STREETS OF BROOKLYN…AND MANHATTAN

SINCE Brooklyn and Manhattan do not share a land border, with the East River providing the undefended separation between the two boroughs, getting street scenes of the two boroughs in one shot is quite difficult. However, I succeeded with this one on a visit to Vinegar Hill, a tiny Brooklyn neighborhood east of DUMBO, in 2020. Though DUMBO’s East River waterfront has been opened up to the public in the past decade with the new Brooklyn Bridge Park, Vinegar Hill’s waterfront is dominated by a vast Con Edison electrical generating plant. I often talk about borough borders as being “undefended” but the Con Ed plant is another matter, as it’s heavily guarded and impossible for ordinary citizens to enter.

That’s why the Corvington lamp on the corner of Hudson Avenue and Marshall Street, well within the plant, is the most inaccessible of its type in New York City. I used my zoom to its strongest power to get this shot, from Hudson and Plymouth. It’s the Golden Fleece of NYC historic lampposts.

While getting the shot, I inadvertently got a photo of the old St. Rose Home at Jackson Street and the FDR Drive on the Lower East Side. While the signage was still in place in 2020, this hospice for terminally ill patients run by Dominican nuns closed in March 2009.

Of course, the blue breadth of the East River can be seen between the two boroughs.

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10/31/23