In the early years of this website, Kevin Walsh returned to Atlantic Yards (Now known as Pacific Park) on many occasions, documenting the transformation of a railyard and former meatpacking district into a high-rise cluster anchored by Barclays Center. I recently attended a training session at a city office building on the corner of Atlantic and Vanderbilt avenues, revisiting locations where Kevin walked a generation ago.
The view from this office revealed a chasm between Atlantic Avenue and Pacific Street, a portion of the railyard that has not yet been decked. This city has a long history of covering up railyards in favor of development, starting with Grand Central Terminal, followed by Concourse Village in the Bronx, Esplanade Gardens in Harlem, and Linden Plaza in Brooklyn. The most recent example is Hudson Yards in Midtown.
The high-rise facing the railyard is 550 Vanderbilt. It was built on the site of a massive Ward Bread bakery, which was renamed Continental Baking Company in 1925. That year it acquired the maker of Wonder Bread and became the nation’s largest commercial bakery. The successor to this company today is the Kansas-based Hostess Brands.
The last loaves were produced here in 1995 and the factory then stood silent as a storage warehouse. Despite protests from preservationists, it was not landmarked by the city and instead demolished in 2007 for a condo tower. The concession to the public is a privately owned park surrounding the residential towers.
Like an artifact from a bygone civilization, a mosaic block with Ward’s logo stands in Pacific Park, flanked by metal signs explaining the site’s industrial past. This park was given its name in 2014 when Atlantic Yards was given a rebranding.
Pacific Street honors the planet’s biggest ocean, but on the map of Brooklyn it plays the sidekick to Atlantic, a one-way route broken up into six segments on its run between the waterfront in Cobble Hill and East New York. The most recently demapped blocks of Pacific Street were to accommodate Barclays Center and Pacific Park.
As a Daily News alum, having reported for New York’s Picture Newspaper during my J-school days, I recognize its traces throughout the city: its logo on a climbing gym in Gowanus, its landmarked former office on 42nd Street, and its later office within the slanted facade of 450 W. 33rd Street in Midtown before its glassy transformation into 5 Manhattan West.
The Newswalk condos preserve the exterior of the former Daily News printing plant facing Atlantic Yards, with its interior repurposed as high-end residences in 2002. The water tower here is retained as a historic relic.
Looking back at the history of this building, its workers were known as pressmen. They made the headlines but rarely in public. There were a couple of exceptions, such as 1979, when Denis Whalen rescued a family from a fire down the block.
Then there was the 147-day strike in 1990. When the Daily News hired scab workers, they were assaulted and one of the delivery trucks was torched. The newspaper was in decline and cuts had to be made. In 1997, the presses were stopped for the final time and printing operations were outsourced to New Jersey.
Developer Shaya Boymelgreen purchased the building and converted it to luxury condos, but construction was shoddy. Jazz musician Richard Bona found his instruments damaged by water leaking into his apartment. Residents formed a board and hired an engineering firm to point out the deficiencies. They then sued Boymelgreen and it took 10 years to resolve the case.
On Dean Street behind Newswalk, the former Dean Street Baptist Church was sold in 2024 for $5.6 million to a residential developer. Built in 1893 for a Swedish congregation, it changed hands from one denomination to another until its last church, Temple of Restoration, put it on the market. Throughout the city, historic churches with declining numbers cannot maintain their sanctuaries and so they close.
Across the street, Dean Playground has a sign explaining the street’s namesake: Revolutionary War diplomat and spy Silas Deane. He was the international talent recruiter who brought the Marquis de Lafayette, Tadeusz Kosciuszko, and Baron von Steuben to the Continental Army. Towards the end of that war, Deane was in Europe and accused of switching sides. He fought to clear his name. Eventually recognized as a patriot, he died aboard a ship making its way back to America. He was buried in England.
While some former churches turned condos have preserved their Gothic and Romanesque exteriors, the developer of 515 Dean Street chose to erase history in favor of a boring brick box. During my visit, the building was clad in scaffolding in the midst of its conversion into pricy residences. Brownstoner has the detailed story of this church.
Closer to Barclays Center, 622 Pacific Street offers high-priced rentals. This tower is marketed as Plank Road. Apparently the developer looked at an old map of Brooklyn and noticed that the ancient Flatbush Plank Road ran on this site before it was straightened into today’s Flatbush Avenue. The 9.9-mile road runs the length of Brooklyn, from Manhattan Bridge to Floyd Bennett Field, passing by the borough’s basketball arena, main library, zoo, botanical garden, Prospect Park, Brooklyn College, and other defining landmarks.
The tower’s 6th Avenue side hosts Pacific Park Campus, which has a Percent for Art installation in its lobby. Remember When Tomorrow Came, installed in 2024 by the Brooklyn-based artist duo Ghost of a Dream (Adam Eckstrom and Lauren Was). With diversity in mind, the phrase appears in numerous languages on this painting. A security guard noticed my taking photos and asked whether she could help me. I politely replied that I teach art history. Never underestimate good manners. It gets you access.
Less secure on my walk to the train terminal is Show Brooklyn Some Love, painted in 2024 on the Atlantic Center mall facing Atlantic Avenue. Sponsored by the nonprofit Groundswell, it depicts a brownstone stoop, Wonder Wheel, and Williamsburg Savings Bank in an ode to the borough. I hope to see more murals beautifying this mall.
Barclays Center knocked down the fading ad for Underberg, whose name evoked the neighborhood’s gritty past as much as the fictional billboard for Dr. T.J. Eckleburg did for the Valley of Ashes in Queens. Fortunately behind the McDonald’s at Atlantic and Vanderbilt, the letters for American Food Laboratories are still legible. Kevin wrote about this business back in 2022. Not seen anymore around here: the yellow Hot Bird mural ads that brought to mind a Sesame Street character being roasted. It was demolished in favor of 550 Vanderbilt.
Where Underberg’s building stood, the plaza of Barclays Center has its own public sculpture: Ona, a 19-foot bronze pillar by Ursula von Rydingsvard. It was intentionally abstract by design, like the totem of an unknown ancient culture, filled with crevasses and crannies for passersby to ponder. This space also has the historic Ebbets Field flagpole, which was donated to a VFW Post in Canarsie after Dem Bums moved to LA, which then passed to a casket company and a church. In 2007, Borough President Marty Markowitz suggested placing the flagpole at Barclays Center and developer Bruce Ratner secured it. It is poetic justice to have it here, as the Dodgers sought this location for a new baseball stadium, which the city rejected. That’s when they decided to decamp for the West Coast.
Kevin’s interest in public works includes subway ventilation shafts. Looking at the column at Flatbush Avenue, it appears to be from Squire Vickers’ tenure as subway station designer. Don’t ask me if it was for the BMT or IRT. Perhaps our friend Joe Raskin, the subway historian, can answer this one.
Sergey Kadinsky is the author of Hidden Waters of New York City: A History and Guide to 101 Forgotten Lakes, Ponds, Creeks, and Streams in the Five Boroughs (2016, Countryman Press), adjunct history professor at Touro University and the webmaster of Hidden Waters Blog.Â
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2/15/26
2 comments
Silas Deane is also remembered In Connecticut, with the Silas Deane Highway being the main street through the Hartford suburb of Wethersfield.
All the time and resources to build that, and it’s an ugly blight!