An Excellent Snow Adventure

I spoke too hastily about the migration of the blog. It turns out that uploading a video to a blog post with the new host costs. It will be something like $59 per year per blog. I'm not sure I'll be using enough videos in the Brooklyn blog to warrant that. But I can't afford it right now anyway. So, I'll be hanging on to this blog as well for any videos I happen to want to add.

This one is of the unexpected storm we had today, 26 February.

Moving

This blog will be migrating to a new host. I am in the midst of trying to set up the new pages now but it's likely to take some time before I am familiar with all the widgets and extras and other things there. Still, that much being said, there will be no more new posts here though I'll keep a link to the remains on the new blog.

I know our winters are quirky here but it is almost March after all, so I'm confident it won' t be too long before I am out and about more and posting more.

The new blog is here:

Walking Brooklyn

This is an afterthought, written several days after the above. I found out that I can't yet post videos to the new blog. It will coat me some extra cash for that privilege, cash I can't afford at the moment. So I am keeping this blog for the time being.

I rarely post videos but, as it happens, I took some shots of the snow this afternoon (2/26) that I felt like posting so that goes here. The still photos, such as they are, will post to the new blog.

The Good, the Bad, and . . . Duane-Reade

The Midtowning of Williamsburg continues

With the temperatures moderating a bit more lately, I had decided I could at least wander around my own neighborhood to see how new construction was progressing. I rarely do that, having a few fixed routes to the subway, the supermarket, and into South Williamsburg when I head off to the library.


So, when I do go down an unfamiliar street I am sometimes taken aback by the appearance a new building wedged into the block, usually something or somewhere totally inappropriate. I thought I might wander out later this weekend and take a survey.




Meanwhile, I had been keeping my eye on the large structure going up on Bedford Avenue near Metropolitan. Until recently it had been covered in scaffolding or netting or just hadn't progressed to the point of being clad so you really couldn't tell what it would look like. I was very much afraid it was going to be another one of those boring green glass things that have been sprouting up around North Brooklyn.



I have to say that when I saw it last week (above) I was pleasantly surprised. It's clad in a sort of cream colored stone or gray depending on the light and doesn't look bad at all.



It's still pretty large, though even the size doesn't seem as overwhelming as it did when it was all scaffolding and girders and cranes and machinery.




When I shot the photos last week I cannot figure out how I missed the large banners on the side and front of the building until this morning. I think I was in a hurry to get someplace else and being nearby with my camra just snapped a few shots and went on. But there was no denying it as I walked past on my way to the L train with my buttered bagel in hand.



I don't want to sound snotty or snobby but I really Do Not Like Duane-Reade. I was so happy to hear that they'd been bought out by Walgreens. Not that Walgreens is any less ubiquitous in New York, but I was hoping I'd never have to see that nauseating red and blue DR logo any more (even though Walgreens will probably keep the stores just as they are). And I've really never forgiven them for buying out and closing down the Rock Bottom drug store in Jackson Heights when I lived there about twenty years ago. A great crowded emporium carrying some of the most out-of-the-way products you'd ever see and one day it had turned into a bland and boring and ordinary (and short lived, as it turned out) Duane-Reade with maybe a quarter of the products.

Just what we need in this neck of the woods; we already have our Chelsea-sized glass and steel mega-apartment buildings screening off the river views, why not more of 6th Avenue? Maybe at the other end of the block, still unreconstructed, we'll get an H & M or a Gap. We couldn't get anything useful like a competitively priced supermarket or a few bank branches.

My city, my borough, but NOT my drugstore. My drugstore is Kings, directly across the street, small and friendly and now decidedly in danger.

New York City Map Time Capsule

That New York City map that I enjoy using so much, and that I have provided a link to here on the site, has added a really interesting new feature.

Now, not only are you able to switch to a close-up aerial view of any part of Brooklyn from today (actually, 2008), but you can also call up a view of the same area from 1924!!

Granted, the 1924 view is not as good as the contemporary one. The photos are black & white and the detail isn't as good, but you can definitely see the differences across the years.

You can see what the borough looked like before the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway was built, before the Verrazano Bridge was built, before some major buildings were thrown up, before the Robert Moses-inspired urban renewal replaced dense neighborhoods with towering projects.

I've placed a few 1924 vs. 2008 photos here just to give you an idea of what the 1924 map looks like. And here you definitely have to click on the photo to enlarge it in order to see any detail.

First a view above McCarren Park in Greenpoint, along Bedford and Driggs Avenues and Lorimer Street, The park is there in 1924 but the pool (the largest municipal pool in the city, I think, when it opened) is about a dozen years in the future; it will occupy the white trapezoidal shaped area north of the park in the 1924 view; just to the right of the Lorimer St. label in 2008. Automotive High School, just west of the park on Bedford Avenue wasn't built until 1937 (it's the "L"-shaped building just above the "Mc" in 2008). And you see that Greenpoint itself was much more industrial in those days, note all the above ground storage tanks dotting the area and more working piers (both of these more evident in the area of Greenpoint off the photo further north).





The view over Fort Greene Park isn't a great deal different except that what had been a dense neighborhood in 1924 along the Myrtle Avenue side of the park is today the site of more New York City housing projects (the "slum" to the right of the 12D label in 1924). And . . . no BQE above Park Ave. at the top of the map.



A short sidelight on that area. I happened to be over there one Saturday last autumn taking pictures of one of the surviving Carnegie libraries on St. Edward's Street and also decided to take some shots of a very imposing Catholic church directly across the street from it. On the old map the church would be directly under the 12D label (the library is shown just to the right of the "D"). I got into conversation with an elderly man who was passing by and he asked if I knew what was curious about the church. When I said no, he told me that Al Capone had been baptized there. I had never given any thought to where Al Capone was born, probably thinking it was in Chicago. It turns out he was born only a few blocks away at 95 Navy Street (the family moved to Park Slope when he was 11). This invaluable map lists the church as dating from 1920 so either the date is wrong or the church was rebuilt. Since I've known other incorrect dates on the map, that doesn't surprise me.


Bay Ridge and Fort Hamilton, 2008.

Bay Ridge and Fort Hamilton, 1924. Hey, dude, where's my bridge!?!



East Williamsburg, the site of the Williamsburg Houses that in 1939 were the largest slum-clearance and low-income housing project of the Federal Housing Project (Stagg Walk and Ten Eyck Walk), according to the 1939 WPA Guide to New York City. Whenever New York City wanted to raze a neighborhood and throw up some projects they brought out the word "slum"; that's all it took and you were out of there, too often left on your own to find other accommodation. They were designated a city landmark in 2003.

A government report of the 1930s reportedly described the slums of the Williamsburg area of Brooklyn as bearing "the stamp of dull listlessness and despair." I can't imagine such government poetry today.



And there really were honest-to-goodness Navy ships in the Brooklyn Navy Yard in 1924.




That 1924 map looks like something you'd see in a Warner Bros. World War II thriller like All Through the Night, where Humphrey Bogart is trying to thwart the Fifth Columnists, or "Fivers," as he calls them, trying to blow up a ship in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, or where Norman Lloyd tried to blow up the ship near the end of Hitchcock's Saboteur (Universal not Warner's, before someone jumps down my throat about it).

No Winter Walks!! Stuyvesant Heights and Other

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.

Cypress Hills National Cemetery: Amplification

Cypress Hills National Cemetery vs. Cypress Hills Cemetery


Amplification and correction.

I don't blame the book since the situation out there in cemetery land can be very confusing.

I relied on a sidebar in The Neighborhoods of Brooklyn for my information on Cypress Hills National Cemetery. The sidebar is titled: Cypress Hills Cemetery. The first sentence explains that Cypress Hills Cemetery was made a part of the National Cemetery System in 1862 and is the only national cemetery in New York City. After that it goes on to mention the famous people buried there, the ones I mentioned in the last posting.

The trouble is that the are two similarly named cemeteries: Cypress Hills National Cemetery, which I visited and photographed, and Cypress Hills Cemetery (without the "National"), which is further north, up the hill among the other cemeteries located in the area. See the map below; please click on it to make it readable.




It's even a bit more confusing than that because what became Cypress Hills National Cemetery was once a part of the original Cypress Hills Cemetery. The VA homepage for the cemetery gives some good background information.

Cypress Hills National Cemetery

And a further complication is that even if Cypress Hills Cemetery was the one meant, only two of the people mentioned are actually buried in that cemetery.

From two other valuable sources, Find a Grave and Jewish Cemeteries in the New York Metropolitan Area, I was able to piece together the following:

Mae West: Cypress Hills Cemetery
Jackie Robinson: Cypress Hills Cemetery
Emma Lazarus: Beth Olom Cemetery
Sholom Aleichem: Mt. Carmel Cemetery
Edward G. Robinson: Beth El Cemetery (New Union Field Cemetery)
Harry Houdini: Machpelah Cemetery

Lou Gehrig: nowhere near here. He is buried in Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, up in Westchester County.

Beth Olom Cemetery is not shown on the map but the address given for it is 2 Cypress Hills Street, so it may be a part of one of the others, perhaps Shearith Israel, but that's just a guess at the moment.

A few of shots of Salem Fields Cemetery along Jamaica Avenue.



Even along Jamaica Avenue they seemed to go on forever and I am only talking about only a few cemeteries along that street, I can only imagine what it looks like further north.



And I didn't even walk down the whole length of them, I cut down into Cypress Hills before I was even a quarter of the way down along Jamaica Avenue.

Brooklyn War Memorials IV and Cypress Hills

Highland Park - Cypress Hills

Our old friend Pietro Montana who was so busy in the early 1920s producing monuments in Bushwick, later in the decade moved further out into Cypress Hills to create “Dawn of Glory” in Highland Park said, by my historical society’s booklet, to represent “a soldier’s dream.” I presume it means the figure represents a soldier dreaming, not the dream of the soldier, or they were more broadminded than I thought in 1925.

So, an unseasonably warm November Sunday called for a walk out Broadway to Highland Park and Cypress Hills. Below, the descent into Highland Park from Highland Blvd.

The booklet also says that there should be a bronze tablet on the back listing the names of 108 young men from the Cypress Hills section who died in the army and the navy from 1917-1918. That is no longer there; no doubt filched at some point for the price of the bronze. The monument was dedicated in July 1925.

The statue is striking but just as striking is the setting. Highland Park lies along the border between the Bushwick and Cypress Hills neighborhoods and tumbles down that great glacial ridge that forms the east-west spine of Brooklyn, from the cemeteries in Bushwick down into Cypress Hills. The statue is located in the lower portion of the park along Jamaica Avenue with a broad hillside of foliage forming the backdrop.

Besides the actual park of that name, there is an area called Highland Park that is part of Cypress Hills but my impression is that they may feel as much a part of Cypress Hills as Riverdale feels a part of the Bronx. Along Highland Blvd. at the top of the hill looking down on the park are large comfortable looking homes while Cypress Hills itself at the base of Hillside Park is a neighborhood of row houses and small homes.

Highland Blvd. (above), Richmond St. (below)

This is definitely New York’s cemetery land. Surrounding Highland Park are around fifteen different cemeteries. The only one I visited was Cypress Hills National Cemetery (Brooklyn’s own little Arlington) that lies along Jamaica Avenue next to Highland Park.

There was supposed to be another memorial dating from World War I there. It’s a very peaceful place (not that you find many really noisy cemeteries), just row on row of small white grave markers, each itself marked with a small flag, broken here and there by a more individual stone. It was declared a national cemetery during the Civil War and some of the earliest grave sites are of Confederate and Union soldiers.

The memorial to the “twenty-five sailors of the French fleet who died while on duty in American waters during the World War 1914-1918” is a large cross on the hillside near the back of the cemetery.

It was dedicated by the France American Society. So, I suppose Justice Scalia finally got his cross, though one memorializing only twenty-five specific French citizens who were probably Catholics anyway.

Also said to be buried in Cypress Hills, among others, are Mae West, Edward G. Robinson, Jackie Robinson, Lou Gehrig, and Harry Houdini. Emma Lazarus, the author of the poem inscribed on the base of the Statue of Liberty is buried there as is Sholom Aleichem. For an amplification and correction of this information please see the posting of Nov. 16.

There was also supposed to be a small memorial in Salem Field Cemetery, which is next to Cypress Hills National Cemetery on Jamaica Avenue, but the gates of that cemetery were firmly locked and the cemetery is well fenced in. However, near the front is an enormous column topped by an eagle in flight, a memorial to the soldiers of the Civil War.

And in front of that is a marker that looks suspiciously like what my historical society booklet describes as “a bronze tablet on a low slanting granite base . . .” erected by the Veteran Corps in memory of soldiers of the Hebrew faith who served in the World War, 1917-1918.

Cypress Hills, like Bushwick, forms one part of the far eastern edge of Brooklyn. Eldert Lane is the border between Brooklyn and Queens in that area. On the edge of Brooklyn that's Eldert Lane below seen from Ridgewood Avenue; Queens is on the other side of the traffic lights.

Having gotten all the way out there, I decided to walk over to Eldert Lane so I could say I had walked to the edge of the borough. I wandered back along Atlantic Avenue, the border between Cypress Hills and East New York (below).

Click on this link to map these memorials.