Radiotopia.

From PRX.

From PRX's Radiotopia, this is Radio Diaries.

I'm Joe Richmond.

To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.

That's from Thomas Edison.

But today's show is about more than a pile of junk.

It's about a whole neighborhood of it.

And it's about how that neighborhood helped spark the very first radio revolution.

The sound you're listening to right now is from 1929.

It's from a film recording of Cortland Street in Lower Manhattan.

As the camera moves from one end of the block to the other, you can read the signs.

Price Radio, Vim Radio, Radio Fair, Arrow Radio, S&S Radio, City Radio.

In front of each of these stores, there are radios, phonographs, each one blasting something different.

This recording was made by Fox Movie Tone.

You can watch a clip on our website.

I'll give out the link at the end of the show.

So back when this recording was made in 1929, radio was still a novelty, but soon hundreds

of radio stores were popping up around Cortland Street in Lower Manhattan.

There was leotone radio, Cantor the cabinet king, Blan the radio man.

The neighborhood became a bizarre of knobs and antennas and radio tubes.

It was the largest collection of radios and electronic stores in the world.

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