Bluestein Family
This family business went through many permutations, generations, and locations before it settled at its current address. Meyer Bluestein (1847–1892) emigrated around 1881 from Berdichev, Russia, with his wife, Betty Piatigorsky Bluestein (1846–1911), a daughter of Dvosy and Jacob (Piatigorsky) Jacobs (Dvosy and Jacob changed their surname from Piatigorsky to Jacobs). Bluestein is listed in the 1890 Charleston City Directory as a dry goods and clothing merchant with shops at 468 King Street and 549 King Street. Meyer and Betty lived above the latter address with their children: Hyman, Moses, Joseph Solomon (“Joseph Sidney”), J. Lazarus, and Sarah. The eldest three sons worked with their father.
Upon Meyer Bluestein’s death, his widow, Betty, continued his business. She moved the family’s residence from 549 King Street to 420 King Street, where she kept a ground-floor dry goods store. Mrs. Bluestein also briefly operated a business at 468 King, before turning it over to Hyman, Moses, and Joseph, who renamed the store Bluestein Brothers. Relocated again by 1900, Mrs. Betty Bluestein’s clothing store, managed by her son Lazarus (daughter, Sarah, was the bookkeeper), was situated at 470 King Street, where both lived.
As Hyman, Moses, and Joseph reached adulthood they moved into apartments near their family and businesses. Typical of King Street, these residences were two- or three-story apartments above stores. By 1900, the brothers had moved their clothing store, Bluestein Brothers, to 494 King Street, here at the corner of Mary Street. Joseph lived upstairs, while Moses stayed in the apartment above 468 King, their father’s former shop and the location of an alley minyan, where Jews met to pray instead of traveling to Brith Sholom on St. Philip Street below Calhoun. Hyman, meanwhile, set up a separate household with his wife, Marsha Freda. The living area above Bluestein Brothers seems to have been divided into at least two apartments. Abraham Patla, an Orthodox Jew who taught Hebrew lessons in his home, also resided here from about 1894 through 1906. Betty Bluestein’s sister Simmie was married to Patla’s son, Morris.
After raising five children and managing an independent business in her widowhood, Mrs. Betty Bluestein finally retired in the early twentieth century. Her son Lazarus opened his own menswear store at 493 King Street; in 1905 Moses joined that firm, which became L & M Bluestein, and later Bluestein & Levin/The B&L Store (Moses Bluestein and Julius Levin), 485 King Street.
Hyman and Joseph Bluestein remained at 494 King Street and, in 1913, they enlarged and rebuilt the store, cladding the exterior in the distinctive glazed blue bricks that individualize the corner building. Under the ownership of Nathan (Nicky) Bluestein, the grandson of Joseph and Bessie Bluestein, the store closed in December 2017.
Bluestein Bros. advertisement, 1901 Charleston city directory
