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Patelson Music House


HISTORY: by Michael Meltzer

The Joseph Patelson Music House had its beginnings in a modest but unique enterprise begun by Ernest Cook in 1920. Using New York’s thriving used bookstores as his model, Cook pioneered the buying and selling of used printed music. He opened the Half-Price Music Shop on Cooper Square, carrying only the bare minimum of new music needed to round out a working inventory. It later moved to 210 West 59th Street, then to 331 West 57th (the block where Bartok lived out his last years).

In 1929, Cook ran a N.Y.Times ad for a clerk, hiring an 18-year-old CCNY student named Joseph Patelson. An amateur pianist, violinist and composer, young Mr. Patelson showed an encyclopedic grasp of his new profession. As Mr. Cook’s health deteriorated, Patelson assumed responsibility for running the store, and it prospered. Cook passed on in 1939, leaving the business to his loyal young manager. Changing the store name to the Joseph Patelson Music House, Patelson moved it in 1940 to 158 West 56th Street, just next door to its present location, and was ably joined in its management by his younger brother, Henry, who remained with him for 29 years.

Directly across the street was the stage entrance to Carnegie Hall, then the home of the NY Philharmonic and host to countless visiting orchestras, and just down the street was the stage entrance to the New York City Center, then the home of the NYC Opera and the NYC Ballet. The finest classical musicians in the city and in fact, the world, passed by Patelson’s every day and it became a favorite pit-stop and meeting place for performers, music teachers and students.

In 1942, #160 next door came up for sale. Patelson quickly acted to purchase it, but World War II rationing of building materials prevented his making the necessary renovations until 1946. During the July 4th weekend of 1947, the shop was finally moved to its present site. The 1879 carriage house (the second floor had been a hayloft) sits directly upon bedrock and has no basement. It had served as an automobile garage and eventually as a piano shop. In 1905 it was occupied by the American outlet for the German automotive manufacturer Bosch and Company.

On this magical musical city block, the shop flourished. Adding carefully selected employees, one by one, Patelson assembled perhaps the most musically knowledgeable staff of any retail store in the world to service the esoteric and in-depth requests and inquiries of his demanding professional clientele. The inventory of new music grew by leaps and bounds. Responding to the very high taste level of his customers, Patelson astutely made a specialty of European and scholarly editions, ever mindful of the need for lower-priced reprint editions as well, placed on the shelf side-by-side.

Complementing the inventory of printed music, a record department (actually a store-within-the-store) was opened by Patelson’s brother-in-law, Joe Darton. The Darton Record Library had an excellent selection of opera recordings in support of the Patelson stock of opera scores. It also gave shelf space to many small but high-quality classical record labels that the chain stores seemed unaware of. The record department was discontinued when Darton retired in 1991.

As the students of Juilliard, Manhattan, Mannes, Columbia and NYU graduated and took music jobs all over the country, they would come to find that there was no music source out there quite the equal of their Patelson’s in New York. The store’s occasional mail-order service began to grow, and by 1960 had become a full-fledged department with its own staff. The next ten years saw national mail order sales jump from 10% of the store’s total volume to an astonishing 40%, and wonderfully, without any letup in the daily walk-in business.

On any given day, a visitor is likely to encounter one of the luminaries of the music or entertainment world at the Patelson store. Over the years, Artur Rubinstein, David Oistrakh, Isaac Stern, Aaron Copland, Samuel Barber, Ned Rorem, Erich Leinsdorf, Maurice Abravanel, James Levine, Kurt Masur, Beverly Sills, Placido Domingo, Robert Merrill, Eileen Farrell, Maureen Forrester, Patricia Brooks, Vladimir Horowitz, Jorge Bolet, Andre Watts, Van Cliburn, Earl Wild, Richard Goode, Mitsuko Uchida, Charles Rosen all called upon Patelson’s services, as did celebrities Frank Sinatra, Judy Collins, Michael Jackson, Paul McCartney, Jaco Pastorius, Werner Klemperer, Claudette Colbert, Lee Remick and Kevin Kline.

Joseph Patelson was quite proud of his building and had personal hopes of its someday earning landmark designation. He stood fast against high-rise encroachment and turned down multi-million-dollar offers for 160 West 56th Street, knowing that such a sale would probably be the end of a very special way of life.

In 1992, Joseph Patelson suffered a sudden and rapid series of strokes, and died at age 81. His adopted son Dan, a graphic artist by profession, became the owner. Neither Dan Patelson nor anyone else had been groomed for top management succession. Whether Joseph Patelson had thought he had ample time left, or was simply unconcerned whether the business continued after him, we can never know. As best he could, Dan began to oversee JPMH’s dangerously slow adaptation to the world of data processing and the Internet. Dan’s untimely passing in 2004 left his wife, Marsha, a cellist and music teacher by profession, at the helm. The Joseph Patelson Music House closed its doors forever in 2009.