Open House New York: Richmond Hill

I spent this, the final day of OpenHouseNewYork, in Richmond Hill, Queens.

Located more or less in the center of the borough, in many ways Richmond Hill seems more like a suburban community than a part of the city of New York. The streets are filled with single homes, many with driveways and garages. The residents spend sunny days washing cars, mowing lawns and puttering in vegetable gardens.

There is a small business district cluttered with store-front lawyers and tax preparers, family-run candy shops and discount stores, fast food joints and Latin American restaurants. Richmond Hills also contains a handful of notable churches, a few neighborhood institutions and more than its share of boarded up buildings, including a train station abandoned by the Long Island Railroad.

The most remarkable aspect of the area, however, is the way it has been divided into two camps: the long-time residents who want to preserve its past and, far outnumbering them, the newcomers who have come here to build.

Not long ago, Richmond Hill was best known for its stock of century-old wooden Victorian  houses, many with large yards. But, unlike many areas where such buildings are protected, the residents here have never been able to rouse the city into giving the structures here protected landmark status.

As a result, the newcomers tend to treat the houses either as tear-downs (the house is demolished and a new structure built in its place) or remodels (original features are destroyed and replaced by incongruous, often gaudy elements).

Trees are ripped out and buildings extended to the very edges of their lots. Fishscale shingles are covered with vinyl siding, cedar shakes are hidden behind asbestos tiles and brick veneer. Wrought-iron gates are replaced by chrome, wooden millwork is stripped off, gilded plaster hidden behind suspended tile ceilings. Satellite dishes replace privet hedges and lawns are turned into parking lots.

A walking tour through the district is accompanied by a sad litany of vanished treasures. But the long-time residents are fighting back. They’ve organized the Richmond Hill Historical Society and are working to preserve and protect their neighborhood’s heritage.

Richmond Hill still contains architectural treasures including the remaining Victorians, the public library (an original Carnegie library), the Catholic and Episcopal churches and Jahn’s, an ice cream parlor founded in 1897 which still contains its original fountain, player piano, hanging lamps and furnishings.

While the majority of the newer residents have no interest in historic preservation, other newcomers are busily painting, plastering, re-pointing and restoring their historic homes to their former glory. Clearly, the final chapter in the battle for the character of Richmond Hill has yet to be written.

Victorian home with stained glass windows and wooden trim

Syrup dispenser in Jahn’s

Jahn’s soda fountain and amber light fixtures

Restored Victorian features several types of shingles

Sleeping balconies were used on hot summer nights

Another type of sleeping balcony

A homeowner lovingly paints his Victorian

A “Painted Lady”-style paint job

Experimenting with contrasting shades and colors

The roof lines were inspired by pagodas

Painted terra-cotta on old apartment building

Crumbling remains of a community center

Entryway to former RKO Keith’s movie theater, now a flea market

The theater’s grandeur hidden behind florescent lights

Wooden Victorian “improved” with plaster columns and circular marble staircase

When these remodelers ran out of vinyl siding, they continued in a different color

Victorian house “improved” with columns and bricked-over windows

Wooden Victorian “improved” with asbestos shingles

openhousenewyork weekend
Richmond Hill Historical Society Archive Museum
Historic Richmond Hill Walking Tour
The Richmond Hill Historical Society
Forgotten NY: Richmond Hill
richmondhillny.com
The Food Section: Jahn’s, the Best Way to Travel Back in Time
Wikipedia: Carnegie Libraries

Open House Harlem Pt 2: Hamilton Heights/Sugar Hill

The OpenHouseNewYork Weekend continued with a trip to another section of Harlem, the areas known as Hamilton Heights and Sugar Hill.

Like Manhattanville, the western boundary of Hamilton Heights is the Hudson River, the eastern end at St. Nicholas. The neighborhood’s name derives from its most notable early resident, the first Secretary of the US Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, who spent the last years of his life here at his country home.

As with Manhattanville, development here started in earnest when the railway lines were extended. A jewels of the area is the Church of the Intercession, built on one of the highest points of Manhattan. Its origins date to 1843, when sanitation problems downtown led Wall Street’s Trinity Church to stop performing burials in their yard.

To create a solution, Trinity reached beyond the city limits and purchased a large parcel of land in the tiny country hamlet of Carmansville for use as a graveyard. The land, which they dubbed Trinity Church Cemetery, became the last resting place of many notable and affluent citizens.

Within a few years, demand began for a convenient chapel, eventually leading to construction of the Gothic style cathedral that adjoins the Cemetery. Now celebrating its 160th anniversary, the Church features an altar designed by Tiffany, notable terracotta floor tiles, and an Aeolian Skinner organ.

Nearby is Audubon Terrace, which fills a block that was once part of a farm owned by naturalist John James Audubon. Created by railroad heir Archer Huntington, Audubon Terrace was intended as a modern-day acropolis, a sophisticated center of art and culture. At the dawn of the 20th century, Huntington hired the leading architects of the day, including Stanford White and Cass Gilbert. They designed the Beaux-Arts plaza and buildings that today house the Hispanic Society of America, the American Academy of Arts and Letters and Boricua College.

Sugar Hill, a residential section of Hamilton Heights, was once the country’s most fashionable address for African Americans, the place where life was sweet. In these palatial brownstones and apartment buildings lived the leading lights of the Harlem Renaissance, including Duke Ellington, Billy Strayhorn (who immortalized the neighborhood in his song Take the ‘A’ Train), Langston Hughes, Ralph Ellison, Cab Calloway, Count Basie, Zora Neale Hurston and Paul Robeson.

The neighborhood was also home to prominent professionals and civil rights activists like W. E. B. Du Bois, Walter White, Roy Wilkins, Adam Clayton Powell and Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American Supreme Court justice.

When the city’s fortunes declined in the late 1960s and 1970s, this area was severely affected; as most of the well-heeled moved away, drugs and violence became widespread. Elegant brownstones were divided into cheap, poorly-maintained apartments, then vandalized. A significant number of neglected buildings were demolished or burned.

But today, Sugar Hill is on the upswing. Professionals, artists and community activists again walk these streets. Newly-created private schools and arts institutions (including the Dance Theatre of Harlem) have made this area their home.

Everywhere are signs of renewal and revitalization. Houses that were filled with squatters only a few years ago are now being restored and selling for millions of dollars. Buildings that had become rooming houses are being converted back to spacious homes and Sugar Hill is again becoming one of the most desirable neighborhoods in the city.

Audubon Terrace at 155th Street and Broadway

Sculpture on the Plaza at Audubon Terrace

Bas-relief of Don Quixote on horseback

Above the entrance to the former home of the Museum of the American Indian

Entrance to American Society of Arts & Letters

The Church of the Intercession

Detail of wall at the Church of the Intercession

Gatehouse at Trinity Church Cemetery

The Gould mausoleum in the Cemetery

Garret Storm’s mausoleum in Trinity Church Cemetery

Gravestones

Building with Mansard roof in Sugar Hill

On W. 152nd St., three houses designed to look like one

Restored buildings on St. Nicholas Avenue

Classic Sugar Hill brownstones on St. Nicholas

Row of houses on St. Nicholas Avenue

Doorway with stained glass panel

Wrought iron railings in Sugar Hill

Painted stonework highlights the construction date

openhousenewyork weekend
Hamilton Heights Homeowners Association
The Hispanic Society of America
Church of the Intercession
NY Times: Living in Sugar Hill
Harlem One Stop Tour: Hamilton Heights/Sugar Hill
Historic Districts Council: Hamilton Heights/Sugar Hill
Hamilton Heights-West Harlem Community Preservation Organization
Harlem One Stop Tour: A Walk Through Sugar Hill
Harlem One Stop Tour: Trinity Cemetery
Dance Theatre of Harlem

Open House Harlem Pt 1: Manhattanville/W. Harlem

NOTE: Thanks to a particularly robust strain of influenza, Blather from Brooklyn was knocked out of the blogosphere for more than a week and a half. Publication is resuming where it left off when the flu bug raised its ugly head.

OpenHouseNewYork Weekend is here, a time when New York celebrates architecture and design. Sites around the city throw open doors that are usually closed to the public while designers, historians and enthusiasts eagerly lead packs of the curious on walking tours and explorations.

This afternoon, as part of the celebration, participants were treated to a tour that included elements of West Harlem’s past and future: highlights of the now mostly-vanished industrial neighborhood known as Manhattanville and a preview of a waterfront park scheduled to open next year.

Situated between St. Nicholas Terrace and the Hudson River, Manhattanville was once a quiet waterfront village eight miles north of New York City. The 1800s brought paved streets, Robert Fulton’s ferryboat and a flock of city residents who ventured north for the green fields, fresh country air and new opportunities.

In the closing years of the 19th century, when construction of an elevated railway made it possible to travel from Wall Street to Manhattanville in less than an hour, the population tripled. The area was rapidly transformed from a community of tenant farmers and factory workers to a bustling commercial and transportation hub.

Over the years, changing fortunes plunged Manhattanville into a decline. But today, those who know where to look can glimpse the area’s past glory. Some of the luxurious buildings that rose here in the early 1900s are relatively unchanged, their facades still clad in marble and terra-cotta. In certain spots beneath the elevated tracks, the asphalt has worn away, exposing the granite Belgian blocks and bronze insignias of the long-defunct 3rd Avenue line.

As for the future, you’ll view it by crossing the West Side Highway to the spot where 125th Street ends at Marginal Street. There, along the river, is a construction project that will reclaim a long-inaccessible section of waterfront. Known as West Harlem Waterfront Park, the project is transforming a grubby, weed-filled parking lot into a lively spot for recreation.

When it opens next year, the small but carefully-designed park will contain sculptures, fountains and benches. It will feature designated spaces for fishing, kayaking, playing, performing and relaxing in the sun. Most importantly, it will fill a missing link in the greenway and bike path that will eventually stretch along the entire length of Manhattan island.

Under the elevated tracks

Plaque and unused tracks of the 3rd Avenue line

The view from Marginal Street

The fence is opened for OHNY visitors

This area will be filled with grass

Trees and grass will grow here soon

Design of the long, narrow park is based on intersecting triangles

Benches and walkway under construction

The future Water Taxi pier

The proposed fishing pier

The kayak launching area

The park will end here but the bike path will continue

openhousenewyork weekend
West Harlem Waterfront Park
Eric K. Washington
Archipelago Architecture and Landscape Architecture
Community Board 9: West Side Harlem
DMJM Harris: West Harlem Waterfront Redevelopment Program
NYLCV: Work Finally Begins on West Harlem Waterfront Park

A Day on Sheepshead Bay

“If you’d come here five, ten years ago,” said the old waitress, “you would have seen twice as many boats, three times as many restaurants and none of these great big places. Back then the tallest building was three stories high.”

She leaned on the counter, wiped her hands on her apron, and talked about the neighborhood’s many vanished businesses. In recent years, dozens of mom and pop stores have disappeared as real estate developers bought up blocks, demolished the existing structures and replaced them with luxury condominiums.

Similar stories can be heard in nearly every corner of the city but the denizens of this neighborhood are a stubborn lot, and most are determined to stay put here in Brooklyn’s only fishing village, Sheepshead Bay.

The Bay, named after the sheepshead (a large saltwater fish), is renowned for its abundant waters. Fishing once played a vital role in the neighborhood’s economy and the area around the concrete piers on Emmons Avenue still includes several bait and tackle shops, seafood restaurants and clam bars.

While the sheepshead disappeared from these waters long ago, the piers remain crowded with dozens of ducks, gulls, swans and fishing boats. The fleet usually goes out after dawn and returns before dark. The boats are met by shoppers who eagerly swap cooking tips and snatch up the catch of the day, often including flounder, tuna, bluefish and crabs.

A bit further down the road, tucked between the yacht clubs and construction sites, are a few rusted gates. These lead to narrow alleyways crowded with tiny bungalows. Most of the alleys and cottages are what remains of Sheepshead Bay’s first housing development, built around 1920 by a developer named Robert Densely.

A bit farther down the street, past the few retirement homes and “no-tell” motels, Emmons Avenue turns into an entrance to the Belt Parkway. The sand dunes begin where the sidewalk ends. The trails in the sand lead down to a quiet beach, where amateur fishermen patiently throw their nets into the water and haul their evening’s meals from the Bay.

The fishing fleet on the bay  

The Brooklyn VI boasts a “Curtious” Crew  

The Crystal Marie  

Fisherman on deck, filling bag for customer 

Entrance to Sheepshead Bay Yacht Club  

Bernie’s Bait & Tackle  

Stella Maris Fishing Shop  

Sand dunes  

Brush on sand dunes  

Cottages at 3082 Emmons Avenue  

More cottages at 3082 Emmons Avenue  

View of Bay from 3082 Emmons Avenue  

View from the center of Lake Avenue  

Houses on Hitchings Avenue  

Swan  

Swans and ducks near the Ocean Avenue footbridge  

Ocean Avenue footbridge  

WPA Guide: Sheepshead Bay
Wikipedia: Sheepshead Bay
Forgotten NY: Sheepshead Bay
Forgotten NY: Alleys of Sheepshead Bay
Sheepshead Bay Party Boats
NY Fisherman: Sheepshead Bay
Sheepshead Bay Yacht Club
The Belt Parkway

They call it “Blooklyn”

You say you’ve been to Chinatown in New York? Which Chinatown?

The fact is, New York City now has three separate Chinatowns. The oldest is in Manhattan. The largest is in Queens. And the smallest and newest is right here in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.

Brooklyn’s Chinatown is centered on 8th Avenue between 50th and 60th Streets. It is commonly believed that the Chinese moved here because they consider the number eight fortuitous for business and “8th Avenue” can be interpreted as “the road to wealth.”

Maybe.

But a more plausible explanation is that those seeking to escape from Chinatown Manhattan’s crowded, twisting alleys, noisy factories and overflowing tenements appreciated Sunset Park’s clean, grassy recreation areas, the relatively wide streets, an abundance of retail space and a direct subway connection to friends and jobs in the old Chinatown.

As with the other Chinatowns, many of the most visible businesses here are focused on food - preparing it, serving it, selling it. The curbs are lined with baskets of skittering crabs, tubs of fat, bobbing bullfrogs and Styrofoam coolers of flopping, freshly-caught fish. Vendors stand in tiny pushcarts, transforming thick, eggy batter into hot, puffy cakes ($1 a bagfull) and transforming skewers of marinated meat into hot, sizzling satay ($1 each). Bakeries fill the air with the scents of fresh-browned chestnut bread, lotus cakes, cinnamon crisps and pork buns.

In terms of charm and quaintness, Chinatown Brooklyn comes in dead last, which means that it is almost completely free of hulking tour buses, pushy sightseers and cheap, tacky souvenirs. If you go, instead of t-shirt shops and Starbucks, you’ll see hundreds of businesses that cater to the residents’ daily needs: insurance agencies, banks, bakeries, pharmacies, acupuncture clinics, hairdressers, tutoring services, cell phone centers, internet cafes, restaurant uniform and supply stores and florists.

Want to know which shops have just opened? Look near the doorway for an array of green plants festooned with red ribbons, traditionally thought to bring luck to a new enterprise.

Church notice board

Egg cake cart

Fa Da Mall

Moms doing errands

Price list in beauty salon

Funny dry cleaning shop

Optician’s shop

Sign in deli window

Dried fruit displayed outside shop

Banks at the corner of 55th & 8th

Fresh caught and for sale curbside

New Dawang Seafood Market

Hong Kong Supermarket

Village Voice: The Other, Other Chinatown

Asia’zine: Brooklyn’s Chinatown

Chinatown NYC: Brooklyn

Prosper with 8 88 888 88888

A Place to Watch the Sun Set

Sunset Park, one of the highest points in Brooklyn, stands at the corner of 43rd St. and 5th Ave. An essential resource for this crowded, working-class community, the hilly, tree-filled park boasts an art deco recreation center for indoor activities, an outdoor swimming pool (now closed for the season), handball and basketball courts, a baseball diamond and rows of game tables that are usually occupied by older people playing chess, mah-johng, checkers and go. A section known as the Rainbow Playground includes swings, slides, jungle gyms, fountains and other play equipment.

Climb to the top of the bluff and you’ll see the park’s most notable feature - its sweeping views of Lower Manhattan, the Statue of Liberty, the East River, New York Bay, Staten Island and New Jersey. The vista once included a magnificent view the World Trade Center; when the towers were destroyed, residents gathered here to honor and remember the dead. Now this scenic area is the site of the city’s first Living Memorial Grove, a few dozen young trees protected with wire cages and surrounded by thousands of daffodils planted by local schoolchildren.

There wasn’t time to do it today, but this is the perfect place to settle comfortably on a wooden bench, kick off your shoes and watch the sun slowly sink below the horizon.

Boy on a swing

Girl hanging from monkey bars

Boy in yellow on a swing

Boys on the playground

Ceiling in Recreation Center

Terra cotta tiles on Recreation Center floor

Fountain in Rainbow Playground

Rear of fountain in Rainbow Playground

View from the top of the hill

Men photographing the Memorial Grove

Looking towards New York Bay

Benches facing west

NYC Dept Parks & Recreation: Sunset Park

NYC Dept Parks & Recreation: Rainbow Playground

NYC Dept Parks & Recreation: Sept 11th Living Memorial

NYC Dept Parks & Recreation: City’s 1st Memorial Grove

A Walkabout Wallabout

OpenHouseNewYork (OHNY), a group focused on New York City’s architecture and design, has organized this as the 4th Annual OpenHouseNewYork Weekend. Billed as “America’s largest architect and design event,” the Weekend offers free tours of dozens of sites around the city, many of them usually closed to the public.

I was unaware of OHNY or the event, scheduled for today and tomorrow, until late last night. When I went to OHNY Web site to investigate the available tours, I found that most of the best-known, least-accessible buildings were already full to capacity. Searching for a tour that I could join, I discovered the Wallabout neighborhood.

Even if you’ve never set foot in New York, you’ve probably seen and heard of certain iconic locations ― the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building, Greenwich Village, Times Square. But even natives are unfamiliar with some areas of the city, and the Wallabout neighborhood is firmly among the obscure.

The area borders three districts burgeoning with new historic and commercial interests ― Fort Greene, Clinton Hill and the Brooklyn Navy Yard ― but even its closest neighbors don’t know Wallabout’s name or its story.

The name comes from the location; this section of Brooklyn is built on a parcel of land purchased in 1637 from the Dutch West India Trading Company by Walloon (Belgian) Jansen de Rapeljein. The river inlet bordering his land became known as Wallabout Bay (from Waal Boght, “Bay of Walloons”).

During the 1700s, Wallabout Bay was the site of one of the greatest tragedies of the American Revolution when 11,000 men died on British prison ships moored in the East River. Most of their corpses were thrown overboard and, for many years afterwards, their bones washed up on the muddy shore.

Five years after the establishment of the United States, the first shipyard was built on Wallabout Bay. In 1801 the federal government purchased the land and the shipping works and established what would come to be known as the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

As the shipyard developed, commercial interests related to the docks began to spring up in the surrounding area, resulting in factories and warehouses for the goods being shipped and low-cost housing and taverns for the shipworkers. Those bustling streets, just beyond the walls of the Navy Yard, were dubbed the Wallabout district.

There was never a reason for tourists to flock to this modest, hidden neighborhood. This was never a fashionable location. The houses, while often attractive and comfortable, were never populated by socialites or bankers; the shops, while serviceable, never included fine jewelers or chic dressmakers; the amenities, while adequate, never featured museums or theatres.

The houses here were always, in every respect, in the shadows of the shipyards, warehouses and factories. Because the district was defined by industry, not ethnicity or economic status, it lacks a clearly defined culture and identity.

Two major events transformed Wallabout and led it even deeper into obscurity: first, in the 1940s, World War II, great swathes of the industrial area (including most of the Dutch-style marketplace) were torn down to make way for America’s urgently expanded shipbuilding efforts; secondly, in the 1960s, the construction of the massive Brooklyn-Queens Expressway (BQE), during which block after block of housing was razed in the name of “progress” and “slum clearance.” The building of the BQE not only destroyed streets and houses, it eliminated an source of public transportation, bisected the area and cut neighbor off from neighbor.

Today, a small band of activists and advocates are working to have Wallabout named as a Landmark district. This designation would help homeowners restore some of Brooklyn’s oldest wood framed houses, which today are often decaying and crumbling, while preserving more of the area’s rapidly disappearing industrial landscape.

Ironically, the most neglected houses in Wallabout are also among those most likely to still retain their original architectural details; their owners, either through neglect or lack or resources, failed to follow the lead of neighbors who have stripped away delicate ironwork, hidden carved stone under vinyl siding, replaced stained glass with factory-made windows and, strangely enough, covered solid bricks with brick veneers and layers of stucco.

Today’s tour, led by an historic preservationist from the Pratt Institute, working with the Myrtle Avenue Brooklyn Partnership, took us past former candy factories and cold-storage warehouses, charming cottages and crumbling churches, tidy homes and neglected gardens, empty lots, litter-strewn housing projects and well-maintained apartment buildings.

At the end of the program, the group turned onto Ryerson Street, site of the last surviving home of America’s greatest poet, Walt Whitman. There, we were greeted by representatives of the Walt Whitman Project, who ― to the surprise and delight of the tour group and the area’s residents ― read to us from the 1856 edition of Whitman’s masterpiece, Leaves of Grass.

The sum of all known reverence I add up in you, whoever you are;
The President is there in the White House for you–it is not you who are
here for him;
The Secretaries act in their bureaus for you–not you here for them;
The Congress convenes every twelfth month for you;
Laws, courts, the forming of States, the charters of cities, the going and
coming of commerce and mails, are all for you.List close, my scholars dear!
All doctrines, all politics and civilisation, exsurge from you;
All sculpture and monuments, and anything inscribed anywhere, are tallied in you;
The gist of histories and statistics, as far back as the records reach, is in you this hour, and myths and tales the same;
If you were not breathing and walking here, where would they all be?
The most renowned poems would be ashes, orations and plays would be vacuums.

All architecture is what you do to it when you look upon it;
Did you think it was in the white or grey stone? or the lines of the arches and cornices?

All music is what awakes from you, when you are reminded by the instruments;
It is not the violins and the cornets–it is not the oboe nor the beating drums, nor the score of the baritone singer singing his sweet romanza–nor that of the men’s chorus, nor that of the women’s chorus,
It is nearer and farther than they.

Heading into the ‘hood under the BQE

The grandest house in the neighborhood

The shabbiest house in the neighborhood

Few awnings remain in the old marketplace

A warehouse with an awning and terracotta tiles

77 Clinton Ave., former bakery building

Site of the Rockwell Candy factory

The site of former stables on Waverly Ave.

Vinyl siding covers a wooden house

Left, brick & ironwork; Right, brick veneer

The last remaining tenement

A brick & brownstone doorway

Apartment building doorway carved with dragons

An original doorway and glass-paned door

A rotting front stoop

99 Ryerson Street, Walt Whitman’s house

OHNY

Prison Ships In Wallabout Bay

Myrtle Avenue Brooklyn Partnership

Pratt Institute

Fort Greene & Clinton Hill Places of Interest

Andrew Cusak: Wallabout Market

Gowanus Lounge: Wallabout Update

The Walt Whitman Project

Fort Greene Park Conservancy

Clinton Hill Blog

NYC Roads: Brooklyn-Queens Expressway

How About a Little Seoul Food?

Some people call it Koreatown, some say K-Town. But unlike the Koreatowns in San Francisco and Los Angeles, Manhattan’s Korean enclave isn’t much of a neighborhood; in fact, it is just a single block of 32nd Street between Broadway and Fifth Avenue.

Few Koreans actually live here. There isn’t much residential space on the block or in the surrounding area. But K-Town has become the cultural center for New York’s growing Korean population.

At ground level you will find an assortment of shops, newsstands, banks and hotels, but the street is dominated by dozens of Korean restaurants and cafes. This area is busy 24/7 and if you are in the mood for an inexpensive prepacked lunch box, a stylish sweet snack, a traditional barbecue or an elegant dinner - regardless of whether you are a vegetarian, a seafood fan, a calorie counter or a lover of bloody red meat - you’ll easily find something to suit your taste and your budget.

Don’t miss the eggless scallion pancakes at Woorijip, the cold acorn noodles (yes, they’re made from acorns) at Hangawi, the freshly-baked cakes and buns at Koryodang Bakery or the green tea frozen yogurt (so addictive it is affectionately called crackberry) at Pinkberry. If the day is sunny, you might prefer to sit outside at the tables on the plaza to watch the busy social scene.

Once your craving for Seoul Food is satisfied, remember to look up. The higher floors of the buildings on this block are packed with businesses that cater to the needs of the Korean community, offering herbal medicines, spas and beauty treatments, tutoring and language lessons, employment and travel agencies, tattoo parlors, internet cafes and raucous karaoke bars.

On 32nd Street

Animated billboard with Korean subtitles

Pinkberry yogurt shop

Girls on the plaza

On the plaza

Korea Way sign

Newspaper stand

Looking in to Woorijip

Nightlife on the upper floors

Hangawi Restaurant

Woorijip Restaurant

Koryodang Bakery

Pinkberry

Village Voice: Close-Up on Koreatown

K-Town Comes of Age

New York Times: Beer For Breakfast

Saying Goodbye to Summer at America’s Playground

Labor Day, the first Monday in September, is considered the unofficial last day of summer in the US. Summer holidays are over; beaches close to swimmers, kids go back to school, temperatures start to drop and days begin to grow shorter.

Coney Island, once known as America’s Playground, is no longer the nation’s preeminent amusement park; that honor has gone to sanitized, homogenized, ultra-safe-and-predictible corporate theme parks such as Disneyworld and SeaWorld. It may longer attract visitors from all over the country but this lively, accessible and inexpensive stretch along the Atlantic Ocean remains the favorite of New York’s working families.

In recent years this neigborhood has experienced a renassiance. A new baseball stadium, a revitalized New York Aquarium and a gorgeous new subway station have helped bring back the crowds. Kids flock to the hotdogs sizzling on Nathan’s grill, the rattling cars of the wooden roller coaster, the polished horses of the merry-go-round, the rolling waves, the cotton candy and stuffed animals, the seashells, scuttling crabs and polished glass. Grownups lose their pocket change to games of chance, suck down freshly-brewed beer and freshly-caught clams and spend a few bucks to savor the burlesque shows and sideshow freaks.

It is hard to say goodbye to the pleasures of summer, but if it has to be done, a day on the beach and boardwalk at Coney Island is the perfect way to end the season.

The Wonder Wheel  

Trying to win a stuffed animal  

After riding Top Spin  

The Cyclone  

Shoot the Freak  

Barker at Freak Show  

Shoot Em Win! 

Mermaid mural (behind a fence)  

Gyro Corner 

Gregory & Paul’s 

Finding seashells  

Burying Daddy in the sand  

A sand castle  

Tomorrow the clam will go to school 

The last salty smooch of the season  

The History of Labor Day

Coney Island USA

The American Experience: Coney Island

Coney Island History

Wikipedia: Coney Island

The Brooklyn Cyclones

New York Aquarium

Astroland

Nathan’s

America’s Playground Redevelopment Plan Unveiled

The Gardens of Carroll

Most of the brownstone row houses in Carroll Gardens were built in the late 1800s, shortly after the American Civil War. The oldest homes in this section of Brooklyn have large, deep front yards, allowing their residents to enjoy an aspect of outdoor living rare for New Yorkers — the ability to create distinctive stoopside gardens, many of them featuring statuary, arbors, grottoes, plaques and fountains.

St. Maria Addolorata at Court & 4th Place  

St. Joseph on 1st Place  

The grass withers and the flower fades

Fountain and pots of hostas

St. Lucy in memory of Tuddy Balsamo  

Back gate to Mazzone Hardware on Court St.  

Garden diva hard at work  

My secret garden: Don’t tell nobody!  

Geese and ADT Security sign  

Statue, hostas and coleus  

With red rosary beads on 1st Place  

South Brooklyn Network: Carroll Gardens

New York Magazine: Neighborhood Profile

Brooklyn Now: BoCoCa Guide

They Call it Little India

The air is heady with the fragrance of cardamom, cumin, roses and incense. The markets are crowded with women clad in flowing saris and men wearing caftans and intricately-wound turbans. Shop windows display glittering gold jewelry, statues of Krishna and lacquered sitars. Sidewalk vendors proffer bunches of fresh herbs, sticky sweets and copies of the Koran.

This is Jackson Heights, also known as Little India. It has been said that this section of Queens is not really like Bombay (or even Mumbai) because there are no cows wandering the streets. But Little India certainly isn’t like anyplace else in the United States.

This is the place to go for books, newspapers, CDs and videos in Urdu, Hindi, Tamil and Gujarati. Catch the latest releases from Bollywood at the Eagle Cinema. Bang on a tabla, have a salwar kameez made to measure, fill your arms with colorful glass bangles, get a mehndi tattoo, drop a coin in a beggar’s cup, have your eyebrows threaded or your handlebar moustache groomed.

The grocery stores and pushcarts overflow with the spices, herbs, fruits and vegetables of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Intrigued by curry leaves, purple yams and ridge gourds but unsure what to do with them? Just ask (you’ll be inundated with “secret” family recipes) or leave the food in the hands of the professionals and fill yourself — cheaply and deliciously — at the local sweets shops and restaurants.

Fresh Pan, Kulfi

Outside a toy shop

Bejeweled necklace

Gold bracelet

Gilded statues of Hindu gods

India Sari Palace

Selling saris

Silk on display

Bolts of silk in a sari shop

Stacks of glass bangles

Vegetables piled on a pushcart

Grocers with cases of mangos

Okra and karela (bitter melon)

Methi and palak

Tiny eggplant

Cloth bags of rice

Delhi Palace Sweets

Sweets with cherries

Pistachio burfi with silver foil

The Eagle Cinema

Citysearch: Jackson Heights

Jackson Heights NYC

Time Out New York: 74th and Broadway

Jackson Diner

Borough Park: Part Deux

Borough Park is a neighborhood largely shaped and defined by its large population of Hassidic Jews. Last spring I visited on a Friday afternoon when the area’s businesses shut down to prepare for Shabbos, the Jewish Sabbath (see Erev Shabbos in Borough Park).

In sharp contrast to the stillness and quiet found here at Shabbos, during the business week Borough Park is bustling. The busiest street, 13th Avenue, is lined with hundreds of mom-and-pop shops and restaurants. It doesn’t take many mothers pushing strollers to fill the aisles of these small stores, so on a sunny day most of the shopkeepers move racks, tables and boxes of merchandise outdoors. Their sidewalk displays serve to both promote the business and make more room inside. Everything from earrings to suitcases to toys can be purchased curb-side, giving the district the air of a gigantic stoop sale.

The prices aren’t far above those of a stoop sale, either. While some stores cater to the needs the religious community, dozens of places offer deep discounts on designer and name-brand goods, particularly women and children’s shoes and clothing. Buy a few items and be prepared to be offered a discount — or just ask for one. In addition to shopping, Borough Park is a great place to practice your bargaining skills.

Kosher pizza guys

Strolling near 48th Street

Three mommies on 13th Avenue

Yakub’s Shoe Repair

S&W Ladies Wear

At the corner of 13th Avenue and 44th Street

Stationery - Cigars

Klein’s real kosher ice cream truck

Newsstand on 13th Avenue

Rack of dresses displayed on sidewalk

Towels for sale

Old man on 39th Street

Mother and daughter running errands

Sign in window of butcher store

Join us for dinner. Gas is on us.

Wikipedia: Borough Park

Village Voice: Close-Up on Borough Park

Boychiks in the Hood: Travels in the Hasidic Underground

Etude: At Work in the Fields of the Lord

Baal Shem Tov Foundation