Russ & Daughters entered its fourth generation of ownership in 2009, when cousins Josh Russ Tupper and Niki Russ Federman took the helm. Mark Russ Federman wrote an acclaimed memoir, “Russ & Daughters: the House that Herring Built,” which vividly recounts the history of Russ & Daughters and his time running it. For thirty years, together with his wife, Maria, they ran Russ & Daughters and made it into a New York destination, despite the Lower East Side’s reputation in those years as a rough neighborhood. In 1979, when the daughters and their husbands were ready to retire, Mark Russ Federman, Anne’s son, decided to leave his legal career and become the third generation owner. The daughters married men who also joined the business.

Russ & Daughters is the first business in the United States to have “& Daughters” in its name. In 1935, he made his daughters full partners and changed the name to Russ & Daughters, a bold and controversial move. Having no sons, Joel Russ required his three lovely daughters - Hattie, Ida, and Anne - to work in the store from the time they were teenagers. In 1920, he moved the store around the corner to 179 East Houston Street, where it has been ever since. The original store was on Orchard Street. It took him seven years to work his way up from that first herring barrel to having a pushcart operation, a horse and wagon, and then, in 1914, a brick and mortar store. He got his start selling schmaltz herring out of a barrel to the throngs of Eastern European Jews on the Lower East Side. In 1907, Joel Russ immigrated from the shtetl of Strzyzow, now part of modern day Poland. For 107 years, Russ & Daughters has been an integral part of the history of New York City, a touchstone in the lives of generations, and the torchbearer of Jewish food in America.

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