I have curtailed my walks around our beautiful borough until the warm weather returns. I am not what you would call a “winter” person. The best temperature for optimum performance of this walker is around 85° with a nice healthy high humidity level. I am still walking to the library of a weekend but I take the shortest, most direct route. And I have even been known to take the bus home though it means standing at a windswept bus stop at Grand Army Plaza waiting for the B69, which runs only every half hour on weekends, since that's better than an hour walk in a biting wind.
A pleasant block in Stuyvesant Heights
More Stuyvesant Heights brownstones
I did try, honestly I did. About a week before Christmas, I wandered out into Bedford-Stuyvesant, a rich and varied neighborhood, but I didn’t enjoy it. Too much stopping to take my gloves off, snap a picture, put the gloves back on, etc.; and much too chilly to be pleasant. Even my photos didn't come out very well, maybe my hands were shaking and blurring the image.
A house on MacDonough Street
St. Philip's Anglican Episcopal Church on MacDonough Street
There are some beautiful blocks in the Bed-Stuy-Crown Heights area and I’ll drop in a few photos here from that Saturday and from a walk a few (warmer) weeks earlier. But the rest of Bed-Stuy may have to wait until spring.
Brower Park, the Kingston Avenue side
Prospect Place off Kingston Avenue across from Brower Park
Above and below are some blocks in and around Stuyvesant Heights, an area of about four square blocks on the western edge of Bed-Stuy, near Fulton Street. Nearby Stuyvesant Heights, also along Fulton Street, is Fulton Park with a statue of Robert, um, oh yeah, Fulton.
Statue of Robert Fulton in Fulton Park
Chauncey Street along the edge of Fulton Park
Further west, several blocks beyond Atlantic Avenue and either in Bed-Stuy or Crown Heights, depending on how you view the matter, is Brower Park, where there is an interesting looking church. Brower Park is where there was supposed to be an elaborate memorial to the fallen of World War I. It's not there any longer, though there is a small stand of trees planted in honor of Theodore Roosevelt that can be seen in the photo of the park earlier in this post. I'd like to find out what happened to that memorial. It may have been displaced by a basketball court, a playground, or even the Brooklyn Children's Museum that occupies one corner of the block.
First Church of God in Christ, Kingston Ave. & Park Place
Also on the edge of Stuyvesant Heights is one of the more interesting looking Carnegie Libraries, the Macon Branch, now undergoing some renovation. It's at Lewis Ave. and Macon St. I've tracked down most of Brooklyn's Carnegie Libraries since all but, I think, three still remain. I'll get to them later in the spring also.
And just for comparison's sake: Boys High School (pictured in a previous post) and Girls High School a few blocks away. Both were designed by the same architect.
Boys High School (above)
Girls High School (below)
From the size of the buildings I'd say they expected a lot more boys than girls to go to high school!
I suppose I could use the winter months to add photos from summer walks that I didn’t put in here earlier, but that depends. I still try to walk home from Manhattan on weekdays but even if I don’t, I just want to sit over a cup of hot tea and a good mystery book at night so not much blogging will get done.
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