Hometown New York City Brooklyn

For people living in small to mid-size hometowns, it is easy to write about their towns. However, for someone like me who was born and raised in New York City, it is rather difficult. Therefore I will look upon the borough of Brooklyn as my small town away from the teeming streets of Manhattan and the other boroughs. If you know about Brooklyn and find a neighborhood missing it is just that I wrote about all the ones I knew and where I have been. I was born in a very quiet corner of Brooklyn called Bay Ridge so I began my tour there. This article is about some Brooklyn streets that have places of interest and I can say I have walked many times including my university Long Island University Brooklyn Center. As I continue I will paste the links for the neighborhoods I have written about below.

Most Brooklynites don’t like to admit it but Brooklyn is actually the western end of Long Island. The one to acknowledge this is the Long Island University Brooklyn Campus at the Dekalb Avenue extension. This is the university from which I graduated.

Another is the Long Island Restaurant at 110 Atlantic where Emma Sullivan says that the food is exactly the same as when her father Ralph Montero opened the restaurant in 1951.

The Atlantic Chip Shop at 129 Atlantic is a small bar with English fare. The walls are adorned by framed pictures of The Beatles & John Lennon, a London underground print, The Who, Clash and The Beatles posters, London Bridge pictures, and so on.

At 124-128 is the Atlantic-Pacific Building which was once the Atlantic-Pacific Chandlery Manufacturing Company (a chandler stocks ships for ocean voyages).

A great selection of beers can be found at Pete’s Waterfront Ale House at 155 Atlantic. The impressive building at 160 Atlantic on the SE corner at Clinton Avenue has different window styles on each of the building’s top four floors.

A place of interest is a block north of Atlantic – 169 Clinton Street at State Street. Here for most of the year 1925, on the first floor lived the master of macabre fiction H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937). His permanent home was Providence, Rhode Island, but he moved to this apartment in Brooklyn after his wife, Sonia moved to Cincinnati, Ohio to find work in a department store. At that time this was a depressed part of Brooklyn and Lovecraft wasn’t happy here and finally moved back to Providence in 1926.

In his 1996 biography “H.P. Lovecraft: A Life,” S. T. Joshi relates:

...Lovecraft found disappointing, at least initially ... the seediness of the general area; but he knew that beggars could not be choosers. …

.The room at 169 Clinton Street really was rather seedy in a run-down neighborhood, and infested with mice. For this last problem, Lovecraft purchased 5¢ mousetraps because in this way he could throw away both the mouse and the trap.

During the time Lovecraft lived on Clinton Street most of his suits were robbed which were the only things besides his books that were worth stealing. His stories “He” and “The Horror At Red Hook”, neither of which put NYC in a favorable light, were written during this period.

In the story “He” Lovecraft writes about a man who came from New England and seeing the city thinks that coming to New York was a mistake and goes on to describe the streets as labyrinths...

Some of the shops on Atlantic Avenue have been selling Middle Eastern goods for 100 years. This began when large numbers of “Syrians” many of whom came from what is today Lebanon, Iraq, or Jordan first started arriving in the US. By the turn of the century, at the end of the avenue, by the waterfront about 100 Arab families had made their home.

At 187-189 Atlantic Sahadi is the largest and most famous Middle Eastern food store on the avenue which opened in 1948.

There are plans to convert the ground floor of The Brooklyn House of Detention at Atlantic Avenue and Boerum Place into retail space. At Atlantic Avenue, Boerum switches from a narrow lane to an 8-lane roadway called the Brooklyn Bridge Boulevard.

On the NE corner of Atlantic at 75 Smith Street a 12-story luxury condo building called The Smith. It is about eight feet taller than the biggest of the surrounding buildings. At Atlantic and Hoyt one can find antique retailers and restorers as well as carpet stores and re-upholsterers.

The Belorussian Autocephalic Orthodox Church has been at its 401 Atlantic and Bond Street location since 1902.

At 415 is the House of the Lord Church which was originally the Swedish Pilgrims’ Evangelical Church built in 1902.

Even though the church at Pacific and 3rd Avenues was closed in 2008. From the 1950s it was an important part of religious life for immigrated Latvians. They were seeking a place of worship in Brooklyn and found this lovely church they rented from the Swedish. Latvian church services took place here on Sundays and on holidays. The Latvian Sunday School took place for Latvian children in the basement on Saturdays. After closing it was occupied by the Temple of Restoration and the former rectory was converted for residential use.

The product Ex-Lax, the “chocolate laxative” was founded in 1908 by Lithuanian immigrant Israel Matz. Its 1925 Atlantic Avenue factory was converted into 57 co-op apartments in 1981. Part of the Ex-Lax complex at 435-443 Atlantic was the August Busch Bottling Company from 1893-1903. Budweiser beer introduced in 1876 was bottled here.

The Muhlenberg Residence at 510-514 Atlantic is a 201-unit residence for low-income, homeless, housing needy, and community people.

The tall impressive Williamsburg Bank Building dates back to the 1920s and is the tallest building in Brooklyn and one of the two tallest buildings on Long Island. In 1929 its four-faced clock was the largest in the world and held the title until 1962. The ground-floor banking room boasts a 63-foot ceiling and the windows overlooking Hanson Place are 40 feet high. It has now gone to luxury co-ops.

Taking up most of the block between Atlantic Avenue, Pacific Street, and Franklin and Bedford Avenues, the 23rd Regiment Armory, 1322 Bedford Avenue was built from 1891-1895 The regiment was organized during the Civil War and was housed in a nearby armory on Clermont Avenue form 1873-1895. It boasts Brooklyn’s most prominent corner tower, at 136 feet. Architects Fowler and Hough emphasized uneven sandstone that would create highlighting shadows in the afternoon sun. The armory is being used as a homeless residence.

Walking further along Atlantic one comes upon the large, Imperial Apartments at 1196 Pacific. The building was constructed in 1892.

The Union League Club of Brooklyn has brownstone portraits of Abe Lincoln and Ulysses Grant. It was built in 1889-90 and originally housed a private club. The Union League was founded by Union supporters in 1863 at the height of the Civil War. Today the building is a senior center.

So take a walk through the neighborhoods and along Atlantic Avenue and get a feel of Brooklyn’s history.

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