[Hallicrafters] History

[Jim Brannigan]

Manhattan was chock full of radio stores.  I could go out on a lunch hour 
and buy darned near anything I needed.

When the WTC was started, most of the old radio shops moved to the area just 
south of Canal St.  Barry Electronics was further uptown at Spring St. and 
Broadway.  The area was then heavy industrial and "not the best 
neighborhood".

Barry was a ham and quite a character.  Barry's was a busy place, the 
showroom was small and at the top of a l o n g flight of stairs.  The best 
time to visit Barry's was off hours.  If you called Barry and made 
arraignments you could visit at almost any time.  We would go at night and 
after you told Barry what you needed he would say "follow me, and lets see 
if we can find it", then you would enter "ham heaven", the warehouse with 
rows and rows of parts, tubes, radios, test equipment....if it was not there 
it did not exist.

As you were concluding business, sometimes Barry would say "let's see if the 
bands are open"  In his office was a KW HF station and if condx were good 
you would operate for a while.

When Kitty took over, things changed, she dumped most of the parts and 
concentrated on new gear.

Jim


> Radio row in NYC was torn down to make room for the World Trade Center and
> Barry was killed in a boating accident.  His wife Kitty ran the business 
> for
> a while in the 70's
>
> Fond remembering
> 73 Dave K4JRB