A Road By Any Other Name

I guess I'm not quite finished with the street name change thing. Please indulge me. This won't take long.

The neighborhood, East Flatbush, started life as Rugby, (hence the Rugby Theater, The Rugby branch of the Brooklyn Public Library, the Rugby post office.  Get it?) yet you have to travel to the equivalent of E14th St to find a Rugby Rd in the heart of what is now Ditmas Park and its million-dollar Victorian mansions. Rugby Road starts at the Parade Grounds at Caton Av and ends around Av H where it assumes its more pedestrian E 14th St.

I had a friend who lived in an apartment house on the corner of what is now Dr. Wesley McDonald Holder Av and Detectives R. Parker and P. Raffery Way.

(Try giving that address to a cab driver!) The names honor local residents and the intersection is Schenectady and Snyder Avs.

'Schenectady' isn't one of those words that just rolls off one's tongue, and it sure isn't easy to spell - not like Utica or Troy or Albany. OK. 'Rochester' was already taken, but there have to be easier names.

I've tried to figure a pattern for the street names along Church Av or Linden Blvd between New York Av and Kings Highway . 

New York Av is the equivalent of E35th.

Brooklyn Av, the equivalent of E36 St, sneaks in and messes up the theory but the next wide street is six blocks east of New York Av- Albany Av(E41st); followed by Troy Av (E44 St) and then Schenectady (E47) and Utica (E50).

The wide streets have upstate names. And at three-block intervals. But, why no names for E53rd or E56th? And why are some two-way streets?

Well, back to Schenectady Av. It's interesting that it's the only named street that most people from the neighborhood feel more comfortable referring to in writing as E47th.

Want to know if someone is really from Brooklyn?  Ask them to pronounce Nostrand Av.
NOS trand?  No way!  NO strand? Way!

Well, I apologize for the digression. Thank you for your patience.

Next session, we'll talk about commerce in the neighborhood. Where we bought stuff; where we ate out; what we did for fun that wasn't free.

What Ever Happened To Linden Ave? Deehan Ave? Wilde Lane?....



surprise quiz - match the original street name (column A)with the one you remember from the sixties (column B):
column A
Grant
Wilde Lane
Vernon
Linden Av
Deehan Av
and, so you don't feel like a total loser:
E 44 St

column B
Linden Blvd
Troy
Tilden
Linden Blvd (2)
Snyder
Church Av
See the bottom of this blog for answers. No cheating! No help from your parents!

Before we begin, did you read the posting in the column to the right?  Did you read the blog that appears below this one?  Good!

The picture, courtesy BrooklynPix.com, at the upper right of this blog is what is now Linden Blvd looking west at Utica Avenue toward E49th St taken in 1924. If you look carefully, that tall building on the left, about two blocks away is PS 135. The tracks in the foreground carry the Utica Avenue trolley. Check out the cobblestones. Smooth roadway had not yet entered the lexicon of road builders.

There were some major thoroughfares that took us out of the neighborhood, but none could offer us the vast
opportunities afforded by Linden Blvd. Whereas Church Avenue and Utica Avenues provided easy transport to all three subway lines and various connecting surface lines, their ultimate destinations were all within the confines of the five boroughs. Even Kings Highway - my, what a regal name - while it meanders through so many Brooklyn neighborhoods and grows to an eight-lane giant by the time it reaches East Flatbush (yeah, the Department of Traffic considers the curb lane as a lane, even though it's primary purpose is for parking) it meets an ignoble, and some may say, untimely end at Howard Avenue in East New York. Even Utica Avenue at its southern terminus contributes to Flatbush Avenue's march toward Floyd Bennett Field and the Marine Park(way) Bridge.

In all fairness, even Linden Blvd has a humble beginning, with its start at Flatbush Avenue between Caton and Church Avenues as a one way eastbound street. How many of you have ever visited the Flatbush branch of the Brooklyn Public Library on Linden Blvd just east of Flatbush Avenue?

If you were fortunate to grow up in a family with a car, NY Route 27 - Linden Blvd - was the way to get out to the country. Route 27 starts at the Gowanus Expressway, shares the right of way with the Prospect Expressway and then heads east on Caton Av until Bedford Av where Caton ends and makes a slight left turn to join Linden Blvd. At this point Linden Blvd is flanked primarily by six-story apartment houses, interspersed with the occasional two-family house. While not high-end, the houses do exude a degree of upper-middle-class class - many had doormen, at least in the nineteen thirties and forties; by 1960 they had long-since peaked. By the time the traveler reaches New York Avenue there are more and more four-floor 'walk-ups.' No elevators! And more two-family homes.

I've been unable to confirm this, but while I was growing up on Linden Blvd rumor had it that the white line down the center of Linden Blvd separated more than just the on-coming traffic. It allegedly also served as the boundary between the six-seven and the seven-one police precincts, now part of Brooklyn South. The word was, 'Don't ever get hit by a car while standing on the white line; neither precinct would respond. Drag yourself to either side.'

Further east, probably around New York Av, the white line (yes, 'white'!) also served as the boundary between Erasmus Hall and Wingate High Schools, once the latter opened in the late fifties.

There is nothing of any architectural significance until Albany Av and St. Catherine’s RC Church and school. If you lived in the neighborhood and you were Catholic, you went to St. Catherine's. As a result, the local elementary school, PS 235, on Lenox Rd at East 39th St was predominantly Jewish.

Seven blocks east was East Flatbush Jewish Community Center, on the corner of Schenectady Av. Well, actually, not on the corner. The plan was to build a sanctuary on the vacant lot on the corner and convert the original building into a community center - a dream that never materialized. The building is now a church. Diagonally opposite is PS 135, an imposing five-story building that was old sixty years ago. And a block further, across the street was a brand-new health care facility. (Help me out folks: I think it was a nursing home. Interboro?)

I bought my first tank of gas at the Texaco gas station on Utica and Linden. (27.9 cents for regular, leaded gas and they checked my oil!). 1959 was a very good year. I learned every bump and pot hole on Linden Blvd.

The Rugby library's first home was east of Utica, in a row of stores on the north side of Linden Blvd, before it moved to a new, larger building on Utica and Tilden Av.

Linden goes through another change east of Kings Highway. The intersection of Kings Highway, Remsen Av and Linden Blvd has to be the most pedestrian-unfriendly intersection in the City. (Actually, in 2003 there were 92 accidents at the intersection, ranking it the fourteenth most dangerous intersection in the City. In the early fifties there was some talk and plans were proposed to make one of the roadways under ground.  No doubt the plans were left on the center island of the intersection and no one was brave enough to retrieve them. Pennsylvania Av at Linden Blvd was more dangerous - 103 accidents that year.) Anyway, on its steady march to the 'country,' Linden Blvd now becomes an eight-lane monster.

Linden Blvd had an interesting traffic control arrangement as it sliced through East Flatbush. Not every intersection had a traffic light. Small signs well-hidden on lamp posts at each corner advised drivers to stop at the intersection if the light ahead of them was red. In most cases the lights were at three-block intervals. For example, Albany Av had a light and the next eastbound light was at Troy Av. The next light was at Schenectady Av, three blocks to the east and then another three blocks at Utica Av which sported an overhead signal. This traffic control concept might have been successful had it been a universal policy throughout the City or if Linden Blvd were in the middle of a desert with no foliage growing in front of the traffic lights or the small signs.

Traffic lights were black four-sided box-shaped lights which were effective only at intersections that were true right angles. They were mounted on stantions about ten feet high at the curb on the corner. Usually two signals controlled an intersection, mounted diagonally across the street from each other. And, they were absolute. Either the light was red or it was green, and the second the light turned red for one direction, it turned green for the waiting traffic. In a nod to fairness, the Department of Traffic experimented with the equivalent of an amber signal. Just before the signal would turn red, both green and red signals would be lit. In New York, that was typically viewed as a signal to speed up.

Now, for the poor hapless driver waiting, say at East 43rd St., to cross Linden Blvd. He was instructed via a small sign where normally there would be a stop sign to look in both directions to see if the light was red for traffic on Linden so he could cross. Even if it were red, there was a fifty-fifty chance that some Linden Blvd driver would not stop at East 43rd St, but continue on to the next traffic light. Obviously, to make this work, all the lights had to change at the same time. If our hero made it across Linden Blvd he was greeted at Lenox Rd with a yellow stop sign (with reflective bead letters) and another stop sign at Clarkson. Standardized red stop signs were still years away as were three-light traffic signals and progressive signals to keep traffic moving at a steady pace and yellow lines down the center of the street. Someone in the City government woke up and by the end of the fifties, Linden Blvd had joined the ranks of other streets with a more conventional traffic control system.

Although it loses its identity somewhere at the Queens border and becomes North Conduit Rd, it still maintains its Route 27 title as it continues east on The Sunrise Highway which was built in the 1920's to alleviate the congestion on Montauk Highway. It will go through several such changes until 122 miles from its western beginning, it ends at a non-descript traffic circle at Montauk Point.

OK.  A word about Vernon Av - not to be confused with the Verson in Long Island City.  As anyone who spent at least one semester in Tilden High School, the street and eventually the school was named after Samuel J. Tilden, an attorney and New York governor who battled Boss Tweed's Tammany Ring.  In the most contested presidential election of the nineteenth century Tilden came up one electoral college vote short to Rutherford B. Hayes despite gaining the popular vote and there went Brooklyn's claim to having a president of the United States.  Hey, it couldda been worse.  You coulda graduated from Vernon High School.

Our next session, we're going to discuss where we bought 'stuff.' You know, like food, clothing. Like I said, 'stuff.'

Quiz Answers:

Grant - Snyder Av; Wilde Lane  (later became Church Lane)- Church Av; Vernon - Tilden Av; Linden Av - Linden Blvd; Deeham Av - Linden Blvd; E44 St - Troy Av.

Commuting in mid-century East Flatbush

Commuting

Both pictures courtesy of BrooklynPix.com a great resource for all things Brooklyn (Thanks, Brian)

I've always had long commutes. (I'm a firm believer real men don't have short commutes.) My commutes - more like journeys, than commutes, started when I was 12.

There was no easy way for me to get to Winthrop. Meyer Levin would have been closer, but I graduated in '55 and the school was not a option.

It was less than a mile - as the crow flies. For mere mortals, it was a little longer: Church Avenue trolley ( yes, 'trolley.') to Utica. Then, the bus up to Winthrop St. Then, 2-blocks to the school.

I don't remember what qualified a student for a transportation pass, but I sure qualified. No one else had a longer commute to school. Each month a new pass. They were called bus passes, but I was the only one in my class to use it on a trolley.

I got the free monthly pass for a while. Then I remember paying a dollar a month. By the time I got to high school I paid a nickel per trip. Anyone out there remember what the deal was?

I liked getting on the bus or trolley and flashing my pass. Unlimited use on school days. Sometimes we'd ride the Utica bus up to Empire Blvd to White Castle for lunch. That was cool. Lunch consisted of six hamburgers and a cola. Close your eyes; think small square hamburgers smothered in onions on a soft roll. Six of them lil babies. Then compare that to the tuna fish sandwich on stale Wonder bread your mother packed for you in waxed paper that sat in the wardrobe until lunch period on a hot Spring day.

No contest!

Waiting for the trolley and the actual ride was an exercise in optimism. First, you hoped it wasn't stuck behind some double-parked delivery truck. (This problem was more prevalent on Church Av which was narrower than Utica Av.) Then, although you were supposed to wait at the curb at those corners with the blue enamel 'trolley station' signs, you hoped the motorman would see you, so you would step into the safety zone near the tracks and hope that the small warning sign and the white lines painted in the street would protect you from on-coming motor vehicles. See the picture at the top right. That sign would have to be on a car driver's hood for thedriver to read it.

There was a sub-group of optimists- usually teenagers - who would hop on the outside back of the trolley, stand on the bumper and hold on to the window mouldings and hope they wouldn't fall off. The trick was to hold on but crouch down below the window line to avoid detection by the motorman looking in his rearview mirror. Their optimism often came to a near-fatal end. Falling off was the least worry of the options. Being run over by the vehicle following the trolley was a very real possibility. Being detected by the motorman who would stop the trolley and go after the kids with a steel rod used to change the track switch at junctions was another.

Our claim to mischievous behavior consisted of putting pennies on the rails and waiting for the trolley to flatten them. Amazing what a couple of tons rolling over a penny can do. Years later a friend of mine admitted to putting a rock on the Utica Av tracks and watch to his horror as the trolley derailed.

The Utica Av trolleys were gone by the time I started junior high school. The tracks were still there as remembrances of things past. In fact, Utica Av south of Tilden Av was only partially paved. The center of the roadway had two sets of tracks which were mounted on wood crossties embedded in the dirt but the intersections were paved The end of the Utica line was Avenue N where there was a massive car barn that served the Flatbush and Utica lines. The car barn was converted to a bus garage when buses replaced the trolleys.

Hegeman St. was the eastern end of the Church Av trolley. That's where the car barn was for the Church Avenue line until, in the early fifties, it was ultimately replaced by a very unglamourous 'turnaround' near Bristol Street. (The 'destination' sign on the trolleys said 'Bristol')

The picture at the top left of this blog shows a Church Av trolley sometime before 1950 at its eastern terminal at Hegeman St. If you look closely at the 'destination' sign on the back of the trolley it says 'Ralph Av.' Someone must have been messing with the sign.

The Utica Av line and some of the cars on the Church Av line (like the one in the picture) were what is known as double-ended cars. They had trolley poles and motorman controls at each end, thus avoiding the necessity of having to turn the cars around at the end of the line. The car would come to the end of the line; the motorman would make sure all the coins were out of the fare box and 'flip' all the wood seat backs so the seats now faced in the other direction. And then he would take his coin dispenser (used to make change; the 'exact fare' concept had not yet been invented); get out and lower the pole in the back and raise the pole in the front to the wire. The final step required him (It was always a 'him' back then.)to throw the track switch with a steel rod he'd slip between the 'points' of the rail so when he started on the reverse trip the trolley would switch to the other track.

(By the way, after August 31, 1969 riders had to have the exact fare. No longer would drivers make change.)

There was a short one-track shuttle trolley that ran along Tilden Av from Nostrand Av to the west entrance of Holy Cross Cemetery at Brooklyn Av. It may have run only on weekends. Two blocks east; two blocks west. And so it went, all day. Change the poles at each end of the trip; probably left half the seats facing in each direction. Talk about a low-stress job.

By the time I rode the trolley by myself these old double-ended cars had all been replaced by sleek, streamlined PCC cars and the Cemetery shuttle had been replaced by a bus.

The Presidents' Conference Cars (PCC) were trolley's last gasp at competing with buses and represented a radical change in design and operation. They came on the scene in 1936 and as lines elsewhere were converted to buses, they wound up on the McDonald Av and Church Av routes, the last trolley lines in New York City. (October 31, 1956 was the last day of operation for the trolleys.)

The neatest thing about the Church Av line was the tunnel under Ocean Parkway. No one knows the rationale for the tunnel. One school of thought says it was to appease the rich people on Ocean Parkway who didn't want the noise; another group claims it was to avoid the long red light at that intersection. The tunnel was unpaved; originally it was just a single track but later widened to two sets of tracks set into the dirt. Every once in a while a motorist - usually at night - would learn that it was a private right of way for trolleys only. For some reason the vehicles, perhaps on sheer momentum, could make it down to the bottom, at which point they would have to be towed out, disrupting trolley operation in both directions.

I finished high school taking the Church Av bus to Erasmus on Flatbush Av.

Buses: no soul; no character; no fun.

Again, take a look at Brian Merlis' www.brooklynpix.com for more great East Flatbush pictures.

School Fixtures

First, a bit of housekeeping.  If, as you scroll down this page everything is in one long, very long, paragraph, then you are not reading this in the original format. Someone has stolen my blog for their own use. So, to see it in its original, please go to EastFlatbushMemories.blogspot.com

I went to Winthrop JHS – an expanded version of the typical 200-series Brooklyn public schools. If you went to Somers, you'd have no trouble finding your way in Winthrop.  Same layout.  White brick (well, the purists would call it 'cream'), 4-story building, auditorium to the right with massive chandeliers, wood seats, linoleum floor that was buffed daily.

The weirdest class was co-ed guidance where the hot topic consuming most of the semester was whether girls in junior high school should be allowed to wear makeup. Wow!!! Now that really held the interest of the boys in the class. The common element for both groups was that they both wanted lipstick that didn't wear off. (In fewer than ten years later I was leading student discussion groups on unwanted teenage pregnancies. I had two pregnant girls in my eighth grade official class. The hell with the attendance award. That made my class a contender for the school fertility award! ) More about the junior high angst later.

I had Miss Casey for math, Mr. Zeitlin for woodworking, Mr. Spear for Guidance. Some terrifying woman for Spanish and learned English grammar and the parts of a sentence from an elderly woman who had the inate ability to make thirty fairly bright kids double over with fear. Our big courtyard discussion was deciding whether it was better to have English in the morning and get it over or prolong the agony until after lunch. The cowards wanted to prolong it, as did the perennial optimists who hoped that by prolonging what everyone knew to be the inevitable that she might die during lunch, or better yet, a fire drill would be scheduled. Neither of which happened. What did happen was that I learned grammar and, you know what? It was logical and it was fun. How many of you can parse a sentence? Find the verb, the subject, the object? How many of you really understand subject-verb agreement? Good old Whatshername left her mark on me! And I went on to share this joy with countless other students.

There must have been more to my education, but that’s about all I remember about the two years in JHS 232, Winthrop Junior High School.

Except for the school fixtures – the perennials. The constants that were there when you started school and were still there five, ten years later when you came back to visit (or still there as a student). The same constants that your older brother talked about when he went to the school. No change. I mean the really important things that really matter when you’re growing up.

I mean fixtures like Winthrop’’s version of Tomaine Joe’s; Tilden's Ralph, the cop; the pretzel guy; the Mr. Softee truck and Pop the hot knish guy. Knishes were seven cents; pretzels only a nickel. (Do you split for the extra two cents and get a knish sprinkled liberally with a month’s worth of sodium, or go for the pretzel and ten ounces of mustard?) These are weighty decisions when you’re thirteen.


Wait a minute.  Breathes there a person who knows not what a knish is, or even how to pronounce the word?  Whaddayou, from Cleveland or sompin?
Get off this site, now!

Pop’s personal hygiene was a topic of much speculation and we agreed that his bathing coincided with major natural events, primarily lunar eclipses. But, one thing about Pop: he was dependable. Here was a guy who truly embraced the Post Office motto.

Every day, rain or shine, there he was pushing that little cart with four squeaky wheels and his inventory, if you could call it an inventory since it consisted of only one product – knishes. I mean HOT knishes. Now, we’re talking about simple days before microwaves. Even if they existed, he’d need a 600 foot extension cord. It was years later that the topic came up and we wondered how did he keep them hot for so long. The concensus was that there was a charcoal or wood fire at the bottom of the cart. We’re not talking about crispy two-inch high Mrs. Stahl's things; these were soggy, greasy, ultra hot, flat jobs delivered on a small piece of wax paper that did nothing to protect your fingers from the molten blob of knish. And, anything that tasted that good had to be really bad for you.

Anyway, back to Pop and his fully insulated wagon that looked as though it was a junior high school metalworking shop project that started out as an ashtray. We thought Pop was unique unto Winthrop. How could there possibly be another hunchbacked ninety-year old with a thick European accent of undetermined origin?

And then it happened.

I seen it wit my own two eyes. Pop had a twin in the business and there the two of them were both pushing their carts up Utica Avenue toward East New York Avenue. I couldn’t believe it. At first I thought I was seeing double. And then, around Rutland Road they were joined by a third. Damn!. Pop was one of triplets – all in the same family business. Each hunched over his cart; they looked alike; they walked alike, they dressed alike. Jeez. Stepford wives of the pushcart cuisine world.

You mean EVERY school has a Pop? Say it ain’t so! There can’t be!

The picture to the left is a fine example of nepotism at its best. Shown is a vendor who must be Pop's grandson working outside the E58th side of Tilden.  No way Pop would let anyone, even mishpuchza, encroach on his "Winthrop turf.'

Here's an update:  Seems there was a guy, Ruby, who muscled in on Pop's turf.  We're talking up-scale because this guy had a van for his inventory.  Same dress code, same hygiene standards.  His franchise may have been further south, closer to Tilden and Canarsie High School.  But his presence no doubt signaled the death knell for the Pops of this world.

On days I didn’t bring my lunch we would go to the corner luncheonette. Now, you wanna get some blank stares? Try explaining what a luncheonette is to someone who grew up west of the Hudson or east of the Queens border. In any case, the place to be seen at lunch was Pinky's,  a block from the school on Rutland Road for what was possibly the world’s worst hamburgers and french-fries.

Pinky's was a spatial phenomenon.  At 10:30 in the morning, it looked like a typical corner Brooklyn luncheonette with enough seating at the counter and in the booths for maybe twenty customers. Two hours later half the Winthrop student body would cram into Pinky’s,

But, once every two weeks my friends and I would treat ourselves to a deli sandwich on Clarkson and East 51st.

I’m talking real kosher deli and real corned beef and pastrami and fat French fries – not those string things that Pinky passed off as French fries. Anyway, the sandwich was under a dollar, the French fries were probably a quarter. I don’t have a clue how much the Dr. Brown’s Celray Tonic or cream soda was. Now that was living! Cholesterol had not yet been discovered. (Think Ratner's; think jars of chicken fat as a delicacy.) 

I feel so strongly about the passing of kosher deli's that I've devoted an entire chapter to them.  Check the table of contents.

Raise your hand if you ever ordered a pastrami sandwich with mayo?  Let me guess; you're from Ohio, right?

But, I digress.

Years later, outside the main gate to Brooklyn College was ‘the’ pretzel guy. Sold them, also for a nickel, out of the trunk of his Pontiac – a new Pontiac every year. (Why was I knocking myself out in school when this guy with the speech impediment that wouldn’t allow him to say ‘fresh pretzels’ without screwing up one or both words so it sounded like presh fretzels, he had a new car every year.)

Four years in the school. There he was every day. Went to the same grooming advisor as Pop, the knish man.

I went back for my Masters. There he was, still hawking presh fretzels.

A regular school fixture.