I made another visit to Red Hook in August 2024, but I haven’t done a full page review yet because I don’t think I can surpass my other Red Hook studies, most recently in 2021. Still, there’s 131 photos from that day in Red Hook and Cobble Hill and they’re going to leach out eventually. Coffey Street, one of Red Hook’s east-west routes, is among my favorite streets in the neighborhood since it preserves its old housing stock, and especially it’s bumpy Belgian block paving, which has been untouched so long that grass grows through the bricks here and there.
Coffey Street was renamed from Partition Street in the early 20th Century for a local political figure, Michael Joseph Coffey (1839-1907), an alderman in the 12th Ward and later a state senator. He was a political maverick during his nearly 4 decades in public life, but his rebelliousness eventually cost him his Assembly seat. Nevertheless, Partition became Coffey in an era when street renamings were truly renamings instead of adding an extra sign. Coffey Park is also named for him.
I’m related to the other Brooklyn Coffey, way down in Bay Ridge. When the Gowanus Expressway was constructed from 1959-1964, Fort Hamilton Parkway was moved and bridged across the open-cut trench, forming a triangle with 7th Avenue and 81st Street. The triangle was named for one of my relatives, Lieutenant William E. Coffey. He was one of my uncles, but I never knew him as he died quite young at World War II’s Battle of the Bulge, two days before his daughter, one of my cousins, was born. There was also a long-vanished American Legion outpost on 7th Avenue that was named for him.
William E Coffey was the son of John J. Coffey and Sara T. Blake. He was married to Margareth M .Wall and had a daughter named Margie, born on the one year anniversary of her father’s death in France.*
He enlisted in the Regular Army in Jamaica, New York on February 24, 1941. He attended high school and was a construction worker before he enlisted. An American Legion Post on 10th Avenue, Brooklyn is named in his honor. [Honor States]
*My cousin Margaret Coffey said she was born one day before her father’s death.
Lt. Coffey was posthumously awarded a Purple Heart. He is interred in Lorraine American Cemetery, St. Avold, France.
Check out the ForgottenBook, take a look at the gift shop. As always, “comment…as you see fit.”
10/21/25