Novak Bowling Supplies, Avenue A

by G. Jack Urso

 

Fig. 1. Avenue A, Albany, NY.

Avenue A, in the Albany Pine Hills neighborhood where I grew up in the 60s and 70s, isn’t much of an avenue. It’s actually the parking lot behind a line of stores on New Scotland Avenue. Only a block from where I grew up on Norwood Avenue, and just a few houses up from where my grandmother lived on Ontario St., Avenue A was a convenient shortcut to stores on New Scotland. At the back of the parking lot there was a small, lone, abandoned white L-shaped building with a sign jutting off its roof announcing, “NOVAK BOWLING SUPPLIES.”

Fig 2. Novak Bowling Supplies advertising masthead.

I suppose most kids are drawn to abandoned buildings out of curiosity and the search for newer playgrounds. Looking inside the windows of the main building with the sign, I could see a long glass counter with some odds and ends scattered about and a few signs on the walls alongside empty shelves. The other part of the L-shaped building had some equipment, including what I later identified as a bowling ball drill press. I never attempted to break in, though it would have been easy. The back part of the parking lot was not lighted and being the mid-70s there were certainly no cameras.

Fig. 3. The location of Novak Bowling Supplies on Avenue A. Although torn down and replaced by a maintenance shed, the dimensions are the same with the door in the same place. A big picture window occupied space to the right of the door.  There was a connected building about the same size that was attached to the main building on the left at a 90-degree angle.

I lived on Norwood until 1978 and in the general neighborhood until 1983 when I went to college. When I left, I recall the building was still standing and still abandoned. In January 1990, about a year or so after I graduated college, I moved back Albany and into an apartment building on Grove Avenue, just behind the Novak Bowling Supplies building on Avenue A. By that time, however, the sign had fallen, the roof caved in, and whatever else left in it pilfered or disintegrating in the exposure to the elements. It remained that way until I moved 1995. At some point after that, what remained was pulled down, at least by the early 2000s when I went to a restaurant on New Scotland and parked in the lot.

Fig. 4. A wider shot of the location of 1 Avenue A In the mid-1970s, the dumpsters were not located there and the area not overgrown.

In time, I forgot the name of the business and filed the memory among the many fleeting, stray images from my youth.

Fig. 5. Novak Bowling Supplies advertisement, 1960.

A couple months ago, while scrolling through a series of old advertisements on the Albany Group Archive Photostream on Flickr, I saw an advertisement for Novak Bowling Supplies on Avenue A! A flood of memories hit me as I recalled the name and the building. That moment when a long-buried and nearly forgotten memories boil to the surface generated a rush of endorphins and I decided that I had to find out more to this story. I doubted I would find anything more than the one lone advertisement I ran across purely by accident, but having done this sort of needle-in-the-haystack research before I had a few tricks I could try to pull out whatever information that might still exist.

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The Remains of the Day

While nothing remains of the original two small shacks that comprised Novak Building Supplies, there are some remaining relics indicating in existence of the previous buildings. In these photos we can see the area immediately to the left of the current gray maintenance shed that currently sits on the site of 1 Avenue A. The left wall of the current building can be seen on the right of fig. 6.  Outlined in red in the images below we can see the remains of concrete blocks supporting a floor or a wall, utility pipes, and a concrete wall footing.

Fig. 6. Outlined in red, on top, remains of concrete blocks, possibly
footings for the floor or back wall. Below right, cut-off utility pipes.

Fig. 7. Outlined in red, on right, remains of the concrete footings.
On left, another cut-off utility pipe.

Fig. 8. Outlined in red in the same area, a concrete footing for a supporting wall post.

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The Era of Big Balls

The ad in the Albany Group Archives list hours for Novak Bowling Supplies in 1960 of 8 AM to 8 PM Monday through Friday, and 10 AM to 2 PM on Saturdays. That is a pretty long work week for a parking lot bowling supply company. Honestly, who needs a bowling ball at 8 AM?  Yet, the hours reflect the immense popularity of bowling in Mid-Twentieth Century America. While still a popular recreational activity, it certainly has lost the large population percentage it once held. By the 1960s, probably about a half dozen bowling alleys operated in Albany.

Fig. 9. The Playdium, shortly before its demise in 2018 (Friends of Albany History).

Novak Bowling Supplies had a prime spot three blocks away from the glorious Playdium Bowling Centre with its lighted glass-brick facade. Built in 1940 and featuring a restaurant and 28 alleys, the Playdium was a popular draw and I recall that on league nights, Fridays, and Saturdays, the place was always packed.

According to the Friends of Albany History in an article about the closing of the Playdium in 2018, “By 1965 there were 750 bowling leagues in Albany” (“The Father of Albany Bowling, the Pine Hills Playdium; an American Dream,” Jan. 6, 2018). A friend, whose father was a competitive semi-pro bowler, remembered Novak Bowling Supplies as a store her father frequented. With 750 bowling leagues in the city, Novak Bowling Supplies probably had good reason for such long hours in the 1960s. By the 1970s, however, as recounted in the same Friends of Albany History article, the popularity of bowling dropped precipitously leading to the closure of most of the city bowling alleys by the late 1980s. Today, while there are a few alleys in nearby towns, no bowling alleys remain within city limits itself.

By about 1975, when at nine I was old enough to begin roaming the neighborhood on my own, I discovered Novak Bowling Supplies. I thought it was long abandoned, but, as I would discover 50 years later, only recently so, and that takes us to the next chapter in our story.

The Two Novaks

The row of shops along New Scotland Avenue that fronted the Avenue A parking lot were probably constructed in around World War I. There was no listing for Novak Bowling Supplies in the Albany City Directory until 1955. In the 1950 directory three addresses are listed for Avenue A: 0, 1, and 7. By 1955, however, only 1 Avenue A remains. With no phone directory available earlier than 1950, what these other businesses could have been is unknown. The last year Novak Bowling Supplies appeared in the directory was 1975. See fig. 10-15 below.

Fig. 10. 1950 business listing.

Fig. 11. 1955 business listing. It's first year in business.

Fig. 12. 1960 business listing.

Fig. 13. 1968 business listing.

Fig. 14. 1975 business listing. It's last year in business.

Fig. 15. 1976 business listing.

I knew from previous research that residential listings often contained the name of the business of the homeowner. Sure enough, a Larry Novak was listed in the Albany City Directory as the owner of Novak Bowling Supplies (see fig. 20 and 21). Larry F. Novak is noted as the owner of Novak Bowling Supplies throughout the twenty years of its listing in the Albany City Directory. Further, it identified Novak as living in Valatie, NY, about a 20 minute or so drive from Albany. This is consistent throughout the 1955 to 1975 directory listings. 

Fig. 16. 1955 Albany City Directory residential listing showing Larry Novak as owner of
Novak Bowling Supplies.

Fig. 17. 1975 Albany City Directory residential listing confirming Larry Novak’s
middle initial is F.

Interestingly, 1950 census records (fig. 18) reveal a Lawrence F. Novak born “about 1923” and whose occupation was listed as “Repair??? Bowling???” (question marks are original to the text) and employed in a bowling supply company. Additionally, he seems to be living at home with his parents and sister. Kinderhook is only 2.5 miles from Valatie, so it is not much of a stretch to conjecture that Larry moved out on his own to Valatie when he was able.

Fig. 18. A page from the 1950 U.S. Census of Kinderhook, NY. The listing for Lawrence F. Novak and his parents and sister is highlighted in green halfway down the page.

Then, a moment of kismet occurred. I discovered two press photos (fig. 19 & 21) from Historical Images and an associated article from The Herald Statesman Yonkers, NY, dated Aug. 30, 1993, featuring a Lawrence F. Novak, president of the Valatie Savings Loan Association, touted as New York’s smallest bank at the time. Historical banking company records are available online and show that Novak became president of the savings and loan in 1967. The company went out of business in 1995 when it merged with the Hudson River Bank & Trust Company.

Fig. 19. Lawrence F. Novak, President of Valatie Savings & Loan, outside the bank, 1991
(The Herald Statesman).

Fig. 20. The former Valatie Savings & Loan building, Oct. 2018 (Google Maps).

Could this be the same Lawrence F. Novak of Novak Bowling Supplies? I could not go by the name alone since many extended families give their children common names. My own family is filled with Joesphs, Anthonys, and Frances. Indeed, while my name is G. Jack Urso, a Jack G. Urso lived in nearby Coxsackie, NY. Telling us apart would be easy since Jack G. Urso's birthdate is 30 years before mine. However, a couple clues suggest the two Lawrence F. Novaks are one and the same person. First, the article reports Novak's age as 71 in 1993 which puts his year of birth at 1922. The Lawrence F. Novak employed in the bowling repair and supply business was reported in the 1950 census as being age 27 and born “about 1923.” If these are the same person and I think they are, one wonders how Novak balanced he responsibilities of his bank presidency and his bowling supply company, but it is possible he hired someone to run it for him.

Fig. 21. Lawrence F. Novak, inside the Valatie Savings & Loan with employees, 1991
(The Herald Statesman).

The Herald Statesman article gives us some insight Novak’s character. He boosts about the bank having only one computer, and that only because bank regulations required him to have one for certain kinds of documentation. It is endearingly quaint. The bank was open only four hours a day so Novak could have managed both the savings and loan and the bowling businesses.

In addition to Larry F. Novak, the 1968 directory also lists a Lawrence, no middle initial, and the 1974 directory lists a student named Larry Novak married to a Shirley, but both these entries last only a year or two then disappear. I can dismiss the latter, but not the former without more information. Consequently, I can’t conclusively determine the Lawrence F. Novak of the Valatie Savings Loan Association is the same Lawrence F. Novak of Novak Bowling Supplies, but the shared approximate year of birth, the shared middle initial, and the transient nature of the other two Larry Novaks, strongly suggests that these two Lawrence F. Novaks may be one and the same person, and I believe they are.

Concluding Thoughts

Memories are a tricky thing. All these years, I had romanticized Novak Bowling Supplies as being long abandoned when I first discovered it about 1975, which actually was the same year it went out business. Larry Novak must have made a good chunk of change during the Golden Age of Bowling in post-war America, enough to warrant a presidency at the local savings and loan. By 1975, the old shack that comprised Novak Bowling Supplies couldn’t compete with other bowling and sporting equipment supply businesses which featured practice lanes, customized shirts, and shoes.

There’s a saying that goes something along of the lines of if you want the real story, speak to the people who aren’t talking.  I like to think it was an old journalism professor, but it was probably just as likely on Lou Grant. Not everyone’s story might change the world, but everyone has a story about their world and that story helps to define the world they lived in. From the Golden Age of Bowling to an old-time, small town, one computer, savings and loan, Larry Novak’s life is a peak into a time now long gone . . . just like the old shack that once housed Novak Bowling Supplies.

Fig. 22. Lawrence F. Novak, 1922 – 1997, Saint John the Baptist Cemetery, Valatie, Columbia County, NY (findagrave.com).

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