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Carnegie Deli Just Threw Out All of Its Autographed Celebrity Photos, Except One

The wood-framed photos that covered almost every available vertical surface in the deli were unceremoniously dumped in plastic bins on the sidewalk.
Photo via Flickr user Mike

If you've been looking for a framed photo of a New York newscaster or a woman who may or may not have been on "Knots Landing," you should've gone down to Seventh Avenue in midtown Manhattan yesterday. A month after the legendary Carnegie Deli served its last pastrami sandwich, its owners have decided to throw out the celebrity pictures that lined the restaurant's walls.

The wood-framed photos that covered almost every available vertical surface in the deli were unceremoniously dumped in plastic bins on the sidewalk, and the owners are A-OK with that. "We wanted to do something nice for people in the neighborhood," Sarri Harper, the daughter of owner Marion Harper, told DNAinfo.

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Tossing those photos out started as something therapeutic for the elder Harper: she originally started dumping the pictures that had been addressed to her ex-husband, Sandy Levine, but then decided to keep going. "It felt good," she said of the photo purge. "Otherwise I would have smashed them."

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Harper said that she couldn't remember how many pictures she'd put in the plastic bin outside—or who they were—but by the time DNAinfo got there, the pile had dwindled to a handful of has-beens or never-quite-weres. One man had just snagged a photo of French-Caribbean crooner Henri Salvador, while another made off with former Jets lineman Joe Klecko.

"To me anything from the Carnegie has value and meaning to people," Marian Harper said. The 66-year-old inherited the deli from her father, Milton Parker, who bought it from its original owners in 1976.

Carnegie Deli opened in 1937 and closed its doors for the final time at midnight on December 30. MUNCHIES has reached out to both Harpers for comment.

The Harpers might not be sentimental types, but there was one autographed picture that they weren't going to let go. "We're keeping Woody Allen for ourselves," Sarri Harper said. Allen had been honored by the deli with a signature sandwich, a $29.99 combination of corned beef and pastrami.