Clik here to view.
Hallelujah!
It took them half a century (plus two months), but today — at 10:19 a.m., to be precise! — the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) finally designated the Lady Moody – Van Sicklen...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Nico Ornamental Works
If you live here in what the historian Thomas J. Campanella calls #deepsouthbrooklyn, it’s possible you’ve seen some of the pebbly garden sculptures on this postcard for Nico Ornamental Works. When I...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Greetings from Gravesend
There are picture postcards of virtually every community in the country, however small. In some cases they provide the only photographic documentation of a place. Many older views have become scarce...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Extra, Extra, Read All About It!
The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission has released its designation report for the house at 27 Gravesend Neck Road, forever known as “Lady Moody’s House,” but officially called the “Van...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Gravesend, Cradle of Invention
I’m always on the prowl for historical Gravesend tidbits (thank you for not reminding me to get a life), and I’m always stunned by what’s out there, waiting to be drawn into the present. I’ve learned...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Father’s Day on Gravesend Bay
I like to imagine the figures in this little watercolor of Gravesend Bay are father and son, wading on the rocky shore, watching the small moored ships and seagulls wheeling by while the scrubby hook...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Summering in Sheepshead Bay
Not sure where to beat the summer heat? A century ago you could have taken rooms at Jones’ Cottages, a compound of seven boarding houses in Sheepshead Bay clustered around the southeast corner of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Coney Island Palimpsest
Twenty-seven thousand firemen descended on Coney Island in August 1893. No, the place wasn’t burning, for once! They came for the 21st annual convention of the New York State Firemen’s Association and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Willy Wonka at the Avalon
The sad news of the death of the uniquely funny Gene Wilder reminded me I had this flier for the 1971 opening of “Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory” at the Avalon Theatre, 1720 Kings Highway....
View ArticleClik here to view.
Gravesend’s ’70s Toyland
I’d been picking my brain to think of an appropriate Christmas post when I suddenly remembered I had this flyer for Taverna’s toy offerings from around 1979. You remember Taverna’s, I’m sure, with...
View ArticleClik here to view.
When everything old is new again
Signal malfunctions . . . Track fires . . . Sick passengers . . . Commuting by subway gets worse by the minute, so we New Yorkers moan. That is our god-given right. We pine for the good old days, …...
View ArticleBlue Christmas
You might say I’m a sucker for a cyanotype. If you don’t know that word, it’s pronounced “sigh-AN-o-type,” with the accent on the “AN.” Cyan is really just a fancy name for greenish-blue. A cyanotype...
View ArticleSally Gil’s Gravesend
Riders of the N train (a.k.a. the Sea Beach line) in southern Brooklyn have been tortured since 2015, when the MTA began work to revitalize the system’s nine crumbling, open-air platforms and station...
View ArticleThe Other White Horse Tavern
News of the recent sale of the building housing the White Horse Tavern has Greenwich Village preservationists worried for the future of that legendary watering hole. Did you know that Gravesend once...
View ArticleSchool’s Out For the Summer!
The Town of Gravesend’s School District No. 3 was established 25 October 1870 to serve pupils in the village of Unionville, the waterfront settlement on Gravesend Bay later called Gravesend Beach or...
View ArticleFlash Flood Past
How did we survive without buzzing smartphones to warn us of coming thunderstorms? We waited for the rain to pass to run outside through the puddles! That’s just what this family did in September 1934,...
View ArticleWyckoff-Bennett Wafers
Food will always be a mainstay of social media posts. Now, while we’re home isolating to stop the spread of Covid-19, it seems recipe sharing is even more popular (just behind those polls asking for...
View Article
