DURING the past week for my weekly item in SpliceToday I wrote about Brooklyn Dodgers and Ebbets Field remnants in Brooklyn. The Dodgers won their 8th World Series and became the first team since expansion in 1962 to defeat both the Mets and Yankees en route to the title. I heard from FNY reader Edward Fitzgerald, who told me about another Dodgers remnant I hadn’t heard of…
Dodgertown
Here’a 1951 Brooklyn Eagle ad for a development called Dodgertown, on East 45th and 56th Streets and Rutland Road and Winthrop Street near Kings County Hospital. In the Cold War era, the basement bomb shelters were prominent in the ad. The developers had no inkling that the Dodgers would be in Brooklyn only a few more years, but not before winning their sole Brooklyn championship in 1955.
Some of the Dodgertown homes at Rutland Road and East 46th. They’re two-story, attached brick homes. Few, if any, of the current owners are aware the homes used to be called “Dodgertown.” From 1953-2008, the Dodgers’ training complex in Vero Beach, Florida was called Dodgertown, until the club departed for Arizona.
Coral Gardens
Nearby is the former Coral Gardens complex, constructed in 1925 between New York and Brooklyn Avenues and Maple and Midwood Streets. This development consists of three landscaped pedestrian courts, all Florida-themed: Tampa, Palm and Miami Courts. Vehicular access is provided by three rear alleys; homes on the east side of Tampa Court have their rear access on Brooklyn Avenue.
Some maps call this area Wingate (there’s Wingate Park and Wingate High School) on the eastern edge of Prospect-Lefferts Gardens or the south end of Crown Heights. (Area residents: what do you call it?)
Kingsway Homes
The hardest to find of the three is the 1924 Kingsway Homes project, built on Kings Highway, Farragut Road and Preston Court. Today, the area includes small industry, auto repair and warehousing and just a few of the Kingsway homes can be found…
… on Preston Court near Kings Highway. While cycling through this area in the 1970s and 1980s, I never considered there were private homes at all the mostly industrialized Preston Court, and if these are residences at all, they are probably for local auto repair shop owners along the road. The area can be thought of as Brooklyn’s “iron triangle,” after the now-vanishing region of chop shops along the Flushing River east of Citi Field.
Just to the north, a short street, Whitty Lane, issues east from Kings Highway and contains homes similar to those in Dodgertown.
Special thanks to Edward Fitzgerald for providing the newspaper clips and info.
As always, “comment…as you see fit.” I earn a small payment when you click on any ad on the site. Take a look at the new JOBS link in the red toolbar at the top of the page on the desktop version, as I also get a small payment when you view a job via that link.
11/2/24
9 comments
Preston Court,where no one cares if you keep your engine hoist out on
the sidewalk.My kind of neighborhood.
You mention the Dodgers’ sole Brooklyn championship, but I used to have fun asking old-time baseball fans, “How many championships did the Dodgers win in the 1950’s?”, to which most would answer “Only one, in 1955…”, after which I would tell them that the correct answer is two– they also won the 1959 championship vs. the White Sox. The Dodgers didn’t stop being the Dodgers just because they were playing in Los Angeles…
The Dodgers defeated the Yankees in the World Series of 1963, too. So, they defeated both the Mets and Yankees in the championship process by 1988.
I mean the same season
The fallout shelters are no longer there because the birds flew off with them.
Brooklyn still had Trolley cars in 1951, so the team and Brooklynites were Trolley Dodgers.
My grandparents bought a new home in Coral Gardens in 1924. Our extended family lived there for 50 years. The Dodgers would walk the neighborhood before home games to sign autographs and hand out tickets to the kids. Family legend says my mom stepped on PeeWee Reese’s foot as the kids were scrambling for autographs and PeeWee missed that night’s game because of a broken foot. No clue if this is true, but it was a fun memory for my mom.
The “Preston” houses photo on the bottom looks to be among semi-detached houses found across southern Brooklyn; Flatlands, Marine Park, Old Mill Basin and Gerritsen Beach. Basic simple 1 family houses hat were the same blueprint over and over. I live in one today. They’re commonly called “Realty Houses”. Donald Trump’s father, Fred Trump, built many of them in the 1920s and 1930s before he moved on to Trump Village in Coney Island.
Brian: As Ed McMahon used to say to Johnny Carson: “You are correct, sir!” My mother’s aunt moved to Trump Village/Coney Island in the mid-60s. We were invited for dinner & as young as I was I was very impressed by the large rooms featuring large windows with ocean views. There were also parking spaces for residents, & many guest parking spaces which helped us “bigly” that evening. At the risk of the webmaster rejecting this, I’ll say, without hesitation, never before has a family that has done so much good for so many been so persecuted. However, they seem to subscribe to the maxim “The best revenge is living well”. The great “restoration” begins on 1/20/25.