DEEP into the Forgotten New York archives we go, to September 2017, when I staggered out of Prospect Park onto the streets of Lefferts Gardens and I found this sign at Flatbush Avenue and Lincoln Road. I have begun to take more notice of these signs that are placed on lampposts by local merchants associations. This one, for FECMA, touted the Flatbush-Empire Boulevard to Clarkson Avenue Merchants Association, or FECMA.
FECMA, though, seems to have bitten the dust quite awhile ago as not a trace of it can be found on the internets. I do see what could be its replacement organization, Flatbush Empire Parkside Merchants Association (FEPMA), on a Facebook post. There happens to be a modern FECMA, though: Federation of European Credit Management Associations. I won’t link it since it’s likely as boring as it sounds.
Empire Boulevard is one of Brooklyn’s “newer” streets; it’s only just over 100 years old. After a Brighton Line subway train crashed at a curve in a tunnel under Malbone Street on November 1, 1918, killing many of the passengers, the street was renamed as Empire Boulevard. The train crashed during a motorman’s strike when an inexperienced desk jockey was placed at the controls in the cab. Many of the era’s disasters, like the General Slocum steamboat fire, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory disaster, and the Malbone Street Wreck, were entirely avoidable from malfeasance and the absence of even rudimentary safety precautions. Life was indeed cheap…if you weren’t upper class.
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