Russ & Daughters, ca. 1980. Russ & Daughters is an ''appetizing'' store established on the Lower East Side in 1914. Appetizing stores are a New York phenomenon, a store that sold fish and dairy products, as opposed to a delicatessen, which sold pickled, cured, and smoked meats. These delineations in products observed the strict Jewish dietary laws. Opened as "Russ's Cut Rate Appetizers'' on Orchard Street , the shop was the first brick and mortar business for Polish immigrant Joel Russ. Russ had previously carried mushrooms on this shoulders to sell and later operated a pushcart. The shop expanded his offerings to include salt cured herring and salmon. In 1920, Russ moved his shop around the corner to 179 East Houston where it has remained for nearly 100 years. In 1933, Russ renamed the shop 'Russ & Daughters' (he and his wife had only three girls). The shop has been continuously run by four generations of Russ family members. Today the shop has an additional outpost on the LES and a cafe in the uptown Jewish Museum.

Houston Street — that's HOW-stun, for the first-time visitors — has seen many changes since it was mapped as the southern boundary of Manhattan's famous street grid under the Commissioners' Plan of 1811. In fact, the 1811 plan was the first time the street, named for William Houstoun, was spelled "Houston." The misspelling stuck. Houstoun was the Georgia-born son of Sir Patrick Houstoun, a Scottish aristocrat and member of the state's colonial Government. The younger Houstoun represented Georgia at the Continental Congress and Constitutional Convention of 1787, where he met Mary Bayard, of the prominent Manhattan family, whom he married in 1788. The original segment of Houstoun's namesake street was part of the Bayard family's property. Over the ensuing decades, Houston was merged with neighboring thoroughfares (North Street on the east side; Hammersley Street on the west) until it spanned the breadth of the entire island. This walk covers the tumultuous early decades of the 20th century, when subway construction and increased automobile traffic molded Houston into its current form. Let's take a look!