5th Avenue in Brooklyn is merely one of a sequence of numbered avenues in western Brooklyn that run from 1st to 28th Avenues. While some like 4th Avenue and 22nd Avenue (later Bay Parkway) were wider and more heavily trafficked, avenues such as 3rd, 5th, 8th, 13th and 18th came to have lengthy commercial sections, and so attracted transit systems: horsecars, then streetcars, elevated trains, and buses; today, only the buses remain, as well as the 4th Avenue BMT subway, opened in 1916.
I once again walked 5th Avenue in Park Slope from Flatbush Avenue. This time I got as far as 19th Street as it was my intention to turn south through Windsor Terrace (I will get to the results of that turn on another day in FNY). I was surprised to discover my most recent trip there had been in late 2000; I thought it had been earlier than that. The gentrification, or upscaling, of 5th Avenue in Park Slope continues apace. When I rode the bus every day here from 1971-1980, it was a gauntlet to be gotten around as it was still in the throes of its mid-1960s depression and was dangerous in spots. Park Slope’s revival happened from its richer sections near Prospect Park, beginning in the late 1970s, and spread west; today, it’s Gowanus Canal’s turn to become luxury.
Since today’s batch of photos came to about 100 and I have begun to avoid composing very long entries as the TLDR (too long don’t read) syndrome continues to take hold, I’ll split 2024’s 5th Avenue entry into two parts, with this being Part 2. I left off at Garfield Place, where numbered streets begin as you walk south. Oner of these days…years..I’ll walk all of Brooklyn’s numbered streets from 1 to 19, as they’re relatively short. Except for the streets that are stopped cold by Green-Wood Cemetery (21-34), western Brooklyn’s numbered streets get increasingly long; 86th Street is probably the longest.
This pub on the corner of 5th Avenue and Garfield Place is home to Brooklyn Burgers and Beer, which added that incongruous roof deck. As you may expect it was a simple two story brick building until 2014.
The green and white signage on Bonnie’s Grill between Garfield and 1st reminds me of 1940s designs. This seems to be a Buffalo Bills bar. Though the team plays hundreds of miles away, its site in New York State is enough for many NYC football fans, since both the Jets and Giants play at Meadowlands Stadium in New Jersey. (Perhaps they should have used Bills colors, red, white and blue.)
A trend I’ve noticed the past decade is to stencil or print type directly on brick fronts, instead of attach a metal or vinyl sign. Calexico adjoins Bonnie’s Grill on 5th Avenue.
You can’t see it too well here, I should have crossed the street for a better photo, but this taller building adjoinig shorter ones on 1st Street was the perfect spot for painted advertising. Remember, the 5th Avenue El also rumbleed past from 1888-1940.
It’s considearbly faded but this was an ad for Fletcher’s Castoria ads, which have been a staple in the Forgotten New York ancient painted ads category from the very beginning, back in 1999. They can be seen frequently in photographs of NYC from the early 20th Century and were absolutely ubiquitous. An extraordinarily high grade of paint must have been used to produce them as many have stood up to full sunshine for over a century.
Fletcher’s Castoria, marketed as a gentle stomach remedy for kids, has been sold since 1871 when Charles Henry Fletcher purchased the rights to a formula developed by Dr. Samuel Pitcher as a cathartic. It has been marketed ever since then, though in recent years the “Castoria,” (for castor oil) has been dropped and it’s now called Fletcher’s Laxative for Kids, though adults can also use it.
Castoria was marketed extensively through much of the 20th Century, with large painted ads appearing on sides of buildings in major cities. The paint used proved quite resistant to sun bleaching; only during the last 20 years have they started to fade considerably.
Stone Park Cafe can be found on the NW corner of 5th Avenue and 3rd Street. Across the street is the second largest park in Park Slope, second only to Prospect Park itself.. It goes by two names, J.J. Byrne Park asnd Washington Park. Why is this the Stone Park Cafe?
In the center of the park, you will find what’s called the Old Stone House. It was originally built in 1699 by Dutchman Klaes Arents Vecht. The house remained in the Vecht family until just prior to the American Revolution, when it was rented to an Isaac Cortelyou; his father, Jacques, bought the property in 1790.
Officially known as the Vecht-Cortelyou House, the Old Stone House played a pivotal role in the American Revolution. On August 27, 1776, during the Battle of Brooklyn, things looked dire indeed for the Americans, as the British and Hessians were overwhelming them in what is now the northern section of Prospect Park.
Hoping to reach forts at Boerum Hill and Fort Greene, about 900 American troops retreated from what would be the Greenwood Cemetery area; they hoped to track northward. General William Alexander, also known as Lord Stirling, led a company of 400 Maryland troops (this is the Maryland state flag) that engaged British General Charles Cornwallis’ force of 2000 grenadiers and cannoneers at the Stone House to cover the retreat and, while many of the Americans were able to escape, Stirling was captured and 259 of the Maryland troops were killed. George Washington, observing the battle from what is now Cobble Hill, is said to have uttered: “What brave fellows I must this day lose.”
The house continued on with the Cortelyou family until 1850 when it was sold to Edwin Litchfield, who allowed the house to literally sink into ruin. By the 1890s only its upper floor was visible above ground level; after serving as a makeshift clubhouse for the Brooklyn Bridegrooms baseball team playing in nearby Washington Park, the house was taken apart in 1897.
The house found an angel in Brooklyn Borough President John J. Byrne. The Old Stone House’s original foundations and brick were rediscovered, and Byrne, in one of his final acts before his death in 1930, ordered its reconstruction in a park posthumously named for him in 1933. The Old Stone House received a thorough makeover in 1996 with new plumbing, electrics and roofing installed. Colorful Maryland state flags wave at the old house, in honor of the regiment. The Old Stone House’s stock has risen as Park Slope’s has in recent years: it’s now a premier history museum.
I have been privileged to do Forgotten NY presentations at the Old Stone House as well as attending Brooklyn blogger meetings (when blogs were a thing).
When I passed this storefront at 372 5th Avenue near 5th Street, I assumed it was an elaborate movie set (Spiderman XVIII?) or an expensive joke, but it turns out “Brooklyn Superhero Supply” is a spiffed-up tutoring center for neighborhood kids, known as 826nyc, that opened in June 2004.
Why 826? It is an offshoot of an original center on 826 Valencia Street in San Francisco called the Pirate Supply Store. The whole thing was started by author Dave Eggers (who wrote the 2000 best-selling memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius.)
Interference Archive, 314 7th Street off 5th Avenue, describes its mission:
…to explore the relationship between cultural production and social movements. This work manifests in an open stacks archival collection, publications, a study center, and public programs including exhibitions, workshops, talks, and screenings, all of which encourage critical and creative engagement with the rich history of social movements.
The archive contains many kinds of objects that are created as part of social movements by the participants themselves: posters, flyers, publications, zines, books, T-shirts and buttons, moving images, audio recordings, subject files, and other materials.
Through our programming, we use this cultural ephemera to animate histories of people mobilizing for social transformation. We consider the use of our collection to be a way of preserving and honoring histories and material culture that is often marginalized in mainstream institutions.
Across the street at 5th Avenue and 7th Street are a pair of curious “faded ads” for De Gamba stripping and finshing and DiGamba Travel. Both seem to be closed forever. Same family, two spellings?
I noticed that this True Value hardware store has an ancient sign and I wondered how old it was. I checked the Municipal Archives for a 1940 photo, when the elevated was till in place, and the sign was indeed there, when the Lazio Brothers owned it; today, it’s the Leopaldi Brothers.
Speaking of ancient, I remember Smith’s Tavern from riding past with my parents in the 1960s and when I was riding it to high school and college in the 1970s. Indeed it is now 93 years old — give it afew more years and call it a century.
Robert Simonson walked in and wrote:
Hate crowds? Tired of chatty bartenders? Then get yourself to Smith’s Tavern, where you will not be bothered with anything that could be called a scene.
I went to this Park Slope bar on a recent Wednesday night and found four televisions, three customers and one beefy barkeep who said not a word to me all evening. This situation did not change, except that the drinkers left one by one. Off night, I thought. So I returned at the primo hour of 10 PM Saturday night. Again: Four televisions, three customers, and one bartender, who was comparatively verbose: he said three words.
This is Smith’s: unfussy, unpopulated, no ceremony. Come in, talk if you like, don’t if you don’t, choose your beer and watch the game. It’s a good place for lone drinkers, who enter, and leave, at regular intervals, usually to partake of Smith’s signature $1.75 Buds in frosted mugs. (These are refreshing, I must admit.) A plaque behind the bar indicates that Smith’s has been declared a “Bud Man’s Bar” by the proper authorities. The jukebox expresses a certain catholic taste in music, as well as a no-nonsense attitude. One CD was titled “Beatle’s Song’s We Find Acceptable” (with that punctuation).
Smith’s Tavern has been in business on Park Slope’s Fifth Avenue and Ninth Street since 1931 and has done a damn fine job of keeping itself out of the news during those [93] years. Go ahead: try to find a write-up of the place. Telling signs of its age include the typical long wooden bar; an actual phone booth complete with sliding door and tin walls; some stained glass at the front; and a singular design scheme that could only be called a cross between wine cellar and ship’s hold.
A series of faux-stone arches border the room. Just below the ceiling at regular intervals are small carved characters—like the figureheads that used to adorn the front of old sailing vessels—of drunken men hugging mugs and casks. Most remarkable is the huge colored frieze behind the bar of an 18th-century gentleman of sorts, in pantaloons and stockings, sitting in his cellar enjoying a flagon of liquor and a long pipe. What it all means, who can tell. Nobody gave it a glance besides me.
Here’s a look at Smith’s Tavern in 1940.
In 2022, most of the ornamentation has been stripped off the building.
Neergaard, which serves those late-night needs (you know what they are) has been in business on 5th Avenue since 1888 and has been open 24/7 since World War I. Like many comprehensive pharmacies, it also stocks surgical products, scooters, wheelchairs, walkers, oxygen equipment, lift chairs, hospital beds, and bathroom safety items. Neegaard has had a vertical sidewalk sign since at least 1940. There is always a pharmacist on duty in case you need a refill pain killer for that toothache at 2AM. There is a younger branch on 7th Avenue.
The Record and Tape Center, 5th Avenue off 9th Street, has been a staple for many years. It just recently gave up its old-skool sidewalk sign for something more contemporary.
I was surprised to see that the Greater New York Savings Bank Building (whihc became home to a closeout department store) and the building on the SE corner of 5th Avenue and 9th Street had been demolished. The sidewalk bank lamppost, the last remaining of what was once a set, was still intact in spring 2024, but I doubt it will remain; something boring and glassy will probably go up on the corner.
Formerly, banks installed sets of post top lampposts on the sidewalk to discourage nighttime robberies.
At 5th Avenue and 11th Street, Bicycle Habitat employs the Avant-Garde font, developed for Avant-Garde Magazine in 1968. In the 1970s and 1980s, it was a popular text and headline font.
I know this building, #555 5th Avenue at 15th Street, home to a paint store and a gym, had originally been a bank. The only remaining visual clue is a sailing ship bas-relief. Which bank? The Comments section is open.
Previous candidates included Marine Midland Bank, Seaman’s Bank for Savings and the Brooklyn Britannia Benefit Society. By 1940, the building was a cafeteria, but its leftover bank lamps gave away its old identity.
I photograph this sign at 5th Avenue and 16th Street each time I pass it. I have still never been in the Black Horse Pub, #568 5th Avenue at 16th Street … all my Park Slope pals and relatives moved away years ago and I never drink alone … but I do like their sign, which uses the Goudy Handtooled font, once again painted or stenciled directly on the bricks.
I liked this vinyl storefront in French colors. I had never heard of a French deli, but there are probably plenty in Quebec and France itself. What’s in there? Plenty of croissants.
This old skool Prospect Care Pharmacy sign, 5th and Prospect Avenues, has two familiar drugstore symbols, the vessel with the pestle and the RX symbol. The sign is relatively new though, appearing first in 2019.
The mortar and pestle has long been used as a pharmaceutical symbol in Britain and on the European mainland [as well as the USA]. The mortar and pestle are tools of traditional pharmacy, hence their use as an easily recognizable visual motif.
The recipe sign appears at the start of prescriptions. Although universally accepted as an abbreviation of “recipe” (Latin for ‘take thou’), it has also been suggested that it is the astronomical sign of the planet Jupiter. [Royal Pharmaceutical Society Museum, London]
There’s been a gaping void on Prospect Avenue just south of 5th Avenue for a couple of years now, as nothing has been built (as of spring 2024) to replace Grand Prospect Hall.
While Greenpoint and Maspeth have a much more storied concentration of Poles, Slovaks and Eastern European immigrants, there’s also a large contingent here along Fifth between about Prospect Avenue and 25th Street, mixed with a Hispanic complement and a newer Asian movement. The late lamented Eagle Provisions at 5th and 18th once specialized in kielbasa and over 1600 varieties of beer.
In the 2000s, Freddy’s Bar and Backroom, a neighborhood dive, art center, and concert venue at 6th Avenue and Dean Street, became one of the neighborhood epicenters for opposition to the Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park development. Today, there is no such intersection at all, but fortunately Freddy’s has found a new home on 5th Avenue between 17th and 18th Streets.
Kimisis Theotokou Greek Orthodox Church was founded in 1931 and moved into this church building on 18th Street just west of 5th Avenue the following year. However, I suspect there was another congregation in the building before that. If you have the details…Comments are open.
Directly across 18th Street you find these simple 3 story brick walkups that I have always called “the bread and butter of Brooklyn residential architecture.”
The 1896 Hutwelker Building at 5th and 19th. You have to wonder why these elaborate building identifications were placed at the top, where no one could see them unless you happened to be looking up, or in a building across the street. But there may be an answer to this…
Here’s what the corner looked like in 1940. As you can see, the 5th Avenue El was shrouding the avenue in its final year of service, as it had done since it was extended past 19th Street in 1889. At the time, spotting that “Hutwelker Building” sign on the pediment would have been tough… unless you could do it from a station platform. As it happened, the el had a stop at 20th Street, so that may have been the case.
Frederick Hutwelker operated a pork packing enterprise with his two brothers beginning in 1896 (the business was physically located on the Hudson River waterfront in the West 40s in Hell’s Kitchen, which had its own stockyards district in the late 19th-early 20th Century).
A former furniture store at 5th and 19th appears to be an old theater. I noticed a faded sign on it advertising an old appliances chain, Friendly Frost; before P.C. Richard ascended to its current domination around town, there was Friendly Frost and later, Newmark & Lewis and the Wiz in the 1970s and into the 90s.
From here, I turned left on 19th Street and made my way south to Windsor Terrace. I may present those photographs on next week’s feature; we’ll see. I may want to do a different borough.
5th Avenue in 2021…you can see how much has changed
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9/8/24