An important aspect of the Gershwin brothers’ story is their sheer pluck thriving amidst the teeming wave of immigration as the 20th century gathered steam. Within 20 years of their parents’ arrival from Russia, the brothers had become quick studies, absorbing the brash sounds and vernacular of the city. In 1918 they articulated their new national tunesmithing with “The Real American Folk Song (Is a Rag).” The lyrics, formatted here exactly as Ira Gershwin intended, perfectly articulate their understanding of the new idiom. 

Each nation has a creative vein

Originating a native strain,
With folk songs plaintive and others gay

In their own peculiar way.

American folk songs, I feel,

Have a much stronger appeal.

The real American folk song is a rag –

A mental jag –

A rhythmic tonic for the chronic blues.

For it’s inoculated

With a syncopated

Sort of meter,

Sweeter-

 than a classic strain;

Boy! You can’t remain

Still and quiet –

 for it’s a riot!

“Though Born in Russia, Sure Enough…”

This is a lyric from the brothers’ 1921 ditty “Mischa, Jascha, Toscha, Sascha,” which continues with “We’re glad that we became relations Of Uncle Sammy.” The number has ancestral overtones inasmuch as the Gershwin story originates in the 1890’s in St. Petersburg in Russia where George’s father Morris was facing induction into the Czar’s army. This prospect, and the hardships Jewish residents experienced in Russia, prompted Morris to up and leave for a better life in Brooklyn where his uncle was a tailor.

George’s mother Rose came to Brooklyn with her parents and her siblings. Her father’s occupation as a furrier ensured that they were of better means financially, making their move one of choice. Morris and Rose knew each other in St. Petersburg and soon reconnected in the United States on Manhattan’s Lower East side of Manhattan. Morris was a shoe cutter, a highly prized skill at that time. His income and the relative financial security of Rose’s family allowed the Gershwins to live comfortably and for Morris, Rose, and young Ira, born Dec. 6, 1896, to leave the Lower East Side for Brooklyn by 1897, where Morris became an American citizen.

A “Cunning Cottage “on Snedicker Avenue

On his naturalization application, Morris gave his address as 241 Snediker Avenue. George was actually born across the street at 242 Snediker. On his birth certificate he was named Jacob Gershwine, after his grandfather. 

In 1963 the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) donated a plaque at 242 Snedicker Avenue to commemorate George’s 65th birthday. His siblings Frances and Arthur attended the unveiling along with Irving Caesar, who in 1919 wrote the lyrics for George’s first hit “Swanee,” and George’s contemporary, composer/conductor Morton Gould. Ira lived in Beverly Hills at the time and did not participate in the ceremony. Michael Owen has provided a photograph of Frances and Arthur in front of the plaque on that special day. Many years later the plaque was vandalized. The New York Times reported in 1976 that there were efforts to save the house from demolition and to convert it into a musical shrine to George.  Those plans didn’t materialize, and the house burned down in 1987.

Ira retained a few memories of the house at 242 Snediker: he recalled that the ground floor had a front room, a kitchen, a dining room and perhaps a maid’s room. Three or four small but comfortable bedrooms were located upstairs. He also said that there were trees on either side of the house, with a fenced-in yard where grapes were grown. Frances, born in 1906 in Manhattan, did not live on Snedicker Avenue but Arthur, born in 1900, did live there when he was a baby. There was a gentleman border named Taffelstein who helped with the rent. The house itself and the residential structures that might have existed on that block no longer exist, A commercial warehouse stands where 242 Snedicker Avenue used to be.