B&H Photo, New York City’s iconic, Hasidic-owned camera and video equipment store, is expanding.
Last week, The Real Deal revealed that B&H Photo was the “mystery buyer” that purchased 333 West 34th Street. According to the publication, property records show that an LLC, signed for by Zalman Gottlieb, the financial controller for the camera shop, purchased the 10-story property for $150 million.
That mammoth number is actually a relative bargain: It is $105 million less than global real estate firm Brookfield Properties spent on the 287,000-square-foot property in 2018.
Founded by a married couple, Blimie and Herman Schreiber, B&H Photo originally opened in Tribeca in 1973 and moved into its current “SuperStore” at 420 Ninth Ave., at West 34th Street, in 1997. Like its founders, many of B&H’s employees are Satmar Hasidic Jews — the shop is closed on Saturdays in observance of Shabbat, and kosher candies are available for free at checkout.
Over its 50-plus years in business in New York City, B&H has had brushes with controversy, including allegations of discrimination made by non-Hasidic furloughed employees in 2020.
“After complaining about the company’s handling of the pandemic back in March — including packed indoor prayer services for its ultra-religious Jewish workers — some workers have spotted what look like postings for their jobs online,” the New York Post reported in October of that year. “It’s a position they wouldn’t be in, they suspect, if they were part of the company’s inner circle of Hasidic Jewish staffers, who they say get special treatment.”
B&H Photo did not respond to requests for comment as of press time.
As for the new digs, it’s not yet clear what B&H intends to do with the additional 287,000 square feet of space, or what it means for the future of their current location. (The camera company also has executive offices at 440 Ninth Ave.) Once known as the Smith Barney Building, the new building has seen a “revolving door of tenants and owners over the past two decades,” reports local Hell’s Kitchen site W42St.com.
Most recently, the building’s ground floor space was occupied by the flagship NYC location of Sam Ash Music, a musical instrument retailer that went out of business in May 2024, after more than a century in operation.
In perhaps an only-in-New York twist, Sam Ash was also once one of the city’s iconic Jewish businesses: The store was founded in Brooklyn in 1924 by Sam Ash (who was born Samuel Ashkynase in Austria-Hungary) and his wife, Rose. The shop, which eventually expanded to dozens of stores across 16 states, was run by three generations of the Ash family before closing for good last year.
In addition, B&H shares a name with at least two other Jewish establishments in New York City: One is B&H Dairy, a kosher and vegetarian luncheonette in the East Village that — like B&H Photo — is named for its original owners, Abie Bergson and Jack Heller. The other is B&H Barbershop, also in the East Village, which is owned by a Jew from Uzbekistan who chose the initials because it represented “Baruch Hashem,” a Jewish expression that translates roughly to “thank God” or “God bless.”
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