Serendipity One?

[Laurence Horn]

On Feb 8, 2012, at 2:51 PM, Joel S. Berson wrote:

> At 2/8/2012 09:59 AM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>> Maybe when she went into New York as a child, her parents took her
>> to Serendipity 3, the famous ice cream and frozen hot chocolate
>> emporium on the East Side (still going, I see:
>> http://www.serendipity3.com/main.htm), and she remembers how messy
>> those big ice cream desserts were, getting all over your nice
>> clothes and requiring a major cleanup.

I only remember the east side one, although it may have moved from one location to another in the shadow of the Queensboro Bridge.  I remember stopping there after the theater with my parents on the way home to Long Island, in the latish 1950s, and it was always on the far east side.  The history given at what appears to be the official site, http://www.serendipity3.com/history.htm, doesn't mention a 1 or 2 or a west side location or any place of a similar name under different management; instead, the "3" seems to have denoted the three guys who came up with the idea.  My mother was so fond of the place and the concept she named our cat Serendipity (Serrie for short).  The cat was much more interesting than the eponymous movie with John Cusack that I saw on an airplane once.

LH

> 
> Wasn't there a Serendipity (One?) a bit further west, perhaps
> actually on the West Side (i.e., west of Fifth Ave.) earlier?  (Than
> the founding of Serendipity 3 in 1954 [Wikipedia].)  And on 57th
> Street, a block or two east of Carnegie Hall, rather than on East
> 60th?  I faintly recall a fanciful ice cream dessert before that date
> when I was taken by my aunt after a concert (Leonard Bernstein's
> "Young People's"?) to a place whose name I recall as
> "Serendipity".  IIRC, my aunt thought I was too young to know the
> word, and she explained it to me.
> 
> Joel
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org