Some New Yorkers remember how brusque the salesmen could be. It was really beautiful, man.”īut not everybody received a warm reception. Pensa, 66, remains wistful about the object of his childhood daydreams. He kept it going for four decades until rising rent and a growing downtown clientele spurred him to leave the block for good in August.
He opened his own shop, which came to be known as Rudy’s, in the 1970s. Pensa was on his way to being a purveyor of guitars to the stars. “I came with a hundred bucks and a guitar,” Mr. “Every band I was really watching and reading about, you found out they were coming to this place called 48th Street.” In 1972, he arrived and looked up Mr. “Everyone who was coming to America was coming to 48th Street,” he recalled. Not long after, Rudy Pensa left Argentina to pursue his dream of finding a place for himself on Music Row. He went to work in an accordion store on 48th Street and eventually opened his own shop on the block. Carozza, who was born in Italy, moved from Argentina to New York in the 1960s to be part of the city’s thriving music scene. The old world is kind of disappearing slowly. “I guess it’s part of the new world that we’re living in. “Musically, it’s kind of depressing,” Mario Tacca, an accordion player and longtime patron of Music Row, said. Where once there were Manny’s and Rudy’s and New York Woodwind and Brass, Frank Wolf Drummers Supplies and We Buy Guitars, now there are demolition crews, “for rent” notices and a construction office for the glass tower going up around the corner. The block is haunted by empty buildings and the occasional tourist straining for some echo of its harmonious past. Now, all that is left of Music Row are the signs and awnings that beckoned to virtuosos and neophytes alike. Both sides of the block, just off Times Square, were lined with shops that sold and repaired guitars, drums, keyboards and other instruments.īut the music finally died there in December when the last holdout, Alex Carozza, packed up his accordion store and 50 years of memories and moved off the block.
For decades, musicians from around the world flocked to a segment of West 48th Street in Manhattan that was known as Music Row.
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