OLD BROOKLYN-QUEENS LINE

IT’S been quite awhile…2005, to be exact… when I last extensively walked in Brownsville, East New York and that deliberately nonmaintained backwater known as The Hole (even Google Maps calls it that). There’s one thing that would conceivably get me back to The Hole, which I’ll get into later, but I don’t rule out another trip through the other two neighborhoods. In The Hole, I was with a pal, Mike Epstein, who has since moved out of town, and we were actually stopped by the cops, as we didn’t look like the kind of jokers who would normally be prowling around down there.

The undefended Brooklyn-Queens border, dividing Cypress Hills and Woodhaven, runs along several streets. On this excerpt from Open Street Map (Google Maps is not keen on showing borough lines) The line runs along several streets: Eldert Lane, 95th Avenue (the only numbered avenue with sections in Brooklyn, Queens and Nassau), Drew Street, Liberty Avenue, 75th Street/Ruby Street, Dumont Avenue, 78th/Sapphire Street (Brooklyn streets near the border are named for gemstones), and the border moves west in Spring Creek Park, running along 75th Street again before running into Jamaica Bay.

While Eldert Lane has Brooklyn-style house numbers on the west side of the street along the border and hyphenated Queens-style numbering on the east, both Drew and 75th Streets dispense with that and houses on both sides of the street carry hyphens and are thus Queens addresses. Those stretches of Drew and 75th Streets were developed somewhat later than the north end of Eldert Lane (indeed, houses there were built prior to the hyphenated Queens house numbers were implemented in the 1920s and so, both sides of Eldert Lane once had “normal” nonhyphenated addresses.

The reason for the post, though, is that unbeknownst to most in 2023, the undefended Brooklyn-Queens border used to be quite different. In this Hagstrom map from 1922, the border runs along Spring Creek, which was above ground as far north as the mapped 135th Avenue. The line straightened north of that, though it still cut across property lines especially between Atlantic and 95th Avenues. Bear in mind, in 1922 few of these streets east of Eldert Lane and south of Liberty (along which the elevated train was running) yet existed, except in the minds of real estate developers and city planners, who transmitted the plans to Hagstrom.

The decision was made within a few years (I can’t pinpoint the year) to run the border along streets, as they were constructed, laid out and houses built along them. Some of those original houses can still be found in The Hole, the area south of Linden Boulevard that is shamefully undeveloped (by which I mean lacking in amenities such as a functioning sewer system). Indeed, Spring Creek remains not far underground, and living in the area is problematic during periods of heavy rain.

The lack of drainage is on show here in this Street View of Emerald Street at Dumont Avenue.

Nothing much to be seen in this view of the sidewalk-free Sapphire Street just south of Linden Boulevard. Much of the street lacks pavement. A few dwellings can be seen at intervals. The Brooklyn-Queens line runs down the center of the street.

I have mentioned that one thing would get me back to The Hole in the near future. Naturally, that’s the Lindenwood Diner at Linden Boulevard and Sapphire Street, built, no doubt, due to its proximity to South Conduit Avenue, which connects to the Belt Parkway. I’ve rarely, if ever, had a bad diner meal with one striking exception, Court Square Diner in Hunters Point in 2008. Yelp reviews of the Lindenwood are good, except for the catfish which apparently isn’t catfish.

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8/19/23