from The Biggest City in the World

"Mrs Agnese was eighty-one years old.  She had arrived the day before on the Italian liner Rex.  It was 10 o'clock when I reached the Italian-American grocery operated by her son, Salavatore Agnese, at 504 Court Street, but the old woman was still upstairs, sleeping happily in a large feather bed ...

The old lady was extremely proud of her son's grocery store.  She has four sons in New York City, and they all run grocery stores.  She wandered through Salvatore's store, admiring the provolone cheeses hanging in the window, slapping them affectionately with wrinkled, capable old hands."

                                                                                                                               Joseph Mitchell

When Mitchell visited the Agnese family, in the 1930s, 504 Court was still a part of Red Hook.  Here's the Carroll Gardens 504 today, sandwiched between an operating grocery store & Le Petit Cafe.