Flatbush

Though southern Brooklyn’s streets are dominated by numbered and lettered streets, over the past two centuries, things have shaken out to be rather interesting, nomenclature-wise. As always, the exceptions prove…

At Beverly and Bedford Avenues in Flatbush is this huge Art Moderne monolith that looks like something straight out of the 1936 movie Things to Come (the third section, where…

Like much of the subways the BMT Brighton Line, which runs generally between East 15th and 16th Streets from Prospect Park south to Coney Island, has a complicated history. It…

I don’t know about you, but when I see the term “Private Street,” I think of Riverdale, the Bronx.  I always thought that Riverdale has the most private streets, but…

Before 1894, Flatbush in Kings County was a separate town on its own, with a separate government, police department, street layout, etc. The town was annexed by the City of…

Some NYC subway stations have small buildings used as entrances, especially where the subway lines run in an “open cut” or a roofless tunnel. Of course on the original Interborough…

Southeast Brooklyn still has a number of colonial-era houses constructed by Dutch and English settlers from the mid-18th to early 19th Centuries. Among them are the Pieter Claesen Wyckoff House…

Across the street from The Flatbush Reformed Church and cemetery, and two doors down from historic Erasmus Hall High School, another chapter in Brooklyn history has been temporarily revealed at…

Perfectly cantilevered buildings mark the intersection of Amersfort Place and Campus Road in the shadow of Brooklyn College. After discussing Hillel Place yesterday, I have another bit of business to…

Hillel Place runs for a block between Campus Road and Flatbush Avenue in the Brooklyn College area, in the heart of Brooklyn known by local denizens as “the Junction” where…

In the Fab Fifties, there was a short-lived craze of drilling kids in school to hide under their desks if the Russkies ever Dropped the Big One. Never mind the…

Brooklyn’s Church Avenue runs from 37th Street between 13th and 14th Avenues on the Borough Park-Kensington border east and northeast to East 98th Street near Brookdale Hospital in Brownsville. The…