy, some married couples put their home and business properties in the name of the wife, and the business in the name of the husband. But as we see with widows Bessie Zeitman, Esther Shelling on Hampshire Street (Stop E05), and Annie Shalit on High Street (Stop D01), these were not just names on paper. Women, often as wives or widows, managed small and large commercial and retail businesses, sometimes for decades.
These economic successes are more remarkable because they were achieved despite active political and social discrimination from the Protestant city leaders that boxed out Jews, Catholics, and Blacks from city government in the 1920s, imposed redlining to restrict where minorities could live, and until 1969, prevented Jews from joining clubs or enjoying hotels and resorts (see the Downtown Trail).