Staten Island / New York / United States
Wallichs main competition on Staten Island was a similar operation down in Stapleton called Weitzmanns Photo Shop. At the time they were the oldest Kodak dealer still in existence and, unlike Wallichs, leaned more towards the newer Japanese camers like Nikon, Canon, Minolta and Pentex. In the late 1060s, Sal Marino started working there part time - first in the retail store as a salesman and later on as a photographer. In the early 1970s Sal started a mail order company specializing in model trains. His SMC Model Railroad Center grew to become one of the largest operations of its kind and in 1974 he purchased part of the old Stapleton Service Laundry to open a retail store. At the time it was the largest train store in the country. Even though Sal was busy shipping model trains all over the world, he still did some photography, but never forgot his love of working in a camera store. During the summer of 1984 The Advance ran a story --"End of a era -- Wallichs to close". After over forty years in business, Al Wallichs three sons had pretty much run the business into the ground and were throwing in the towel. Sal Marino decided to buy the business and move it into his train store. What he got for his money was the Wallichs name and phone number, 3 showcases and a box of processing that customers had not picked up even after weeks of phone calls telling them the store was closing. From these beginnings Wallichs has grown into what is now the only custom lab left on Staten Island. In 2000 we installed a Fuji Frontier processor to help move us into the 21st century. We were one of the first labs to be able to print true photographs from digital files and the first to install a wide format poster printer on site. We started using scanners, computers and Photoshop when most photographers never even heard of them.
