IT’S been quite awhile…2005, to be exact… when I last extensively walked in Brownsville, East New York and that deliberately nonmaintained backwater known as The Hole (even Google Maps calls…
Brooklyn
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I have always been a fan of the original formula pedestrian lampposts on expressways built in NYC during the 1950s. To me they are simplified versions of Bishop Crooks that…
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I found this confusing pairing of signage on the northbound leg of Hamilton Avenue at Henry Street a few years ago. Apparently the Department of Transportation must have heard from…
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PARKED outside #167 Concord Street in Brooklyn is owner Frank Didik’s car, a hybrid gasoline/electric powered vehicle called the Didik Long Ranger designed in the mid-1980s. It’s 96 inches long, 65 inches…
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A foray into what was formerly called “South Brooklyn” when it was actually the southern end of the City of Brooklyn before it absorbed the rest of Kings County and…
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DOUGHTY Street is one of a network of short streets and alleys adjacent to the Fulton Ferry landing that were built in the early 1800s, making them some of Brooklyn’s…
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AUGUST is the month of my birth. I breathed my first in Maimonides Hospital, a now-sprawling complex between 9th Avenue, Fort Hamilton Parkway, 48th and 49th Streets in Borough Park,…
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ROLANDO Pujol, the indefatigable finder of ancient NYC objects at The Retrologist, recently located this ancient vinyl sign (formerly with neon tubing) for Barney’s Ladies’ Shoes on 82nd Street off…
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A look at any picture book of old Brooklyn will show you that Fulton Street from about 1850 all the way to about 1950 was the pre-eminent street of the…
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OAK Street is just one of Greenpoint’s “alphabetical” streets, that begin with Ash and end with Quay; the L street’s place is taken by Greenpoint Avenue and the P by…
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GRAVESEND Neck Road was once a major east-west artery in Gravesend and Sheepshead Bay in the days of carts and wagons. “Neck Road” as it’s called by locals and the MTA…
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THERE are two monuments to famed 19th Century preacher Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887) in the Boro Hall — Brooklyn Heights area, the one seen here and one at Beecher’s church,…