PRE-GRID BENSONHURST

by Kevin Walsh

By SERGEY KADINSKY
Forgotten NY correspondent

EARLIER this month I stopped by the Jewish Community House in Bensonhurst to assist Ukrainian refugees who had landed in New York fleeing the war in their homeland. This building is an architectural work of art, designed by the Chanin Brothers and opened in 1927. It is not an official city landmark, but it evokes history in its appearance.

Pockmarked stone bricks evoke the Western Wall, the Roman “U as a V” adds to the older-than-it-is look, and on top is a verse from the Ethics of the Fathers, a Talmudic tractate: “Isolate not thyself from the community.” A Romanesque arch frames the main entrance. The philanthropist couple whose name appears on the building, Edith and Carl Marks, felt ironic to me, considering that many Jews in southern Brooklyn fled from Marxism. Presumably, Brooklyn’s Carl Marks and the infamous Karl Marx are unrelated.

The main lobby features a glass ceiling with Jewish stars in the center and seemingly exotic pointed arches. The center is culturally Jewish but open to all people of all ages in the tradition of settlement houses and the YMCA. Its services include summer camp, English lessons, and a senior center, among other things.

Diagonally across Bay Parkway is the western tip of Kings Highway, and Kevin notes that Brooklyn’s historic and grid-defying “Mother Road” used to run to Bay Ridge in the colonial period. Looking east, the first address on this distinguished road represents another wave of Jewish immigration. The Magen David Yeshiva is a cornerstone of Brooklyn’s Syrian Jewish community. The philanthropists who helped fund this modernist building with rounded corners, Al and Sonny Gindi, are the cousins who founded the iconic Century 21 department store.

Initially mapped as 22nd Avenue on the Brooklyn numbered avenue grid stretching between Upper New York Bay and Stillwell Avenue, Bay Parkway runs on the border separating the former towns of New Utrecht and Gravesend. Those two towns were annexed by the city of Brooklyn in 1894, and six years later Brooklyn itself was absorbed into New York City. Unlike Ocean and Eastern Parkways, which have generous green shoulders and service roads, Bay Parkway simply has a wider roadway and sidewalks. This 2.7-mile route connects Ocean Parkway with Bensonhurst Park.

A block to the north of the intersection of Kings Highway and Bay Parkway are Seth Low Park and Bealin Square, a sizable open space that serves as the neighborhood park. Located on the Gravesend side of Bay Parkway, the reason why this park exists is because of a hidden waterway, Indian Pond. This pond was filled in 1896 with ash from a trash incinerator and the poor soil conditions discouraged development. Long before Fresh Kills Park and Flushing Meadows, Seth Low Park offered the precedent of a landfill-turned-park. The park is also where Bay Ridge Parkway and Stillwell Avenue meet with Bay Parkway, the meeting of three major local roads.

Getting back to the Jewish Community House, I noticed that the backyard fences behind it skew to the street grid. Looking at the city’s property tax map for Brooklyn’s block 6264, we see the trace of Kings Highway from the pre-urban period when it ran further west. Perhaps there are other hidden examples of pre-grid roads within the tight blocks of Bensonhurst?

Near the southern tip of New Utrecht Avenue I found a beer distributor whose property line runs on an angle on an otherwise rectilinear block. It is more pronounced in the parking lot behind this store. It occupies the path of the Greenwood and Bath Plank Road, which carried a railroad line that preceded the elevated West End Line that is today’s D subway train. To the south, the old plank road ran on today’s Bay 19th Street. The railroad line followed it to Bath Avenue, then turned east on its run to Coney Island.

We see this long forgotten railroad on this 1917 property map, where I highlighted in yellow the demapped colonial route of Kings Highway, and outlined in green the historic New Utrecht Reformed Church.

An earlier map from 1905 shows New Utrecht Avenue before it was overshadowed by the West End Line, before it was routed to merge with 86th Street.

From the NYPL digital collection, we see a view from 84th Street, looking north in 1922. The old plank road and its railway appear alongside the elevated West End Line. Today this block is a row of stores, with the beer distributor at 1783 84th Street having property boundaries that hint at this phantom rail line. There’s a similar example in the Bronx, where a building outline follows the route of a long-gone train line.

Kevin has been to the intersection of 18th Avenue and 84th Street many times. There’s an old church here, a replica of a Revolutionary War flagpole, but has he ever wondered why there’s a cut-off sidewalk on this corner, next to this labor union office? This cut-off curb is also a remnant of Greenwood and Bath Plank Road.

I traveled to this corner of Brooklyn on the D train, and at the 18th Avenue station, the mezzanine still had a wooden plank floor. Decades ago, all elevated station platforms in the city were made of wood. Standing here evokes the feeling of Manhattan’s famed Third Avenue El.

Besides my visit to the Jewish Community House on Bay Parkway, I had another errand in this neighborhood. I had to pick up a vehicle at Bay Ridge Chevrolet on 86th Street. While waiting for the vehicle in the dealership’s parking lot, I noticed that the property wall here also skewed from the grid. Pulling up property maps and a Google Maps aerial, I found lines hinting to the past, when Bennett’s Lane ran through the area.

It appears together with the superimposed numbered grid on this 1890 map by Elisha Robinson. I highlighted three old roads here: Bennett’s Lane, Greenwood and Bath Plank Road and its pre-elevated West End Line, and De Bruyn’s Lane, which disappeared entirely without a trace.

When Bensonhurst became urbanized and numbered streets were laid out across the land, these old lanes were not supposed to survive. But sometimes the surveyors forgot and left them under city ownership even when enveloped inside a block, surrounded by private properties. That’s what happened to two of the three roads that I highlighted. In 2003, local State Senator Marty Golden noticed this oversight and with the support of a City Council Resolution, had these former streets sold to private owners.

Take a protractor with you and measure the driveway at 1565 Benson Avenue. The angle of the driveway at this house is a reminder of Bennett’s long forgotten lane.

Sergey Kadinsky is the author of Hidden Waters of New York City: A History and Guide to 101 Forgotten Lakes, Ponds, Creeks, and Streams in the Five Boroughs (2016, Countryman Press), adjunct history professor at Touro University and the webmaster of Hidden Waters Blog. 

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8/13/22

8 comments

Matt Perlstein August 13, 2022 - 4:32 pm

I went to the JCH Day Camp for many summers in the late ’50s and early ’60s. We would play softball at Seth Low Park or the Bay which is what we called the parkland adjacent to what is now Ceasar’s Bazaar. On the roof of the JCH we had music and arts and crafts. Ten Little Indians was a frequent music game where we all had to sit on a chair when the music stopped. There would be one less chair than the number of kids each time until there was one kid left. John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmitz was a favorite song. Of course I remember the camp song:
We’re campers of the JCH
We come from near and far
We have our fun,
We learn a lot
We’re friends, we’re pals, we are.

There’s a few more verses.

We also remember the Coach, Uncle Miltie, Milton Gold, who was also Sandy Koufax’s coach when he was a camper there.

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Michael Lagana August 14, 2022 - 2:13 pm

Always a good article from Sergey

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Mike Olshan August 14, 2022 - 8:49 pm

This is the territory I walked as I was growing up and I attended teen dances at the JCH and used the pool there. Now. I remember that 84th St between 16 Ave and 18 Ave was extra-wide. And I.was told that it was the original terminal. base of Kings Highway and was wide to allow big carriages pulled by long teams of horses room to turn around.

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Steff August 15, 2022 - 10:50 pm

Bath Plank Road can be seen in use as a trolley line in this video. Most of those buildings are still there!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=un3o9SkUInY

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Mike Olshan January 29, 2023 - 11:22 am

Just popped up into my memory of the JCH a handsome guy who had about five years on me who was the handball whiz and the girls were gaga over him: Elliot Gould.

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Kevin Walsh January 29, 2023 - 3:36 pm

I met Gould on Ellis Island about a decade ago as he had narrated a video about it.

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DALE BERENSON August 14, 2023 - 10:35 am

I loved summer day camp at the JCH in the mid to late forties. All the little girls would sit on the floor in the main hall, trading “charms”. before the camp day began .I also remember swimming
lessons in the indoor pool. .I lived at 1599 West 10th Street right at Avenue “P” and played with my friends at Seth Low Park and shopped with my Mother on Bay Parkway. Went to PS 247,Seth Low Jr. High, Lafayette HS and Brooklyn College. Anybody remember Gilbert’s Market , a precursor to Supermarkets, Spector’s Clothing Store, New Deal and Taeng Fong Chinese Restaurants? I’m
going to be vliche, but…..THOSE WERE THE DAYS!

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Kevin Walsh August 14, 2023 - 1:11 pm

CYO camp was tortuous for me, but I was a strange kid.

Reply

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