Please visit the NEW SITE for Flatbush Gardener
The BMT as I remember -- never rode it much, but had relatives on East 17th & Beverley Road. We would always go to the Albemarle Road footbridge by the tennis courts over the BMT cut, and watch the trains.Eastern Dead End of Albemarle Road at Buckingham Road. 143 Buckingham Road is at the left of the photograph.
- Steve Hoskins, SubTalk Post #93389, NYC Subway
“I seem to have a memory - or is it just a dream? - going back to my earliest childhood, associated with a place about a mile in a different direction from where I lived, towards Prospect Park: it is a stretch of about five blocks of Albemarle Road, going from the Brighton subway underpass to Coney Island Avenue. One got there from our side of the subway tracks by crossing over on a small footbridge. On the far end of the bridge, Albemarle Road suddenly widens, and in the middle of it there is a traffic island, covered with trees and extending a 11 the way to Coney Island Avenue; there are also trees on both sides of the street. My first encounters with this scene are in my memory entirely intermingled with my dreams of it, a recurring vision of overwhelming loveliness at the edge of things, beyond which something entirely new and different must lie.”Western Dead End of Albemarle Road near East 17th Street. 143 Buckingham Road is at the right of the photograph, across the tracks.
- Ronald Sanders, A Brooklyn Memoir, via Living in Victorian Flatbush
One of the most impressive homes in Prospect Park South, was the enormous mansion purchased in 1920 by Israel Matz, founder of the Ex-Lax company. After years of neglect, it was consumed by fire in 1958.The forest which lives on the site now is just 50 years old, grown since the building burned down in 1958. "Forgotten Flatbush" includes an old aerial photo of the area from 1908, a hundred years ago, which shows the old "Ex-Lax Mansion", and the future location of the community garden. The trees for which the neighborhood is known are absent from the photo; they were just a few years old.
- Forgotten Flatbush: When Flatbush was Greenwich, Victorian Flatbush, An Architectural history
Mathieu Eugene and Harry Schiffman are the only candidates on the ballot for the April 24 special election in Brooklyn, a Board of Elections spokeswoman told me.More later when I learn more.
The new election was set to be contested by [Mathieu] Eugene, [Harry] Schiffman, Jamaican Wellington Sharpe and two other Haitian candidates, Gina Faustin and Darly Brutus. But Eugene and his side challenged the candidates based on residency, voter registration and eligibility.
While Eugene did not contest the BOE clerk’s report, which placed Schiffman, the lone Jewish candidate on the ballot, he challenged each of Sharpe’s 1,727 signatures. This led to strong objections from Sharpe’s lawyers and testy arguments between the representatives.Their wording of this last paragraph is interesting. They imply that the Commission ignored their legal Counsel and reversed their decision in order to deny Sharpe a place on the ballot.
Although some commissioners expressed concern that registered voters on Sharpe’s petition were being discounted, the clerk’s report on to Sharpe’s petition was amended from 812 valid signatures to 832, omitting over one hundred of Sharpe’s signatures which his campaign submitted as valid, causing him to fall short of the 1,002 needed to be on the ballot.
This outraged Sharpe representatives who vehemently argued that under the law every signature of registered voters who reside in the District is valid. Rickford Burke, Sharpe’s campaign manager, argued to Commissioners that once the Board has determined that a petition signer is registered to vote in the District, whether they signed the address at which they are registered or another addressed in the District, the signature is valid according to case law. This argument was supported by Steve Richmond, Counsel to the Commission as well as some Commissioners, leading to confusion among the Commission.
The Commission subsequently rejected the clerk’s report. But after realizing that this action automatically placed Sharpe on the ballot, the Commission reversed itself and allowed the clerk’s report as amended to stand, throwing the matter to the Supreme Court for resolution.
The Wellington Sharpe campaign has filed a Request for Judicial Intervention ( RJI ) in the Brooklyn Supreme Court to invalidate Mathieu Eugene's Nominating Petition. There will be a hearing on the matter on April 12. Sharpe is a candidate in the April 24 th City Council 40th District Special Election.It would be morally satisfying to see Eugene go down in this way. But NYC election politics has nothing to do with justice, and my cynicism for politics is surpassed only by Eugene's.
The Sharpe campaign in a statement insisted that "The 40th District seat became vacant as a result of Eugene's declination of the office and his refusal to execute his Oath."
- Residency and Eligibility in the 40th, Room Eight
Every office shall be vacant upon the happening of one of the following events before the expiration of the term thereof:Eugene himself, the putative winner of the first special election, requested the second special election just so he wouldn't have to prove he lived in the district he was elected to represent at the time he was elected. But again, a decision on this Request will probably hinge on the timing of Eugene's "refusal," which came after the Board of Elections certified his win, but before he was sworn in. Of course, he refused to be sworn in, because that would have required proof of residence.
... His refusal or neglect to file his official oath or undertaking, if one is required, before or within thirty days after the commencement of the term of office for which he is chosen.
The plan calls for the planting of 40 new Linden trees, Flatbush Light Poles, benches, clocks, bike racks and wrought iron tree guards. This streetscape will create a public space that invites pedestrianism, improves public health, stimulates local economic activity, and attracts residents and visitors to the community.Today, the block was hopping, with activity from Coney Island Avenue to Rugby Road. Here's the front of the library, at the northeast corner of Argyle Road:
- Cortelyou Road, FDC
