The Building With the Curved Cornice

I've long been intrigued by this small trick building on Fulton Mall, largely because of its unusual, curbed cornice, which appears to be original. I've not been able to find out anything about its past life. Anyone out there known anything?

Gage & Tollner Building Falling Into Ruin

The Gage & Tollner building was once a thing a beauty—the only thing of beauty, in fact, on Fulton Street in downtown Brooklyn for decades. Now, it is an eyesore.

Read more »

Arby's, Come Get Your Sign

Years after its short life inside the landmarked Gage & Tollner building on Fulton Avenue in downtown Brooklyn ended, Arby's has yet to take down its signage. The vertical sign advertising the roast beef chain covers an original sign reading Gage & Tollner.

Meanwhile, the tacky junk jewelry shop that took over the space after Arby's exited continues to inhabit the address, covered nearly ever bit of its beautiful, 19th-century landmarked interior with hot pink displays of the most appalling array of tinsel-y rubbish imaginable. All in violation of an contempt of City landmarking laws.

Restaurateur Danny Meyer brought a Shake Shack to Fulton. Can't he take over this hallowed space and save it from further ignominy?

Heimesch Coffee Shop

The individuality of New York's many neighborhood is one of the City's great strengths. Only in Orthodox Jewish Borough Park (and maybe a couple other areas) would the coffee shop arm of a gas station be called the Heimesche Coffee Shop. For those who don't know their Yiddish, Heimesch (also spelled Haimish) means cozy or homey. This particular coffee shop doesn't look very cozy. But what the hell. It's the intention, right?

Downtown Brooklyn Cafeteria Glimpsed Once Again

The removal of some signage from a Jay Street Sprint store in downtown Brooklyn has uncovered a former resident of the block, indicated by a half of lovely old sign, saying "Cafeteria." Fantastic font on that sign. There is a red circle with a "W" in the middle of it, and there appears to be another "W" under the red section of the old/new sign that still remains.

Carmine Merlino: Creator of Fine Men's Hairpieces

Carmine Merlino, "creator of fine men's hairpieces and ladies wigs," operates out of a funny little triangle of a storefront that occupies a narrow wedge of Emmons Avenue in Sheepshead Bay. His business is two stories tall, though both stories seem to be about as wide as a airplane bathroom.

Merlino has a lot of amusing signage. He calls his business a "Hair Replacement Studio." He boasts of a signature creation called "The Fantastico," which is "featherlight and undetectable."

Read more »

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.

How Things Work at Green-Wood Cemetery

Last week I posted an open query about the decrepit, sealed-up state of the mausoleum of poor old Eugene Fairchild in historic Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn. 

Soon after, I received some illuminating information from Green-Wood—not necessarily about Fairchild, but about how things are done at the burial place in general. Read and learn:

There are a couple of reasons mausoleums get sealed up, like the Fairchild’s. First, if it has been filled to capacity, the family may opt to have Green-Wood to seal the mausoleum. Or, when Green-Wood is unable to find surviving heirs to make the necessary repairs to a mausoleum, the entrance is sealed with masonry or wood. And last, others may have had stone doors which broke away from their hinges under their massive weight or metal doors that just rusted away.

In keeping with our rustic, rural cemetery layout, we actually do let some areas of the cemetery “go native.” Our superintendent of grounds knows the whole place like the back of his hand and has his crew on the grounds every day. So no area is just untended. Art is a big fan of naturalistic settings and some areas of Green-Wood are purposely allowed to grow over.

All that being said, we do have a preservation department that works to recreate iron gates and doors and to replace the wood closures. We’re also working to restore entire mausoleums like the marble one heading into Clinton Dell. All in time, as we have labor and resources to work through the list. With 478 acres, it’s a tall (if not never-ending) order.

Oak Street's Haunted House

Give or two a few bends, the Greenpoint streetmap is a fairly predictable grid. But there's an interesting twist or two. If you walk westerly on Manhattan Avenue, then hang a right on Calyet, in a couple blocks you'll reach an interesting intersection. On the left, it's Guernsey Street. On the right it's Guernsey, too. But a right turn will take you only a hundred yards or so before the road makes a severe left. At that turn, it becomes Oak Street. After that, Oak runs a few blocks before being stopped dead by the East River.

Read more »

The Brooklyn Bear Attack of 1932

I originally thought this New York Times story took place in the East Village. As several sharp-eyed readers informed me, it actually took place in Brooklyn. Still, it's a great story. So here it is in the right context.

It was April 26, 1932, when a big, brown bear invaded 84 Second Avenue in Brooklyn. Reported the NY Times:

A small boy with very red hair ran up to Patrolman Arthur Engh at 4 o'clock yesterday afternoon at Second Avenue and Eighth Street in Brooklyn. His eyes were wide with fright and his red hair stood on end.

"There's a bear in a house up the street," he gasped. "He's eating everybody up."

"Tut, tut," said Patrolman Engh. "You're twenty-five days late. Roll your hoop."

But he suddenly cocked his head. From up the street came frenzied shouts; first a man's voice, then a woman's, then both together:

"Bear! Bear!"

Patrolman Engh raced for a telephone.

In due time, with clatter and shriek, Emergency Squad 13, headed by Sergeant Hugh McGuire, rolled up in front of a tiny, two-story frame dwelling at 84 Second Avenue where Emil Shubert Jr. was leaning out the window, shouting for help.

"There's a bear in the hall," he bellowed. "A great brown bear big as a buffalo. Help!"

It was all true. The invader was a real, 500-pound bear that had broken out of its pen in the backyard of the home of Richard Herrold, pet-shop man at 121 Ninth Street, which is just back of the Shubert's back yard.

The bear ate up the Shubert's butter, milk and chicken, and resisted all attempted to be lassoed and captured. The cops tried to lead him out with a trail of "sweet crackers," which finally worked, the bear led out of the house and back into its cage. The animal "belonged to a Coney Island show and was left with [Herrold] to board."

None of the houses where this took place exist today. The area is all low-lying warehouses.

Brooklyn Post Office Lookin' Nifty

The grand downtown Brooklyn Post Office and Federal Bankruptcy Court has been swathed in scaffolding and netting for what seems like forever. But lately the encasements have been coming down and the work beneath is lovely to behold, both in its sparkling hue and delightful details.

It's taken a while. A renovation of the landmarked General Post Office building on Cadman Plaza was announced in 1999. The Postal Service had decamped a decade before, leaving the structure empty except for a post office branch in the ground floor. The government declared it would be expanded for Federal courtroom uses at a cost of $129 million.

The costs since then have tripled. And a schedule completion date of 2002 passed long ago.

The Romanesque Revival structure was built in 1892 as a Federal courthouse, from a design by Mifflin E. Bell, when Brooklyn was its own city, with an extension constructed in 1933 built by James A. Wetmore. Its historic features, including a skylight in the older section and the interior atrium that it overlooks, plaster columns, ceiling paintings, mahogany doors, signage, wainscotting and marble floors, have been restored to their original condition.

Jalopy Theatre Takes Over Old Moonshine Bar Space

The Moonshine Bar is in good hands.

Last month came the worrisome news that the Columbia Street bar—which contains an interior and an old wooden backbar that has been used by one tavern or another since 1934 (and probably before that)—was closing. The fate of the space and its beautiful old bar (and its rare working cigarette machine) were in question.

For weeks, there was obscure talk around the neighborhood that the new owners of the address would reopen it as a bar. But nobody knew anything about these mysterious new proprietors. Turns out they lived right next door. The people behind The Jalopy Theatre, the improbably successful music venue (at least in my opinion; it's so out of the way, I don't know where their crowds come from), will reopen the Moonshine at the Jalopy Tavern. It says "bar and grill," so I guess there will be food. No word on an opening date.

UPDATE: This, from the owner: the bar will remain. The cigarette machine left with the previous owner.

The Other Skyline

Frame it just right, from the right angle, cutting off bits of ugliness on the left and right, and the clutter and clamor below, and downtown Brooklyn cuts a lovely and dignified profile. Latest Landmarks Commission Historic District? Hell, yeah! Absolutely deserving. 75 Livingston is one of the best buildings in the whole city.

The Shell of a Shake Shack

For its Brooklyn debut, Danny Meyer's Shake Shack empire has taken over an interesting building on the far western end of ugly Fulton Mall. It's a polygon-shaped, two-story structure bordered by Fulton, Peal and Willoughby. It used to contain a terrible pizza joint and still does have a dentist's office with a big red sign on the second floor.

Read more »

The Ugly Condo Complexes of Vinegar Hill

Charming, charming Vinegar Hill. What ugly new condo complexes you have.

I was paying a visit to the Vinegar Hill House restaurant the other night when what do I encounter on my way back to the subway but one atrocious new apartment building after another. First came this one, 85 Hudson Street. The architect appears to have been going for the Early Erasmus Hall style. Seriously, I thought this was a school at first. Instead, it's just a gauche and gaudy pile of would-be classy bricks.

Read more »

A Night With the Cyclones

Few things beat a Brooklyn Cyclones game on a fair June night, as far as untarnished New York summer joys go. I look forward to my first game of the season every year.

Read more »

Law Routinely Broken at Brooklyn Botanic Garden

There's a big old tree dead center of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Don't know what kind, exactly. But perhaps some breed of willow. Anyway, it has a canopy of droopy leaves which hides the stout trunk from you. If you venture inside, you'll see this sign.

Obviously, this sign is not obeyed. In fact, climbing the old tree seems to be a long-standing garden tradition.

Read more »

Richard Yee's Revisited

Last year, I mourned the old school Chinese-American joint called Richard Yee's Chinese Restaurant in Sheepshead Bay without having ever had the chance to go there. Recently, I was in the neighborhood, so I went to check on the place.

It's still there, the great signage still in place, and as far as I can tell, the interior is intact, booths, bar and all. There are "For Rent" signs all over the front, but apparently nobody knows what to do with the huge place. That's fine with me. As soon as some chain (it will be a chain) takes over the address, those wonderful signs will come down and hit the scrap heap. I want them up there as long as possible. 

Richard Yee's was founded 1952. It closed in 2009. It was an old-style tiki place, with a "Polynesian Room" that served exotic drinks, and the place was famous for its pupu platter. 

This Morning in Carroll Gardens

Almost a bucolic scene, the sight of these berried branches enveloped in white. Every branch in the neighborhood was bent under at least a couple inches of snow. Quite a pristine scene, the blinding whiteness persisting even as we approach noon and much of the shoveling and plowing has been done. Good snowball snow, too.

Last Night in Williamsburg

Driving snow at 10 PM in north Williamsburg. Not a car on the street. Bamonte's shuttered up well before quitting time. People walking down the center of the street. And some fool standing around taking pictures of it all.