Crown Heights

Mid-Brooklyn’s north-south avenues have a naming pattern from west to east. After Bedford and then Nostrand, they are named for major cities found going north on the Hudson River and…

Small, round Brooklyn-Battery of Queens-Midtown Tunnel signs, as opposed to small, round webmasters,  are getting rarer. This one points traffic west on Atlantic Avenue at Bedford… H/T Gary Fonville 10/29/14

In August I was on my way to a gathering in Prospect Park South, near the Parade Grounds. Instead of the usual thing, the F train to Church Avenue, I…

While President Ulysses S. Grant, an Ohioan by birth, is entombed on Manhattan’s Upper West Side and represented on Brooklyn’s Grand Army Plaza’s Soldiers and Sailors Arch, his perhaps most…

Stenciled signs for the “chocolated laxative” appeared frequently on drugstore windows frequently in the early to mid-20th Century, and several more can be found concealed under newer awnings, or in…

After a walk east on Bergen Street from Cobble Hill, the sun was beginning to addle my pate, so I made for the subway on Eastern Parkway down Franklin Avenue,…

I’m fascinated with Rex Cole apartment building signs. He was a 1930s refrigerator designer. Gary Fonville has the scoop here. 5/27/14

Gary Fonville sends this sign pointing the way to the Marine Parkway Bridge at Utica and East New York Avenue. If you take Utica Avenue south all the way to…

Dean Street and Nostrand Avenue, Crown Heights

Cul de sacs and alleyways have always held a fascination for me. However they are rather scarce in New York City, which has a grid system of streets not only…

In Bedford-Stuyvesant, Crown Heights, Flatbush and East Flatbush, you will find a succession of avenues that run north to south that are named for major cities in New York State.…

During my recent walk from downtown Brooklyn to Crown Heights, I was meandering down Montgomery Street when, just past Nostrand Avenue I spotted an odd little part-dirt, part Belgian blocked path issuing…