On Sunday, March 17, 2024 I meandered around the Gowanus area and wound up walking the length of Nevins Street, which runs from Carroll Street to Flatbush Avenue in the heart of downtown Brooklyn. Gowanus is under heavy construction these days with massive residential buildings popping up along Gowanus Canal, though Lavender Lake is not much cleaner than when I circumnavigated it back in November 2005. As it turned out this was among the last passable weather weekend days until this writing in April. I was in Howard Beach today but the wind and rain was just too much and I did what I rarely do: called it a day after about a mile and took the longest, most excruciatingly slow and crowded express bus back to Woodside. It’s also a rule now that if you’re playing a video game or music on your “device” on a bus, you are obliged to play it as loud as possible (as in the old boombox era) to see if anyone will challenge you.
Because I got about 115 photos on this walk, I’ll split this into Parts One and Two.
To get to Gowanus, you have your choice of subways; this former backwater for some reason lucked out in the transit department. You can get the F or G to the elevated Smith-9th or 4th Avenue stations (the latter is seen here) or the R (BMT 4th avenue Line) to the Union or 9th Street stations. I chose the former because the 4th Avenue IND is among my favorite stations in the subways but only for one design element: the arched viaduct over 4th Avenue itself.
The IND built just two elevated stations in Brooklyn in 1933, the tallest station in the system, Smith/9th (tall enough to let tall masted ships on the Gowanus Canal) to pass beneath it; and the Fourth Avenue station, lower because it is built just west of a tunnel entrance. There had been plans for the IND to build an elevated station that would connect the Roosevelt Avenue station in Queens with the Rockaways which would have been elevated in Glendale and Ridgewood, but the Depression and World War II canceled those plans; in 1956, the Transit Authority reached the Rockaways anyway by rehabbing a Long Island Rail Road trestle over Jamaica Bay that had burned in 1950, and then extending the A train over the former Fulton Street Elevated to meet it.
At the Fourth Avenue IND elevated station (opened July 1, 1933), the tracks are close to the ground, but still high enough to require bridging over the avenue. Engineers came up with a beautiful arch bridge with Art Deco accents. For the first few decades of its existence, the windows on the platforms were clear and allowed a view north to the Williamsburg Building and south toward Bay Ridge.
The windows on the arch bridge had been painted brown for many years, since at least the 1970s; I remember grime-caked windows you could see through as late as the Sixties. The MTA was tired of vandals graffiting and breaking them, so the agency just painted them opaque. Now and then, though, the paint flaked off and permitted a view. For much of the 2010s the MTA rehabilitated the windows and finished the north side first and installed an opaque covering on the windows, apparently so no one will think about breaking them. It took 3 or 4 years to finish the north side and I had despaired that they actually would finish, but here’s the completed set. You can’t see out the windows, but at least the light gets in.
Another unique element at the 4th Avenue station is there pencil-shaped signs at the side entrances on 10th Avenue on either side of the avenue. Also note the decorative Deco-style brickwork. The IND is thought of as sort of “cookie cutter” regarding station design, but there are some surprises mixed in.
Another IND style element I’ve been paying additional attention to lately is the directional signage in the stations, not just the large ID tablets on the platforms, but the small signs like these in the mezzanines and foyers. There is a definite IND font that comes in “regular” like this and the bold font used on the platform signs. Thus far, I don’t know of a font house that has succeeded in digitizing it. Though the MTA usually lets them be, as they are tiled into the wall and removing them would be expensive, the agency sometimes installs metal black and white signs that duplicate what’s on the tiled signs.
Note the BMT transfer signs. This station was built in 1933, before the days of universal free transfers as the three subway brances, IRT, IND, BMT, were operated independently. After the city purchased the lines in 1940 and unified subways under one operational banner, free transfers between lines was gradually adopted systemwide.
This is a digitized form of the black and white IND platform directional signs, called simply “NYC Subway Font.”
This relatively new directional sign is something of a botch. The MTA was trying to produce a facsimile of the 1933 tiled signs; but not knowing the font, only a rough approximation was the result. It’s better than a black and white metal sign, though.
Looking south on 4th Avenue, toward the IND arch viaduct. High rise apartment construction , “affordable” and otherwise, continues apace along 4th Avenue, formerly home to auto repairs shops, tire retailers and gas stations.
Speaking of fonts, when the F in “of” fell off this plastic and vinyl sign for Taste of China at 4th Avenue and 8th Street, it looks like they replaced it with the first “F” they could find. It gets the job done. The yellow sign over the sidewalk employs a Frederic Goudy font still very popular on signage, Cooper Black.
To get closer to Gowanus Canal I headed west on 7th Street, a side street I have rarely visited, Between 3rd and 4th Avenues I found a gaggle of 3-story attached brick walkups, so often found in what was once called “south Brooklyn” that I call them the “bread and butter of Brooklyn residential living.” Unfortunately this area has no Landmarks protection, and owners feel free to add a fourth floor when they need one.
Between 2nd and 3rd Avenues, 7th Street gets even more interesting. This stolid brick building on the south side was formerly warehousing for Adolph I. Namm & Son Department Store; the building itself still stands at #458 Fulton at Hoyt Street. Today it’s home to small businesses, the biggest of which is an Apple computer repair shop.
Meanwhile the north side of 7th, formerly home to ironworks, tool shops and truck repair, now has a furniture and signage/awnings dealers, and even a kosher caterer/restaurant (the “SIGNS” is in Cooper Black again).
Bell House, which has a magnificent sign, is a major concert/venue hall in Gowanus:
Jim Carden and Andy Templar, the team behind Union Hall, were hardly the first to carve a music venue from a Brooklyn warehouse — but few have done so as expertly. Converted from a 1920s printing press [in 2008], their ambitious Bell House brings a sizable performance space with a decidedly Adirondack feel to crumbling-brick Gowanus. Chandeliers dangle from the 25-foot arched wooden ceilings, while a buffalo silhouette looms over the stage, which hosts a variety of bands and comedy acts. [NY Magazine]
I have been in Bell House once, shortly after it opened, to attend a lecture about blogging by a famed tech blogger whose name I don’t remember, but has the initials “J.J.” (help me out in Comments). Remember blogging? Everyone had a blog before people stopped reading and pictures and video (Instagram, Tik Tok) took over. I may be the last blogger standing. Or really, sitting.
Street art, 7th Street opposite Bell House
Showing the NE corner of 3rd Avenue and 6th Street, as this for many years was the site of a huge red and green neon billboard for Eagle Clothes. There was some talk of reassembling it on the adjacent building on 6th Street but it didn’t happen. The sign was removed, as was the building it sat on, in 2013. The clothier itself, founded in 1919, filed for bankruptcy in 1977.
The intersection of 3rd Avenue and 3rd Street in Gowanus on the edge of Park Slope is an unlikely architecture mecca. The former home of the Brooklyn Improvement Company, founded by engineer Edwin Litchfield for the express purpose of dredging the Gowanus Creek, then a fresh stream, and making it vessel-worthy, is still standing at the SW corner and is was reconstructed by its current owner, Whole Foods.
At the SE corner is the magnificent brick American Can Company building (above), with its distinctive diamond shaped 4th floor windows with etched glass. After its 1885 construction the original tenant was the Somers Bros. Decorated Tinware Company, but American Can was occupying it by the 1920s. The 5th Street Basin of the Gowanus Canal is situated in the back of the building and it’s likely that both companies utilized the canal to ship and bring in materials.
The building is currently occupied by small businesses but its most intriguing use in recent years has happened on its roof, where Rooftop Films used it as a venue for a few years.
At the SW corner of Third and Third in Gowanus is a magnificent gem of a building, made of coignet stone, with ornate trimmings and ionic columns by the door, seemingly plopped in the middle of empty lots, auto repair shops and the Gowanus Canal, which is less nasty than it used to be, though its tributary, the 4th Street Basin, is still filled with garbage and algae. It turns out that the building and Gowanus Canal itself are bound by history, since this is the former headquarters of the Brooklyn Improvement Company, founded by one Edwin Litchfield for the express purpose of dredging the Gowanus Creek, then a fresh stream, and making it vessel-worthy. We’re not sure whether to thank him or not, since for the latter half of the 20th century when its flush pumps were in disrepair, the canal became so foul that it turned the color of Pepto-Bismol and became known as Lavender Lake. Litchfield owned much of the property between here and Prospect Park and built, with the aid of architect Alexander Davis an Italian-style villa at what would become Prospect Park West and 5th Street in 1854. In 1860, Litchfield had to give up his property so that Prospect Park could be built, but he continued to reside in his magnificent villa until his wife’s death in 1881. The villa still bears his name, but when you pass the Gowanus Canal and pass the mini-masterpiece at 3rd and 3rd, you can thank him for those, too.
As for the Brooklyn Improvement HQ, its coignet stone finish was covered with brickwork at some point in the 20th Century, and the building was occupied by various concerns and gradually sank into utter decrepitude, surrounded by empty lots and the noxious and noisome canal. Relief came when Whole Foods purchased the parcel next to it in 2005, and promised to restore the Coignet Building. Whole Foods dragged its corporate feet, but work got underway in 2013 and was completed in 2015. The building had been landmarked in 2006. It is currently wedding cake white, which upsets some purists who would like the original finish restored, but hey, if you want it at the right price, it’s yours.
The reliable Brownstoner has the full story.
Powerhouse
I knew this building only as a broken-windowed, graffitied hulk alongside the Gowanus Canal north of 3rd Street and west of 3rd Avenue for decades; however, it has been converted into state-of-the-, um, art, art sudios:
Powerhouse Arts, a nonprofit that offers production facilities for local artists, opened on Friday in a 170,000-square-foot industrial structure that overlooks Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal.
The six-story, red-brick building, erected in 1904, was once the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company’s central power station. The station was decommissioned in the 1950s, and by the early ’70s, the site was altogether abandoned. Its roof eventually gave way, and plants sprouted in its interior. In recent decades, the building became host to squatters, graffiti artists, and underground ravers—a period of time that earned the site its now-infamous nickname: the Batcave.
Philanthropist Joshua Rechnitz purchased the property in 2012, and has since given some $180 million through his foundations to overhaul it. Rechnitz formed the Powerhouse Environmental Arts Foundation (which has since been renamed Powerhouse Arts) and tapped two notable architecture firms to design the center: PBDW Architects and Herzog & de Meuron. (The latter firm, a Pritzker Prize winner, previously transformed London’s Bankside Power Station into the Tate Modern.) –[Artnet]
With no signage or gates to keep me out, I wandered around, bold as brass, for a few minutes before I was shooed out (albeit politely, not generally the case) by security, as shabby characters pointing cameras usually are, but I squeezed off some shots of the newly restored powerhouse.
After leaving the Powerhouse I sidled over to check on Denton and Whitwell Places, which run for a block each between 1st and Carroll Streets east of 3rd Avenue and, while I got quite a few photos, I’lll save them for the upcoming, exhaustive as usual Brooklyn One and Done series, as each runs for a single block.
As a rule, bakeries have large display windows where bread loaves and cakes are set out for inspection. Everybody Eats at #294 3rd Avenue off Carroll breaks this rule in every way as it appears to have been fashioned out of a first-floor apartment. The door opens up to a foyer between the owner’s office and kitchen. The bakery features gluten and nut free products, as owner Pedro Arroba has celiac disease and founded a bakery specifically for people with the affliction, though the baked goods can be enjoyed by everyone.
Pierogi purveyors are usually found in Polish or eastern European neighborhoods and unless I’m wrong, Gowanus isn’t one. Nonetheless, at 3rd Avenue at Carroll:
You can’t open a single-item comfort-food specialty shop these days without a sense of humor and a willingness to cater to the Attention-Deficit Generation in the flavor department. Thus Baba’s, named after the owner’s pierogi-master grandmother, stuffs its dumplings with everything from a mixture of jalapeño, potato, and cheddar to mac ’n’ cheese — a soporific combo that picks up where the ziti-topped pizza left off. In spite of these efforts, the best pierogi on the menu is a classic — a surprisingly un-stodgy boiled variety filled with a piquant sauerkraut and tossed in butter and chives (get them topped with sautéed mushrooms for $1.50 extra). We imagine Baba would back us up on this. [NY Magazine]
I was underwhelmed when I boiled some frozen cheese pierogies a few years ago, but no doubt I’m making them wrong. I may order some from Doordash to get a better idea. (I never pretended to be a gourmet; I think there’s 12-15 meals I eat regularly).
More from 3rd Avenue in Gowanus
Ex-Monte’s
Turning west on Carroll, I noted the former location of Monte’s at #451. The Italian restaurant, which added a liquor license and a cabaret stage as the decades passed, was founded by Angelo and Nicholas Montemoreno in 1906 and remained in business until 2008. Over the years, Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis, Jr. were on the guest list and performed here, and the Brooklyn Dodgers chose Monte’s for the party following their long-awaited victory over the Yankees in the 1955 World Series (that task accomplished, they departed for Los Angeles after two more seasons).
In 2010, Katia Kelly wrote in “Pardon Me For Asking”:
It is indeed a sad end to this Gowanus eatery. I am glad that I ate there at least once about six years ago, though by then, it was clear that its heydays were long over. If I remember right, my friends and I were the only ones in the place on a Saturday evening. Choosing a dish from the extensive menu was frustrating since the kitchen seemed to be out of almost everything. After the rather sorry meal, the elderly waiter with the lovely South Brooklyn accent handed us the dessert menu, but prefaced by saying that the only thing available was the cheesecake.
“It’s the best Italian cheesecake in Brooklyn” he told us.
Though it seemed like a waste of money back then, I don’t regret having had the chance to soak up the Venetian Rooms ‘atmosphere’ before it faded away. And I can now honestly say, I will miss the place. Somehow, the neighborhood is a bit poorer without it.
The building is now occupied by a Japanese restaurant, Cotra. I chuckled to myself when I read the review in Time Out New York:
When a neighborhood restaurant closes, the best thing that can replace it is another one. Inevitable grousing about the way things were aside, those pleasant, easy spots are preferred over the alternative million dollar condos, bank branches, or even overpriced, underperforming food and drink businesses seemingly sprung fully formed from social media. So Cotra, a new self-billed izakaya that opened last month in the space long occupied by red sauce spot Monte’s is a welcome new steward of the address. [Time Out NY]
See, the reviewer thought that the reader…and maybe I’m out of touch about this… knows what “izakaya” means. I had to look it up; it means, basically, “pub” in Japanese.
The 21st Century hasn’t been kind to venerable restaurants in Gowanus. Two Toms, which opened in 1948, closed in 2019.
I really hope this isn’t the end for the Carroll Street retractile bridge spanning Gowanus Canal, which has been stuck in the open position “for repairs” for a couple of years; apparently it was nicked during preparation work for some new high rise apartment buildings going up at Carroll and Nevins. It’s an FNY favorite as I wrote about it in 1999 and I have led more than one tour here.
A look east on Carroll Street, which runs from Carroll Gardens east all the way to Brownsville several miles to the east, though interrupted by Prospect Park. There are many lengthy east-west Brooklyn streets in this area to choose from but I may choose to feature it in FNY, given even the interesting items found on one block between Nevins and 3rd Avenue.
The two spires in the distance are St. Francis Xavier Roman Catholic Church on 6th Avenue and the Old (Dutch) Reformed Church on 7th.
Nevins Street begins (or ends; its house numbering is north to south) at Carroll just east of the canal and proceeds in. astraight line north to Flatbush Avenue. It is named for Russell Nevins (1785-1853) a real estate developer and partner of Charles Hoyt, who has a street of his own two blocks west. The barrel-shaped object on the lamppost is a 5G cell phone antenna tower.
Since construction fencing tends to stay up for years, developers have begun to try to make them a little more interesting. Here in front of what will be #300 Nevins Street are dozens of photos of Shiny Happy People that, at first I thought were stock images, showing the kinds of people who will be buying apartments when it’s finished. The truth is a bit hazier. the images are real area residents, “creatives” or artists, as a sign on one panel says. Somehow, I doubt a whole lot of artists will be able to buty the “affordable” apartments in #300 Nevins as well as the two greenish high rises, Society Brooklyn and Sackett Place, going up at Bond and Sackett Streets.
5 Residential Projects Coming To Gowanus Brooklyn [Medium]
Though Ample Hills Creamery still has six locations around town, it once had several more before bankruptcy in 2020 forced a reorganization; a few years ago I sampled the wares here at Union and Nevins. Boutique ice cream shops like this pride themselves on innovative mixes and flavors, but I’m pretty much a vanilla and chocolate ice cream guy, and sad to see this location go. Union Street, meanwhile, is a defacto Casket District, and I even briefly worked in a print shop on Union that makes those little laminated cards handed out at wakes!
Meanwhile, a painted ad on Nevins offers a nearby alternative to Ample Hills and a hamburger truck was parked on the corner.
One of my favorite buildings in the area, James Dykeman’s box factory on the NW corner of Nevins and Union.
Dykeman “was a carpenter by trade who established himself in the box business in 1877,” according to The Disston Crucible, a magazine for millmen. “Two large buildings occupy the whole block at Union, Nevins, and Sackett Streets, the fourth side of the property facing the canal, making it possible to bring lumber to the mill.”
Cabinet Magazine, an art/culture quarterly, has offices in the box factory, as well as an exhibit space. Its banner, designed like a classic heraldry shield, features a fox and a hedgehog. The publication explains that the fox knows many small things, but the hedgehog knows only one big thing. Me, I know about lampposts.
Next time: Part 2 on Nevins (a lot of buildings came down since I was here last)
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4/14/24
5 comments
Your statements about the IND Roosevelt Avenue station and planned line extensions are incorrect. See the full story at http://www.nycsubway.org. The tracks to Maspeth and the Rockaways were to split off at Roosevelt Avenue in a separate, still underground Terminal Station. The line would have some segments above ground as it traversed Queens.
Our Mayor is a stooge and flunky for the real estate lobby here in NYC. He is always saying that NYC has a housing problem. I live in Brooklyn, and you can’t walk a block with our seeing some new ugly apartment building going up. What we have is an affordable housing crisis. How many people can afford $3000. for a studio or a million plus for a condo?
“The Fox And The Hedgehog” is like a Greek fable that was updated to the mid-20th C. by political philosopher Sir Isaiah Berlin (not to be confused with Irving Berlin as Winston Churchill once did, but I digress). Berlin obviously argued that you need both sorts to make a world, and to run the world, as well. His was more a more-lighthearted game of, “Look around you– who are the foxes and who are the hedgehogs? Can you tell?” but it was supposed to make you think about what sort YOU are. It was meant to get the hedgehogs not to see the foxes as mere dilettantes, and the foxes not to see the hedgehogs as humorless obsessives.
Unfortunately, even Gowanus hasn’t been immune to gentrification especially with so many new buildings being constructed there in the last two decades.
A friend of mine grew up on Nevins Street. When we toured the neighborhood 30 years ago, Charlie was proud to point out the House of ExLax right around the corner on Atlantic Ave. It had a brown color if I remember correctly!