Surely, if you are of a certain age (and if you lived in Massachusetts at the right time) you remember Building 19 and Gerald Elovitz. Actually, you probably don’t remember the latter name, because he was always known under his Americanized name, Jerry Ellis. (As you probably know, that sort of name change happened to a great many immigrants who came from Eastern European Jewry — my grandparents, for instance — even though the change did not take place at Ellis Island, as the common myth claims, and as would be all too appropriate in this case.)

Anyway, Ellis’s daughter, Linda Elovitz Marshall, has compiled this light-hearted history of the famous store. It is beautifully illustrated —well, let’s say, appropriately illustrated — by Building 19’s well-known cartoonist, Mat Brown. The format is that of a graphic novel, but we can’t call it that since it’s not a novel! The sensibility is more like Mad Magazine than any novel you might have read. You can find it at the library, as I did, and you can read it in no time. It’s fun, and you’ll actually learn something!

Categories: Dorchester/Boston