BQE Service Road Gets Immigration Mural

Cars driving too fast between Atlantic Avenue and Hamilton Avenue on the BQE Service Road known as Hicks Street will now be treated to an oddly placed, and very large, mural on the history of Italian immigration in the South Brooklyn area.

As far as I can tell, the painting went up today. The paints and brushes were still on the sidewalk when I walked by this afternoon. There are five panels separated by painted pillars: immigrants gazing from a boat at the Statue Liberty; immigrants disembarking from a ship named after Christopher Columbus; American saint Mother Cabrini, who taught at the local Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary Roman Catholic Church (the nearby Mother Cabrini Park is named for her); an image of Catholic education; and a unspecific domestic scene.

Nice. Particularly since it will remind people of the area's rich, and fast disappearing, Italian-America history. But the only people who are going to see it are the oddballs (like me) who sometime walk down dirty, dusty Hicks instead of the commercial strip Columbia Street or the picturesque Henry Street.