By Claudie Benjamin
Marc Wigder is an attorney and City Councilman in Boca Raton, Florida. His parents owned the Royale Bakery at 237 West 72nd Street for more than 40 years. On the ten-year anniversary of the day that Ben Wigder passed away at the age of 94 in 2014, his son wanted to do something especially nice to honor his late father.
He wrote in advance to Mayor de Blasio and got approval to have 72nd Street named Royale Bakery/Ben Wigder Street for that day of memorial. “I bought 1,000 black and white cookies and gave them out near the bakery.” He was very moved by the response describing how many Upper West Siders came up to him to share joyful reminiscences about his father and the Royale Bakery.
Growing up, Wigder spent a lot of time in the bakery helping wherever help was needed. His father baked in the back of the bakery. Victoria, his mother, worked behind the counter as a sales clerk.
Ben Wigder specialized in classic Jewish baked goods, “We were especially busy at the holidays,” said Marc, “we made every type of challah: round challahs, braided challah, Babkas, ruggelah, marble pumpernickel, and blintzes.” He recalled that his father especially liked baking and decorating celebratory cakes. He loved to exercise his creativity with decorations associated with occasions like Thanksgiving, the Fourth of July, and even George Washington’s birthday. This decoration referred to the popular “I never tell a lie” myth in which as a child the first president chopped down a cherry tree and then admitted the deed to his mother.
Longtime Upper West Side resident Lorna Nowvé remembers the Royale bakery very well. She and a number of her colleagues at the Municipal Art Society (MAS) lived near the Royale bakery and would take turns bringing in pastries for committee meetings. “Ruggelah was a particular favorite of Mrs. Onassis, who attended many of our morning meetings.”
Ben was a Holocaust survivor from a small town outside of Bucharest, Romania. Ben was arrested by the Nazis and interred in a labor camp in Romania. His job at the camp was breaking stone to build a road for tanks headed for the invasion of Russia. Later when the tide of the war turned, the Russians charged Ben and other inmates to reverse the direction of the road into Germany. When the war ended Ben was placed in a Displaced Persons Camp in Bari, Italy, where he learned to bake. Victoria, who was much younger, later recalled that her family was forced to quarter Nazi soldiers and then Russians in their farmhouse. Marc’s parents, both from the same area of Romania, immigrated to the United States separately. They later married here and settled in New Rochelle after living in Washington Heights where their son Marc was born.
Their Upper West Side bakery gained a kind of long-lasting national fame after it was featured in an episode of Seinfeld, the wildly popular long-playing TV series with an Upper West Side setting. The plot of “The Dinner Party,” Episode 77, describes characters experiencing various pitfalls revolving around the purchase of a babka at the Royale Bakery to bring to a dinner party. Seinfeld bought a black and white cookie and his positive quip relating to racial equality was widely reported.
As a part of Seinfeld lore, the bakery, like other businesses featured on the show, was actually shot on set in LA. The site of the former bakery was included on tourist bus tours of Seinfeld’s NY even after the bakery closed and the space was occupied by Jenny Craig (no irony intended).
Ben Wigder was deeply committed to the Upper West Side community. “He was a wonderful Jewish businessman. He gave bakery goods that were not sold to homeless people. Also, many early mornings you could see garbage trucks lined up on 72nd Street near the Royale Bakery where he regularly provided sanitation workers with breakfast bagels. He cared not only about the homeless but about the workers who served the city,” Marc said. He added that over the years, Ben Wigder acquired several multi-family buildings with affordable rents on West 72nd Street and drew satisfaction from being supportive of housing for middle-income residents.
This is a commitment that inspired his son. Today, as a member of the Boca Raton City Council and through other professional efforts he emphasizes the need for affordable housing to address the needs of workers who cannot afford to take jobs in an area where housing is too expensive creating a crisis for business owners.
Although he moved to Florida nearly 20 years ago, Marc is still sentimental about the Upper West Side and Bakery-related matters. When H & H Bagels (once on 80th Street and Broadway) recently opened a branch in Boca Raton, he and other nostalgic former Upper West Siders arrived on opening day at 5:00 am to savor memories of a much-loved neighborhood.