OCEAN. Slices of an overlooked avenue

by Kevin Walsh

Your webmaster will admit it. When I lived in Brooklyn (1957-1993) I really never had all that much to do with Ocean Avenue, and it’s still by and large an avenue of mystery to me. Much of my locomotion on the borough of churches was by bicycle, and when I wanted to head south toward Coney or Marine Park, I’d use avenues like Bedford or the Ocean Parkway bike path, which seemed infinitely more interesting than Ocean Avenue (which paled beside its parkway cousin). It just seemed so boring in comparison, mostly lined with uninteresting apartment houses.

The ForgottenEye has been honed rather sharper since FNY got started though, and now I can discern highlights where there were once piles of bricks. I’m not ready to move Ocean Avenue to the top of my must-explore list, but I uncovered some gems alongside Prospect Park…

For example there’s this colossus at 99 Ocean at Lincoln Road, done up in a sort of what… Spanish? Byzantine? style, with arched windows, columns, and interesting tilework. For example let’s take a look at some specific tiles that are placed between the pairs of arched windows on the ground floor…

You get the idea. (This is the first hook-handed Virgo I’ve ever seen; she reminds me of Moulty.)

These look like kids’ drawings, though clearly by the same artist, and they were probably put in place long, long after the building was erected. I wonder who did them? Anyone who lives in the Prospect Park area know about this?

Another thing 99 Ocean has going for it is the gorgeous arch doorway with checkerboard tiling. Take points off for the canopy which obscures it, and it’s not quite as cool as the great Kenruby Apartments on 90th Street in Dyker Beach (below), but it’s digable just the same.

I cocked my snoot at Ocean Parkway for many years, and the official guidebooks of Brooklyn have no time for it, either. The last 2 editions of the AIA Guide to NYC ignore the stretch of Ocean Avenue between Flatbush Avenue and Fort Hamilton Parkway, where all the georgeous buildings are. So does the Big Onion Guide to Brooklyn.

I suppose the fact that Ocean Avenue is intersected by only Lincoln Road from Flatbush Avenue south to FHP, and it faces Prospect Park on the west side, gave some architects license to get a bit crazy. It’s one of the longer unintersected stretches in Brooklyn.

 

Take a look at this Art Deco masterwork. The terra cotta presages Space Invaders by fifty years. And look at that brickwork!

Since I know nothing at all about the treasures of Ocean Avenue, I’ll take a page from the folks at Bridge And Tunnel Club and show the next couple unimpeded by text:

Old school park bench on Ocean Avenue. The streets surrounding the park have kept these old fashioned designs.

Photographed September 2006; page completed April 28, 2008

5 comments

Tristan September 16, 2011 - 10:33 am

Old buildings have their charm, but also their issues ( http://bedbugregistry.com/location/NY/11225-3601/Brooklyn/99-Ocean-Ave/ ).

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Darryl Price January 12, 2013 - 10:15 pm

To Whom it May Concern, I just found this web site on my computer but I had to do a double take when I
saw the top picture of the apartment house, that apartment house is 645 Ocean Ave, how do I know?
I lived there from age 14 up till I got married. My apartment was F-9 sixth floor and many memories
good and bad. Being caught throwing water balloons out my window. Or a very, very, sad moment when
the neighbors daughter committed suicide by jumping to her death from her kitchen window, she lived for 3 days. Overall there were a lot of better memories.

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Anonymous September 7, 2017 - 12:53 am

Sorry to correct you, but that’s my old block & the VERY TOP pic is the bldg next to mine which is 135 Ocean Ave!
I used to live in 125 Ocean. Check it out.

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Jeff January 7, 2021 - 6:43 pm

Too bad all the private houses around are now being torn down in twos & threes to make new condo’s outpacing any construction of rental buildings. So now before you could own a house on Ocean Ave; my home street for decades. and now you can only find condos unless the semi & fully connected houses didn’t sell yet but once one does then they start gutting and raising the price to get the other houses empty. Now my block has already lost 6 1 or 2 family houses and only two are left. one directly next to an older apartment building of my building’s generation and a halfway house for those with special needs. That last house is now the only fully unattached house on the block and between the two I’m sure someone will try to buy out the properties and fit in one more building so the entire block is apartment buildings. What’s worse is now speed cameras all up and down Ocean Ave and Kings Hwy and all over especially during covid they installed another thousand or 2K that had been approved and the buildings may have some garage or parking space; but your replacing a house with driveway or garage or backyard with 6-story buildings with multiple units per floor and at osts of 800K+ for studio and 1M+ for condo or co-op at least which they all drive too and make parking in the area even worse than its been. Still Ocean ave is my home and I love the history of it.

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Alice Harris May 28, 2021 - 8:01 pm

How come Ocean Ave in Manhattan Beach was unpaved between Oriental BLvd and the Ocean until well after the houses were built on that street?

Reply

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