Frank Maybrs

The storefront at 119-06 Merrick Blvd in St. Albans is part of a single story, vernacular building built in a traditional retail style with a flat roof as well as glass windows and a large sign facing Merrick Boulevard. The building is part of a block of similarly constructed single-story buildings and is directly adjacent to Roy Wilkins Park. Most likely, the name Frank Maybrs is a misspelling of Frank Mayers, the owner of the liquor store in the 1950s.  

The building was constructed as a part of a block of similar single-story retail buildings in 1931, and by September 1932 a small grocery store called Evergreen Dairies opened in it. It advertised in local newspapers a dozen eggs for twenty-five cents and a pint of mayonnaise for fifteen cents.  

Evergreen Dairies wouldn’t be open long. By January of the next year, the building would become a part of Kollner’s Incorporated, a chain of butcher shops that operated throughout New York City. Kollner’s advertised prices of cuts of meat in local newspapers, including a leg of lamb costing twenty-three cents and fresh pork costing fifteen cents. Kollner’s operation at 119-06 Merrick got off to an inauspicious start. A few months after it took over from Evergreen Dairies, George Dodd - the manager of the store - discovered that looters had dug into the store through the foundations and robbed it. 

At the same time that Kollner’s operated a butcher shop out of the building, a refrigerator repair service also briefly advertised its services in local newspapers from the address. For a few months in 1939, a company called Queens Service advertised its ability to repair and sell refrigerators before disappearing from history entirely. 

By the 1950s, the building had become a liquor store run by Frank Mayers - whose name is misspelled in the Green Book as Frank Maybrs. In local newspapers his last name is spelled alternatively as Mayers and Meyers. Mayers didn’t run the shop alone, though, and a man named George White was a clerk at the liquor store. Frank Mayers seems to have maintained a good relationship with local police, and local newspapers commented that they frequented the store.  

In the late 1960s, the liquor shop appears to have changed owners, with Frank Mayers moving on. The shop was renamed Seaglin Baisley Liquor Shop. Seaglin Baisley would be actively advertised throughout the early ’70s. In the modern day, the building has become a beauty salon called Beauty EX Studio.