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.
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11/2/24