I consider myself fortunate to come from Bay Ridge, Brooklyn and though I have been in Queens since 1993, a good 30 years now, I keep threatening to return. I like the building I’m in in Little Neck, but the neighborhood itself has gotten dead as a doornail in recent years, as my favorite haunts such as the Scobee Diner, Little Neck Inn, Stop & Shop, Aunt Bella Pizza, North Shore Hardware, Staples and even a Subway where I got a sandwich once a week have all reached the hangman’s noose, one by one. I work at home, remotely, but when you work in type and print, all jobs are tenuous. I think the best bet is to stand pat and hope for the best.
Bay Ridge is chockablock with historic artifacts, like St. John’s church, Fort Hamilton, Brooklyn’s smallest cemetery and the Verrazzano Bridge. I still visit regularly. However it has had its share of losses; Zeke’s Roast Beef, Nathan’s and even Blimpie are gone (it was crappy anyway) and the dentist who treated me for over 30 years retired.
Once or twice a year I take a lengthy ramble and find things I never knew about when I lived there. One of them is this stolid structure on Bay Ridge Ave. (er, 69th St.) just west of 3rd Avenue, which has served as a Masonic temple, a church, and a school in recent decades, but its original purpose can be discerned on the keystones above the windows. Though some have been buffed out, the remaining ones depict former volunteer fire companies’ seals and names—such as Old Jackson H&L (Hook & Ladder); Blythebourne Engine; Neosho H&L; Bay Ridge Engine—of the former New Utrecht Exempt Firemen’s Association. (“Blythebourne” is the original name of the development that gave rise to Borough Park. “Neosho” stumps me, since it is a town in Missouri. Mets star Donn Clendenon was from Neosho.)
In the name “New Utrecht Exempt Firemen’s Association” you find two tidbits of history. A fireman known as “exempt” was a member of a volunteer fire company for five years; a number of other exceptions and corollaries to this rule further explained the term “exempt.” As far as “New Utrecht” is concerned, Bay Ridge was a part of the town of New Utrecht since the town’s establishment in 1683 until it was annexed by the City of Brooklyn in 1894, and then Greater New York absorbed Brooklyn in 1898. While Brooklyn had its own fire department (the BFD, the trigraph seen on a number of old firehouses around the borough) far-flung realms like Bay Ridge were served by a number of volunteer fire departments. This was a building where exempt firemen could meet and take advantages of services offered by the Association.
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4/7/23