Born June 17, 1923, at 1424 Crotona Park East, Bronx, N.Y., to Roumanian immigrants Meyer and Bessie Itzkowitz Silverman, Maurice Bernard Silverman died March 4, 2015. He grew up in Bridgeport, Conn., where his father, a bench jeweler to the trade, operated the Royal Jewelry Shop, at 77 Plaza, until his death in 1949. Maurice's mother moved to Washington D.C., where her son employed her in the antique shop he opened in 1958 and has run continuously. It is now Silverman Galleries Antiques & Antique Jewelry in Alexandria.
A survivor of childhood polio, in high school and beyond he was a naturalist and protege of Aretus A. Saunders. Concealing his medical history, he enlisted in the U.S. Army at the outbreak of World War II and qualified for a program that sent him to the Virginia Military Institute. He set up and ran medical dispensaries at prisoner of war camps housing German and Italian soldiers throughout Virginia.
He completed an undergraduate and master’s degree in psychology at the George Washington University, Washington, D.C., and was employed as a scientific abstracter at the Library of Congress. He taught fencing, practiced hypnotism, and was an avid chess player and swimmer.
In 1958, from his second floor desk at the Library of Congress, he spied a storefront for rent, scrubbed off the “Fortunes Told” sign left by the palm reader who was the previous tenant, and opened the antiques shop he has now run continuously for 57 years. The shop's original name, Capitol Hill Antiques, changed to Silverman Galleries when Maurice and the shop moved to Virginia upon expansion of the Library of Congress — the Madison Building of which now stands at the shop's original location.
By the early 1970s Maurice and the shop were in old town Alexandria, where he was joined in 1981 by his partner for 33 years in love and life, learning and business, his wife Angela, who will continue running Silverman Galleries Antiques & Antique Jewelry, according to Maurice's wishes.
Through changing times, Maurice had continued to run the shop “hands-on,” personally selecting and researching early and historical antiques and several centuries of antique jewelry. He continued to be active in the shop through January 2015, making new friends and enjoying return visits from decades and generations of private and institutional clients.
Maurice is also cherished among many friends as a creative, inventive cook, host and enthusiastic dinner companion, whose wide-ranging interests and original mind have enlivened everyone around him.
Besides his wife, Angela Silverman, survivors include his sister Edith Block and nephew C. Joel Block, both of Iselin, N.J., and niece Shelli Block of Rockville, Md.