The Saga of Flora Mir

This building on the corner of Flatbush Avenue and Caton Avenue made me stop in my tracks. The facade seemed needlessly ornate and rococo. It reminded me of the old, long, one-story buildings you see here and there in the city that used to be the homes of Child's restaurants. For a moment I thought that this address itself might have been a Child's at one point.

A little research proved that theory wrong. Just as it is today, this structure was originally chopped up into various assorted businesses. In 1944, there was a poultry and egg shop here, a florist and a place offering electrolysis. And a few offices on the second floor. But the main operation, occupying the corner space, was a store called Flora Mir.

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The Fighting Fish of Flatbush

Here's a little ladies wear shop on Flatbush Avenue with an awful name and an awful garish awning. Not a place of great interest on the surface of it. Yet, the devil is in the details. Look up on the second floor of the small building and you find a curious stone ornament. The maritime-themed sculpture depicts two fierce-looking fish on either side of a seashell, their tails entwined around the sort of Triton that Neptune typically carried. I know from similar sculptures both here and in Europe, that those fish, despite their angry attitudes, are meant to dolphins.

So what fishy history lies in the past of 876 Flatbush Avenue?

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Half-And-Half Store

This building at 866 Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn is conducting a double life. On the bottom half, it is Golden Shoes, a going concern. The top half, though, obscured by the windows, is a reminder of the address' former life as Opera Bridal, which had "everything for the"....something. The upper sign is far more charming than the lower.

Furs By Novick Isn't Going Anywhere

Back in 2008, I posted about some of the delightful old signage that can be found on Flatbush Avenue, including the stubborn vertical neon sign for Furs By Novick. More than six years later, I'm happy to report that no one's bothered to take down Novick's handiwork.

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A Perfect Storefront: All Brooklyn Locksmith

How many services can you mention in the signage of an eight-foot-wide storefront? Not as many as All Brooklyn Locksmith does!

A Corner in Flatbush

This building at the corner of Church Avenue and Rogers Avenue is interesting enough in contemporary terms, since it is the home of Nio's Trinidad Roti Shop, a restaurant of some local renown. One Nio Badall founded the Trinidadian eatery some quarter century ago.

But I am more interested in what the building was before that. The sprawling, two-story, brick, corner edifice is so obviously an old structure—with its peaked cornice, oval window and decorative lintels—that one imagines it was a significant local landmark going back as far as one hundred years, if not more.

Alas, I have found out nothing about this building aside from the fact that it was a restaurant back in 1935. Anyone out there have any information?

Would You Get Your Taxes Done Here?

On a lonely sidestreet off Church Avenue in Flatbush, in a low-slung, oddly built brick building that may have been a stables of a small factory, is an accountant with no name and an unprepossessing address. I picture motley surroundings upstairs, a low ceiling, cluttered desk and an old, wily, not entirely trustworthy may in an unbuttoned vest and eyeshades. Bill Sikes might get his taxes done here. If Bill Sikes ever did his taxes.

The Grandest McDonald's in Town

Is this the grandest McDonald's in town. It's certainly in the running. This Flatbush Mickey D's is situation inside an old branch of the Lincoln Savings Bank built in 1932. It's four stories tall, granite, with large, three-story, arching windows.

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This has got to be the flashiest key-maker-shoe-shop-jewelry-watch-repair store in the City. Every single little nitzy thing this tiny Flatbush business does is emblazoned in light. Either the owner really likes neon, or he's crazy.

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Willie Had a Liquor Store

The bold, rather unpleasant sign above this Church Avenue business tells you its it's Willie's Liquors. But look further up and you'll receive the same information in a much more enjoyable package. The old neon sign would seem to indicate that this Flatbush business has been around since the 1930s or '40s. I love that it's called Willie's Liquors—not William's, or Bill's. And I'd love to know who Willie was. But I don't.

Despite the signs, this liquor store apparently officially goes by the name of 77 B&C. Utterly charmless. Long live Willie.

An Italian Butcher in Caribbean Flatbush

I stumbled upon one of New York's oldest butchers the other day during a long rainy walk through Flatbush. Sitting anomalously in the middle of the various Caribbean and Spanish shops on Nostrand Avenue was Michael's Prime Meats, a remnant of the neighborhood's Italian past.

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Flatbush's Merry Oldsmobile Sign

This is surely the only extant neon Oldsmobile sign in New York City. I almost passed it by without noticing, so seamlessly has it facing into the background of visually hectic Flatbush Avenue, near Avenue D.

It's a beaut of a sign, two-sided and three stories tall. Also, the block at the bottom, by some miracle, works. Most certainly, this was an Oldsmobile dealership once upon a time. The sign also used to be red, based on old photos.

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Even America's Oldest Schools Are Failing

Ask a politician what he stands for, and he'll say education. We gotta help our kids! We gotta improve our schools! Check out a politician's record, however, and you'll find education is pretty low on his/her list of priorities. American politics has always had everything ass-backwards. Teachers, policemen, firemen, artists—the selfless people that make life livable—are paid squat, and people even complain of paying them that. Corporate CEOS, lawyers, parasitic real estate barons, stockbrokers—the people who make the lives of 99% of Americans miserable—are rewarded and protected.

Why, City Hall doesn't even take care of our old schools. Check this our for symbolism. The original Erasmus Hall building, which sits in the courtyard of the larger, more familiar Flatbush building called Erasmus Hall High School, is in danger of falling down. The building, a dignified but weatherbeaten two-story affair that was erected in 1786, when all our Founding Fathers were still alive (some of whom were founders of the school), is not included in the multi-million dollar renovation of Eramus that is now going on. Go figure that one out.

"The boards are falling off. They're rotting. The roof has a hole in it. And there's water leaking in. The glass is damaged. The shutters are falling off," said Terry Kaplan, Erasmus Hall Alumni Association.

Well, you say, they should landmark the building! They did. It is both a federal and city landmark. But, of course, we all know that means nothing. Landmarking body bestow titles on things all the time, then walk away, as if the structures are going to take care of themselves.

"How I dislike everything that keeps me back, or retards me," Desiderius Erasmus once wrote. I know how he feels.

Proof the Dutch Once Owned Our Asses

I've always found it amusing and improbable that this great City was founded by the Dutch. The English Empire is easy enough a one-time reality to grasp for anyone who grew up in the 20th century; it held on until just after World War II. But the Dutch? That puny, waterlogged country was once a world power? How the fuck did they pull that off, with their canals and wooden shoes and neck ruffs?

Proof that the mighty Netherlands was not a joke back in the 1600s can be found in Flatbush, in the graveyard surrounding the Flatbush Reformed Dutch Church. The church is 211 years old, and it is actually the third house of worship to be built on this spot. The first was erected in 1654 by mandate of Peter-freaking-Stuyvesant.

Many of the headstones are so old that their chiseled messages are in Dutch. No English, my Yankee friend, but Dutch, the bygone mother tongue. The one below begins "Here Lies Buried..."

Loew's Kings Might Have Savior

Brownstoner, citing Brooklyn Junction, reports that there may be some quixotic soul, or soulful corporation, that may want to save the majestic and abandoned Loew’s Kings theater in Flatbush. Wrote teh blog:

An unspecified “major theater operator” is considering answering the EDC’s longstanding call to redevelop the property, according to Brooklyn Junction. A city official told the blog that the company is holding focus groups to try to determine what sort of programming would work at the theater, which would probably cost between $20 and $40 million to renovate. The EDC issued an RFP for the former wonder theater in September ’06.

Improbable! And cool, if true.

Schoolmarm Savings and Loan

There's an old bank on Flatbush Avenue, not far from the old Dutch Reformed Church near Church Avenue, that permanently preaches Puritanical values not to be found inside any bank today, let along the home of any bank patron. The building is home to a branch of some God-awful chain right now, but it used to be one of the grander locations of the Fulton Savings Bank. (See above) The building must have erected between 1870 and 1889, when Fulton merged with State Mechanics Bank.

Inside the ceiling rises about 30 or 40 feet. And written along the uppermost edge of the wall, running the length of all four walls, are some words to live by. The basic thrust of the message is that saving money and not spending it breeds all the finer virtues man can achieve. My favorite part of the wall is a passage that instructs that fiscal responsibility "teaches self-denial," that greatest of all things. Can't recall the last time I saw "self-denial" carve in stone in two-foot letters.

Old Signs on Flatbush

Flatbush Avenue appears to be the epicenter of the no-need-to-take-down-the-old-sign-to-start-a-new-business ethos. Here are a couple choice examples, each within a few steps of the other.

One all-around discount store still bears a vertical neon sign which reveals that this was once where you went to purchase Furs by Novick.

Nearby, an awning for a suit warehouse is still topped by a couple boxy sign advertising the once omnipresent and dominant shoe brands of Naturalizer and Hush Puppies. Overlaid on them, for reasons unknown, is the visage of a rather severe looking gentleman who stares at us as if daring us not to buy his shoes. Was this the guy who owned the store? The mascot of either Naturalizer or Hush Puppies?

Roebuck Remembered

Nobody's called the Sears department store chain by its original name of Sears, Roebuck and Co. in decades, but somebody forgot to tell the managers of the monolithic branch of the chain on Bedford Avenue in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn. There it is in monstrous letters high above the street. Alvah Roebuck lives! The full name is also seen carved above various entrances and on metal plaques about the structure.

Whoever decided to keep the sign as is is all right in my book. It's a nice historical reminder. And thank got the company's ugly new logo wasn't stuck up on top of that beautiful Art Moderne tower.

Looking at the building I thought to myself, "Geez, I haven't been inside a Sears in years. I wonder what they're like these days." I entered and found out: they're like K-Mart! Sadly, there were no more reminders of the building more glorious past inside; just the usual personality-free division of departments. No adornment whatsoever.