On November 1, 1918, the worst transit disaster in New York City history occurred just outside Prospect Park and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. The wooden cars of the Brighton Beach line of the Brooklyn Rapid Transit (B.R.T.) company left the tracks, crashing inside the tunnel beneath the busy intersection where Flatbush Avenue, Ocean Avenue and Malbone Street met [Google map]. The Malbone Street Wreck killed nearly 100 people and injured more than 250. Criminal trials and lawsuits arising from the accident dragged on for years, contributing to the bankruptcy of the BRT. The name "Malbone Street" became associated with the disaster; it's known today as Empire Boulevard.
Please visit the NEW SITE for Flatbush Gardener
Showing posts with label History. Show all posts
Showing posts with label History. Show all posts
2018-11-01
2016-03-12
Off-Topic: The Conversation
I moved to NYC the first weekend of 1979. By Spring, I had moved to the East Village, an epicenter of what was first called "gay cancer," then "Gay-Related Immunodeficiency Disease," or GRID. Four years later, by 1983 - the year of the symposium that led to this anthology - it was being called AIDS.
2010-09-11
Grief & Gardening: Nine Years
Let's get the usual question out of the way. This is where I was the morning of September 11, 2001.
This is Skytop Tower at Mohonk Mountain House at sunset the previous night. Blog Widow and I had planned a week-long vacation upstate, starting at Mohonk. The morning of September 11, we hiked up to Skytop. A rustic retreat, Mohonk had no televisions or radios in the rooms. As we left the massive wooden structure to go out hiking, I noticed people huddled around the few televisions in some of the common rooms. I thought nothing of it at the time. I later realized we left just after the first attack.
This is Skytop Tower at Mohonk Mountain House at sunset the previous night. Blog Widow and I had planned a week-long vacation upstate, starting at Mohonk. The morning of September 11, we hiked up to Skytop. A rustic retreat, Mohonk had no televisions or radios in the rooms. As we left the massive wooden structure to go out hiking, I noticed people huddled around the few televisions in some of the common rooms. I thought nothing of it at the time. I later realized we left just after the first attack.
2008-12-17
"Proud to be from ... somewhere ... over there ..."
Update: Yup, the Eagle corrected the opening paragraph! Guccione was now "born in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn," intersection unknown ...
The Brooklyn Daily Eagle has a daily, On This Day in History, that features different interesting Brooklyn historical events. Today's historic event is ... the birthday of Robert Guccione:
View Larger Map
So, proud to be from Brooklyn, sure, maybe even from Flatbush. Just doesn't remember "his childhood Brooklyn home" as well as he thinks he does.
I notified the Eagle via the email address on their Web site. Hopefully they will correct it soon.
The Brooklyn Daily Eagle has a daily, On This Day in History, that features different interesting Brooklyn historical events. Today's historic event is ... the birthday of Robert Guccione:
Robert Sabatini Guccione was born on Argyle Road and Flatbush Avenue in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn on December 17, 1930. Bob well remembers his childhood Brooklyn home and is always proud to respond “I’m from Brooklyn,” when asked where he was born.Okaaaay, except that Argyle Road - aka East 13th Street - and Flatbush Avenue never intersect. They run parallel to each other, nine blocks apart.
- Proud To Be From Brooklyn, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 2008.12.17
View Larger Map
So, proud to be from Brooklyn, sure, maybe even from Flatbush. Just doesn't remember "his childhood Brooklyn home" as well as he thinks he does.
I notified the Eagle via the email address on their Web site. Hopefully they will correct it soon.
Links
Proud To Be From Brooklyn, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 2008.12.172008-11-01
90 Years Ago: The Malbone Street Wreck
On November 1, 1918, the worst transit disaster in New York City history occurred just outside Prospect Park and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. The wooden cars of the Brighton Beach line of the Brooklyn Rapid Transit (B.R.T.) company left the tracks, crashing inside the tunnel beneath the busy intersection where Flatbush Avenue, Ocean Avenue and Malbone Street met [Google map]. The Malbone Street Wreck killed nearly 100 people and injured more than 250. Criminal trials and lawsuits arising from the accident dragged on for years, contributing to the bankruptcy of the BRT. The name "Malbone Street" became associated with the disaster; it's known today as Empire Boulevard.
2008-10-16
A recent history of Cortelyou Road
Cortelyou Road, North side, looking East from Westminster Road, September 2006, before the new streetscape was put in place in Spring of 2007.
Neighbor, friend, and local real estate agent Jan Rosenberg writes of changes in our neighborhood in the online journal NewGeography:
We're newcomers to the neighborhood. We've only been here since the Spring of 2005. Most of our neighbors have been here much longer than that, even longer than Jan's "twenty some" years. Jan summarizes what we hear from the "old-timers:" not so long ago, moving to this neighborhood was a pioneering act:
Although Jan doesn't mention it in her article, the transformation of the Cortelyou Road streetscape resulted from many years of organizing and planning from several different sources, including the Flatbush Development Corporation (FDC). FDC has been active since arson for insurance fraud was a serious concern for the neighborhood, unthinkable today, when the same homes that might have been torched 20 years ago are going for over $1 million. FDC sponsors the annual Flatbush Frolic, which takes place on Cortelyou Road, and has been running for 31 years.
Cobblestones, Cortelyou Road, South side, West of Stratford Road, march 2007. That's Coney Island Avenue in the background.
The new clock at night, in April 2008, shortly after it was installed this Spring, on the grounds of P.S. 139 at the corner of Rugby Road.
Even before we moved into the neighborhood, James Heaton's Flatbush Residents Email Network Database - FREND - served as an introduction to the cultural landscape and issues of the neighborhood we were adopting.
The Daffodil Project is in bloom on Cortelyou Road, April 2008
Cortelyou Road (Flickr Collection)
Changing Ditmas Park, Ditmas Park Blog
Race, Class and Gentrification in Ditmas Park, Brownstoner
Neighbor, friend, and local real estate agent Jan Rosenberg writes of changes in our neighborhood in the online journal NewGeography:
Twenty some years ago my husband, 2 young sons and I moved from our cramped 16-foot wide attached row house in Brooklyn’s trendy Park Slope to a free-standing, 7-bedroom Victorian house in the Ditmas Park section of Flatbush with stained glass windows, pocket doors, original wood paneling, a back yard, front porch, driveway and 2-car garage in a little-known, tree-lined neighborhood about 10 minutes away – on the other, high-crime side of Prospect Park.I know everyone's tired of hearing it from me, but this is not Ditmas Park. It's Beverley Square West and Ditmas Park West. Or Victorian Flatbush. Or just plain Flatbush. I suspect the editors provided the title, not Jan.
- Gentrification from the inside out in Brooklyn's Ditmas Park
We're newcomers to the neighborhood. We've only been here since the Spring of 2005. Most of our neighbors have been here much longer than that, even longer than Jan's "twenty some" years. Jan summarizes what we hear from the "old-timers:" not so long ago, moving to this neighborhood was a pioneering act:
When crime exploded in the 1960s and welfare tenants were moved into some of the apartments, much of the middle class – white and black – fled. By the early 1990s many assumed that nothing could be done about the collapse of the quality of life. It wasn’t unusual for police officers in that era, many of whom lived in suburban Suffolk County, to respond to crime victims condescendingly by asking, “What do you expect if you live in a neighborhood like this?”The "from the inside out" part describes the efforts by Jan and other long-time residents to build community through a variety of means. Jan focussed her efforts on the 7 blocks of Cortelyou Road, from Coney Island Avenue to East 17th Street, that are zoned to allow commercial use. She credits other neighbors, as well, with transforming Cortelyou Road into our Main Street:
Little changed even after the extraordinary Giuliani/Bratton efforts brought down crime, little changed in the mid-1990s. The district’s once thriving shopping street, Cortelyou Road , still had no bank, no coffee shop, no diner, no sit-down restaurant, no children's store, no real estate office.
One incredible woman, Susan Siegel, decided she wanted to bring a farmers market to the neighborhood. She worked on this full time, and a year later it opened! Some Cortelyou grocers objected to having it on their strip; a few vocal homeowners objected to unlocking a public school yard and using it to house the market. Ironically the fight over the market swelled into a local “pro-development” movement, made up of people alive to the new possibilities, and sparked a neighborhood newsletter.Red Jacket Orchards, Greenmarket, Cortelyou Road, July 2007
Once it opened in 2002, the Farmers Market became an informal community center, a literal common ground, for our neighborhood. The Market became a place where the full range of neighborhood residents could come together to buy fresh fruits and vegetables and to catch up on what’s happening in the schools, the playgrounds, and stores including a highly successful organic food co-op. Until then, only the homeowners were organized but now new co-op owners, home owners, and renters all came, mingling freely with each other, and with “veterans”, in a way that had not previously been the case.
Although Jan doesn't mention it in her article, the transformation of the Cortelyou Road streetscape resulted from many years of organizing and planning from several different sources, including the Flatbush Development Corporation (FDC). FDC has been active since arson for insurance fraud was a serious concern for the neighborhood, unthinkable today, when the same homes that might have been torched 20 years ago are going for over $1 million. FDC sponsors the annual Flatbush Frolic, which takes place on Cortelyou Road, and has been running for 31 years.
Cobblestones, Cortelyou Road, South side, West of Stratford Road, march 2007. That's Coney Island Avenue in the background.
The new clock at night, in April 2008, shortly after it was installed this Spring, on the grounds of P.S. 139 at the corner of Rugby Road.
Even before we moved into the neighborhood, James Heaton's Flatbush Residents Email Network Database - FREND - served as an introduction to the cultural landscape and issues of the neighborhood we were adopting.
Jim Heaton, a local advertising executive initiated an online newsletter, FREND, [which] served to “connect” nearly a thousand people and families to the new initiatives, particularly around the Farmers Market and crime ...The successor to FREND is The Flatbush Family Network, started by two other neighbors:
The on-line contribution really blossomed in 2003 when Ellen Moncure and Joe Wong revived the Flatbush Family Network (FFN) . This site has become an invaluable source of neighborhood and childrearing information for the many young families who live here. For many people moving into this neighborhood, FFN provides an initial introduction and orientation to life in this neighborhood. For those who live here, it’s a convenient, ongoing source of information and support.
Related Content
Cortelyou Road Park, Park(ing) Day NYC 2008, September 2008The Daffodil Project is in bloom on Cortelyou Road, April 2008
Cortelyou Road (Flickr Collection)
Links
Gentrification from the inside out in Brooklyn's Ditmas Park, NewGeographyChanging Ditmas Park, Ditmas Park Blog
Race, Class and Gentrification in Ditmas Park, Brownstoner
2008-09-23
Flatbush Neighborhood History Guide published by Brooklyn Historical Society
MUST HAVE! Flatbush joins the neighborhoods of Williamsburg, Greenpoint, Red Hook/Gowanus, DUMBO/Vinegar Hill, Bay Ridge/Fort Hamilton:
BHS Celebrates Publication of New Flatbush Neighborhood History Guide [PDF], Press Release, September 9, 2008
The Brooklyn Historical Society (BHS) has just released a history of Brooklyn’s fabled Flatbush neighborhood. As one of the original six townships of Kings County, Flatbush has 400 years of recorded history, in which time it transformed from a rural Dutch hamlet of farmers into the “layered, complex, endlessly fascinating place” that the book’s co-author Francis Morrone described at the booklaunch last Thursday evening.The book provides yet another response to the question, "Where is Flatbush, anyway?!"
- Brooklyn Historical Society Releases New History of Flatbush, Phoebe Neidl, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, September 23, 2008
The neighborhood is geographically defined in the book as being bound on the north by Parkside Avenue, on the south by Avenue H, on the east by Rogers Avenue and on the west by Coney Island Avenue. Flatbush encompasses several smaller communities, such as Ditmas Park, Prospect Park South, Beverly Square, Fisk Terrace, Midwood, Caton Park, and Albemarle-Kenmore Terraces.
Credit for this new history is largely due to the late Adina Back, a public historian who specialized in the civil rights movement, community activism and education here in Brooklyn. She passed away last month from cancer as the book was going to print.
With both anecdotal and statistical accounts, Back traces Flatbush’s evolution into the diverse urban area it now is with the help of documents and photos preserved by the Flatbush Historical Society, which closed its doors in 2002 and donated its collection to BHS.
Related Posts
Where is Flatbush, anyway?!, December 1, 2007Links
Brooklyn Historical Society Releases New History of Flatbush, Phoebe Neidl, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, September 23, 2008BHS Celebrates Publication of New Flatbush Neighborhood History Guide [PDF], Press Release, September 9, 2008
2008-07-16
Boerum Hill, July 12, 2008
Buddy 50 Windowbox, 381 Pacific Street, Boerum Hill, Brooklyn
The Green With Envy Tour One of community gardens last Saturday was a walking tour. Lots, and lots, of walking, Five hours of walking interspersed by standing around, and occasionally sitting, in the beautiful gardens.
It was also a street-side introduction to Boerum Hill, a neighborhood with which I'm not familiar. Here's some things which caught my eye, including some gardens which were not officially on the tour.
"Flags" (T-shirts, actually), 485 Pacific Street
Gardens, North Pacific Playground, Boerum Hill
At first glance this building seems out of place, but take a closer look. The brick and wood relate to the dominant materials on the block. The detailed brick lintel across the width of the ground floor echoes details of its neighbors. The windows reflect the street trees and sky.
Fellow Flickrites luluinnyc and mayotic and I were all intrigued by this unusual building at 385 Pacific Street.
The frieze above the door - I thought it was a wood carving, but on closer inspection it could be terra-cotta - reads "Cuyler Church."
It really was built as a church building. It has a fascinating history. It served an "immigrant" community of Mohawk ironworkers and their families that settled in this neighborhood starting in the 1930s. In Spring 2001 it was added to the National Register of Historic Places.
Another beautiful building, this is the Brooklyn Inn, a local watering hole since the mid-1800s, at 148 Hoyt Street.
Rubbernecking at the Gowanus Community Garden, only time to admire it as we walked by.
Another lovely windowbox, this one at 218 Bergen Street.
Finally, here's a different view of the Buddy 50 scooter and windowbox that opened the post. They were each so perfect and beautiful.
Wyckoff-Bond Community Garden, Boerum Hill, Green With Envy Tour, I.3
David Foulke Memorial Garden, Boerum Hill, Green With Envy Tour, I.4
The Green With Envy Tour One of community gardens last Saturday was a walking tour. Lots, and lots, of walking, Five hours of walking interspersed by standing around, and occasionally sitting, in the beautiful gardens.
It was also a street-side introduction to Boerum Hill, a neighborhood with which I'm not familiar. Here's some things which caught my eye, including some gardens which were not officially on the tour.
"Flags" (T-shirts, actually), 485 Pacific Street
Gardens, North Pacific Playground, Boerum Hill
At first glance this building seems out of place, but take a closer look. The brick and wood relate to the dominant materials on the block. The detailed brick lintel across the width of the ground floor echoes details of its neighbors. The windows reflect the street trees and sky.
Fellow Flickrites luluinnyc and mayotic and I were all intrigued by this unusual building at 385 Pacific Street.
The frieze above the door - I thought it was a wood carving, but on closer inspection it could be terra-cotta - reads "Cuyler Church."
It really was built as a church building. It has a fascinating history. It served an "immigrant" community of Mohawk ironworkers and their families that settled in this neighborhood starting in the 1930s. In Spring 2001 it was added to the National Register of Historic Places.
The former Cuyler Presbyterian Church is located in the Boerum Hill neighborhood of northwestern Brooklyn, Kings County, New York. Designed by Staten Island architect Edward A. Sargent, the building is an example of High Victorian Eclectic design with elements of both Gothic and Romanesque styles of architecture. The Cuyler Presbyterian Church began as an extension of Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church to support its growing programs. The chapel was built one-half mile away from the Lafayette Church in the North Gowanus neighborhood (now called Boerum Hill).Here's GRDN, a gardening store in Boerum Hill which I've been wanting to visit. It's on the same block as the Hoyt Street Community Garden, but time did not allow me anything but the briefest entry into the front of the shop. I drooled over the hand-thrown Guy Wolfe pots. I want to go back.
- Cuyler Presbyterian Church
Another beautiful building, this is the Brooklyn Inn, a local watering hole since the mid-1800s, at 148 Hoyt Street.
Rubbernecking at the Gowanus Community Garden, only time to admire it as we walked by.
Another lovely windowbox, this one at 218 Bergen Street.
Finally, here's a different view of the Buddy 50 scooter and windowbox that opened the post. They were each so perfect and beautiful.
Related Posts
Hoyt Street Garden, Boerum Hill, Green With Envy Tour, I.2Wyckoff-Bond Community Garden, Boerum Hill, Green With Envy Tour, I.3
David Foulke Memorial Garden, Boerum Hill, Green With Envy Tour, I.4
Links
Boerum Hill Association2007-12-01
Where is Flatbush, Anyway?
Update 2007.11.04: For others' reactions to the Times piece, see the Links at the end of this post, or check out the list on Brooklyn Junction. Also added a link to a 1998 letter to the editor about their invention of "Greater Ditmas Park."
Map of Flatbush in 1873
Map of Flatbush in 1873
2007-11-25
Forgotten Flatbush: The Albemarle Road Pedestrian Bridge
In the first Imagine Flatbush 2030 workshop, we enumerated "Assets" and "Challenges". At our table - and it sounded like the experience was shared at others' - where someone lived emerged as a primary determinant of what appeared in which category. Sometimes shared concerns, such as transportation, appeared as both an asset and a challenge, depending on where one lived. It became clear to me that the lines can be sharply drawn, sometimes block-by-block.
I'm a newcomer to the area, having moved here only in Spring of 2005. I researched more and more about the area and its history as we committed to buying a home and moving here. I've still only visited a small portion of Flatbush. IF2030 is making me curious about exploring more of it.
Part of what I want to explore more of is literally "on the other side of the tracks" from where I make my home. The B/Q subway line runs through this neighborhood as an open trench. There are several places where there is no crossing, and the cut forms a geographical barrier, a steel river, separating one side from the other. It wasn't always so. With homage to Forgotten NY, here's a little piece of Flatbush that's not quite forgotten, still part of living memory, the Albemarle Road pedestrian bridge.
Google Map of the location of the old Albemarle Road pedestrian bridge. 143 Buckingham Road is also highlighted; it's a landmark in all the historical photos of this crossing. The markers show where I took the photos for this article.
View Larger Map
Western foundation of Albemarle Road Pedestrian Bridge
East Foundation of Albemarle Road Pedestrian Bridge. 143 Buckingham Road is in the center, across the tracks.
Albemarle Road is interrupted by the subway cut for the B/Q lines. In the late 19th Century, several rail lines were developed to take passengers from the City of Brooklyn, what we now think of as downtown Brooklyn, through the other villages and towns such as Flatbush, to the beach resorts on Coney Island and Brighton Beach. By the 1870s the Brooklyn Coney Island Railroad ran along Coney Island Avenue. By the 1890s, the Brooklyn, Flatbush and Coney Island Railroad (BF&CI) ran along what is now the current route of the B/Q subway line. Most of Flatbush was still farmland at the time. When the Flatbush farms were sold and the area was developed at the turn of the 20th Century, the tracks still ran at grade.
In this 1873 map of Flatbush, Prospect Park and the Parade Grounds are already laid out to the north, and the Brooklyn Coney Island Railroad runs along Coney Island Avenue. On this map, Parkside Avenue is named Franklin Avenue, Church Avenue is named Church Lane, and Cortelyou Road is named Turner Harrow (or Narrow?) Lane. The Waverly Avenue shown on this map no longer exists; it's later replaced by Albemarle and Beverly Roads Road, whose future locations are shown, but neither named nor yet built. The future route of the B/Q line is not shown. The families whose landholdings and houses appear on this map lent their names to several streets and neighborhoods: Turner, Hinkley, Ditmas and Vanderveer.
In an 1888 USGS Survey Map of Brooklyn, just a small portion of which is shown here, Waverly Avenue has been "de-mapped." The roads built in its place, unnamed on this map, are Avenues B and C; these will be renamed later to Beverly and Cortelyou Roads. Between them run East 11th through East 14th Streets; in the early 1900s, these will be renamed to Stratford, Westminster, Argyle and Rugby Roads to cash in on the cachet of Prospect Park South. The BF&CI, which began service in July 1878, is also now in place. East of that, the eastern half of Avenue A (Albemarle Road) has been built, along with East 17th through 19th Streets.
Through the early 1900s, all these railroad lines ran at grade, at street level. There were also trolley lines, at first horse-drawn, then later electrified, on many of the crossing streets. Development brought a burgeoning residential population, more traffic, and more traffic conflicts and accidents. The decision was made to separate the rail and street traffic by moving them to different levels, passing above and below each other.
This photo from the 1918 "Reports of the Brooklyn Grade Crossing Elimination Commission" shows the Albemarle Road Footbridge. The line has been widened to four tracks and now runs below grade. Today, the local Q train runs on the outer tracks, while the express B runs on the inner tracks. 143 Buckingham Road is visible on the upper left of the photograph. Thanks to Art Huneke for permission to use this photograph. This photo appears on his page Brighton Beach Line, Part 3.
The physical contrasts could hardly be stronger across the tracks: a wide, tree-lined boulevard with large, detached wood-frame houses on one side, and tall, multiple-unit residential buildings with few trees on the other. It is tempting to imagine what it would be like to restore the pedestrian bridge, eliminating at least a geographical barrier between these two halves of the same neighborhood. Would it help us to make other connections, to recognize our common assets and challenges, and work together to create a future we can all live with?
Brighton Line, NYC Subway
ARRT's Archives, Art Huneke's Web site
Rapid Transit Net
The Brooklyn Grade Crossing Elimination Project, 1903-1918
I'm a newcomer to the area, having moved here only in Spring of 2005. I researched more and more about the area and its history as we committed to buying a home and moving here. I've still only visited a small portion of Flatbush. IF2030 is making me curious about exploring more of it.
Part of what I want to explore more of is literally "on the other side of the tracks" from where I make my home. The B/Q subway line runs through this neighborhood as an open trench. There are several places where there is no crossing, and the cut forms a geographical barrier, a steel river, separating one side from the other. It wasn't always so. With homage to Forgotten NY, here's a little piece of Flatbush that's not quite forgotten, still part of living memory, the Albemarle Road pedestrian bridge.
Google Map of the location of the old Albemarle Road pedestrian bridge. 143 Buckingham Road is also highlighted; it's a landmark in all the historical photos of this crossing. The markers show where I took the photos for this article.
View Larger Map
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
Western foundation of Albemarle Road Pedestrian Bridge
“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
East Foundation of Albemarle Road Pedestrian Bridge. 143 Buckingham Road is in the center, across the tracks.
Albemarle Road is interrupted by the subway cut for the B/Q lines. In the late 19th Century, several rail lines were developed to take passengers from the City of Brooklyn, what we now think of as downtown Brooklyn, through the other villages and towns such as Flatbush, to the beach resorts on Coney Island and Brighton Beach. By the 1870s the Brooklyn Coney Island Railroad ran along Coney Island Avenue. By the 1890s, the Brooklyn, Flatbush and Coney Island Railroad (BF&CI) ran along what is now the current route of the B/Q subway line. Most of Flatbush was still farmland at the time. When the Flatbush farms were sold and the area was developed at the turn of the 20th Century, the tracks still ran at grade.
In this 1873 map of Flatbush, Prospect Park and the Parade Grounds are already laid out to the north, and the Brooklyn Coney Island Railroad runs along Coney Island Avenue. On this map, Parkside Avenue is named Franklin Avenue, Church Avenue is named Church Lane, and Cortelyou Road is named Turner Harrow (or Narrow?) Lane. The Waverly Avenue shown on this map no longer exists; it's later replaced by Albemarle and Beverly Roads Road, whose future locations are shown, but neither named nor yet built. The future route of the B/Q line is not shown. The families whose landholdings and houses appear on this map lent their names to several streets and neighborhoods: Turner, Hinkley, Ditmas and Vanderveer.
In an 1888 USGS Survey Map of Brooklyn, just a small portion of which is shown here, Waverly Avenue has been "de-mapped." The roads built in its place, unnamed on this map, are Avenues B and C; these will be renamed later to Beverly and Cortelyou Roads. Between them run East 11th through East 14th Streets; in the early 1900s, these will be renamed to Stratford, Westminster, Argyle and Rugby Roads to cash in on the cachet of Prospect Park South. The BF&CI, which began service in July 1878, is also now in place. East of that, the eastern half of Avenue A (Albemarle Road) has been built, along with East 17th through 19th Streets.
Through the early 1900s, all these railroad lines ran at grade, at street level. There were also trolley lines, at first horse-drawn, then later electrified, on many of the crossing streets. Development brought a burgeoning residential population, more traffic, and more traffic conflicts and accidents. The decision was made to separate the rail and street traffic by moving them to different levels, passing above and below each other.
This photo from the 1918 "Reports of the Brooklyn Grade Crossing Elimination Commission" shows the Albemarle Road Footbridge. The line has been widened to four tracks and now runs below grade. Today, the local Q train runs on the outer tracks, while the express B runs on the inner tracks. 143 Buckingham Road is visible on the upper left of the photograph. Thanks to Art Huneke for permission to use this photograph. This photo appears on his page Brighton Beach Line, Part 3.
The physical contrasts could hardly be stronger across the tracks: a wide, tree-lined boulevard with large, detached wood-frame houses on one side, and tall, multiple-unit residential buildings with few trees on the other. It is tempting to imagine what it would be like to restore the pedestrian bridge, eliminating at least a geographical barrier between these two halves of the same neighborhood. Would it help us to make other connections, to recognize our common assets and challenges, and work together to create a future we can all live with?
Related posts
Imagine Flatbush 2030Links
My Flickr photo setBrighton Line, NYC Subway
ARRT's Archives, Art Huneke's Web site
Rapid Transit Net
The Brooklyn Grade Crossing Elimination Project, 1903-1918
2007-07-05
American Dream
A post on Bay Ridge Blog reminded me of an incident I haven't thought of in many years. Any romance street explosives might once have held left me on the afternoon of a hot, sunny 4th of July.
In 1980, within nine months of moving to New York, I had my own apartment, a fifth floor walkup in a tenement building in the East Village. The rent was cheap.
Across the street was - still is, for all I know - the NYC headquarters of the Hell's Angels. My apartment faced the street. Every 4th of July, they closed off the street and had their block party. Fireworks and firecrackers were always part of the activities. After the first few years, the novelty wore off, then transformed into endurance trauma.
In 1980, within nine months of moving to New York, I had my own apartment, a fifth floor walkup in a tenement building in the East Village. The rent was cheap.
Across the street was - still is, for all I know - the NYC headquarters of the Hell's Angels. My apartment faced the street. Every 4th of July, they closed off the street and had their block party. Fireworks and firecrackers were always part of the activities. After the first few years, the novelty wore off, then transformed into endurance trauma.
2007-05-23
Back in the Day
2008.03.10: Welcome - I guess - New York magazine Intelligencer readers. I encourage you to read my post about the BlogFest itself, which inspired this "hyperniche nostalgia," as NY characterizes it. (Shouldn't that be hypo-niche? sub-niche? micro-niche?)
Crazy Diamond, aka Flatbush Gardener, circa 1980s.
I wrote the following as part of my Brooklyn Blogfest coverage. I now find myself in the position of being one of the coordinators of the first Brooklyn Blogade Roadshow, which it is hoped will take the spirit and energy of the Brooklyn Blogfest on the road to different neighborhoods in Brooklyn. I hope to provide details of the inaugural event later tonight or this week.
I'm highlighting this bit of autobiography and technology history in its own post here because it expresses what I'm trying to bring of myself to this first event.
[Written 2007.05.11]
Back in the Day
Gather round me, children. Close your eyes, and try to imagine it. It was long before the Web, when the Internet existed only in military and select academic settings. It was the time before GUIs, before mice and color monitors, when MS-DOS and 1200bps dial-up modems roamed the Earth.
There were these things called computer bulletin board services, BBS for short. Your computer told your modem the phone number of the BBS. Your modem dialed, their modem answered, and both modems connected with each other. Then your computer could talk to their computer. Directly. No Web, no Internet. Machino a machino. You could leave messages for other BBS members; the precursor of email. You could even chat with someone else who was also logged in; the precursor of IM today.
I was a member of a BBS based in New York City called The BackRoom. It was, as one might guess from the name, a gay BBS. It was an online community of gay men, mostly, living in NYC, mostly. We had handles, like CB radio users (1970s technology). My CB handle in the 1970s, 30+ years ago, was Green Thumb. My BackRoom handle was Crazy Diamond, after the Pink Floyd song, "Shine On, You Crazy Diamond."
Donor Recognition plaque on the wall of the second floor landing of the center staircase of the NYC Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center.
We were an online community. A community of humpy nerds, of which I was one. We were not only virtual. We also met, face-to-face, at a periodic event called the Backroom Bash. Sometimes we met at a bar, sometimes at the home of a member or the Backroom founder and sysop, Art Kohn. We built community online, with handles and anonymity. We met in person, still with our handles, and less anonymity, and built community there as well. Our virtual community was enriched by our interactions in 3D, and vice versa.
Last night [the Blogfest] reminded me of that.
Crazy Diamond, aka Flatbush Gardener, circa 1980s.
I wrote the following as part of my Brooklyn Blogfest coverage. I now find myself in the position of being one of the coordinators of the first Brooklyn Blogade Roadshow, which it is hoped will take the spirit and energy of the Brooklyn Blogfest on the road to different neighborhoods in Brooklyn. I hope to provide details of the inaugural event later tonight or this week.
I'm highlighting this bit of autobiography and technology history in its own post here because it expresses what I'm trying to bring of myself to this first event.
[Written 2007.05.11]
Back in the Day
Gather round me, children. Close your eyes, and try to imagine it. It was long before the Web, when the Internet existed only in military and select academic settings. It was the time before GUIs, before mice and color monitors, when MS-DOS and 1200bps dial-up modems roamed the Earth.
There were these things called computer bulletin board services, BBS for short. Your computer told your modem the phone number of the BBS. Your modem dialed, their modem answered, and both modems connected with each other. Then your computer could talk to their computer. Directly. No Web, no Internet. Machino a machino. You could leave messages for other BBS members; the precursor of email. You could even chat with someone else who was also logged in; the precursor of IM today.
I was a member of a BBS based in New York City called The BackRoom. It was, as one might guess from the name, a gay BBS. It was an online community of gay men, mostly, living in NYC, mostly. We had handles, like CB radio users (1970s technology). My CB handle in the 1970s, 30+ years ago, was Green Thumb. My BackRoom handle was Crazy Diamond, after the Pink Floyd song, "Shine On, You Crazy Diamond."
Donor Recognition plaque on the wall of the second floor landing of the center staircase of the NYC Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center.
We were an online community. A community of humpy nerds, of which I was one. We were not only virtual. We also met, face-to-face, at a periodic event called the Backroom Bash. Sometimes we met at a bar, sometimes at the home of a member or the Backroom founder and sysop, Art Kohn. We built community online, with handles and anonymity. We met in person, still with our handles, and less anonymity, and built community there as well. Our virtual community was enriched by our interactions in 3D, and vice versa.
Last night [the Blogfest] reminded me of that.
Happy Tercentenary Birthday, Carolus Linnaeus
Reproduction of a painting by Alexander Roslin in 1775. The original painting can be viewed at the Royal Science Academy of Sweden (Kungliga vetenskapsakademin).
Carolus Linnaeus, also known after his ennoblement as Carl von Linné, (May 23, 1707 – January 10, 1778), was a Swedish botanist, physician and zoologist who laid the foundations for the modern scheme of nomenclature. He is known as the "father of modern taxonomy." He is also considered one of the fathers of modern ecology (see History of ecology).
Taxonomists, in almost any biological field, have heard of Carolus Linnaeus. His prime contribution was to establish conventions for the naming of living organisms that became universally accepted in the scientific world--the work of Linnaeus represents the starting point of binomial nomenclature. In addition Linnaeus developed, during the great 18th century expansion of natural history knowledge, what became known as the Linnaean taxonomy; the system of scientific classification now widely used in the biological sciences.Of course, any tool can be used against others.
The Linnaean system classified nature within a hierarchy, starting with three kingdoms. Kingdoms were divided into Classes and they, in turn, into Orders, which were divided into Genera (singular: genus), which were divided into Species (singular: species). Below the rank of species he sometimes recognized taxa of a lower (unnamed) rank (for plants these are now called "varieties").
... While the underlying details concerning what are considered to be scientifically valid 'observable characteristics' has changed with expanding knowledge (for example, DNA sequencing, unavailable in Linnaeus' time, has proven to be a tool of considerable utility for classifying living organisms and establishing their relationships to each other), the fundamental principle remains sound.
Linnaeus was also a pioneer in defining the concept of race as applied to humans. Within Homo sapiens he proposed four taxa of a lower (unnamed) rank. These categories were Americanus, Asiaticus, Africanus and Europeanus. They were based on place of origin at first, and later on skin colour. Each race had certain characteristics that he considered endemic to individuals belonging to it. Native Americans were reddish, stubborn and easily angered. Africans were black, relaxed and negligent. Asians were sallow, avaricious and easily distracted. Europeans were white, gentle and inventive. Linnaeus's races were clearly skewed in favour of Europeans. Over time, this classification led to a racial hierarchy, in which Europeans were at the top. Members of many European countries used the classification scheme to validate their conquering or subjugation of members of the "lower" races.
2006-09-29
Matthews Park
Our house was built in Matthews Park. Don't look for it on any current maps of Brooklyn. Beverly Square West, the neighborhood where we live, was originally known as Matthews Park from at least 1900, the same year our house was built, to 1902. Two articles from the Brooklyn Eagle document the boundaries of Matthews Park, which exactly coincide with those of what is today called Beverly Square West.
A March 30, 1900 article, Attempt to Rob Bolles' Home, is a report on burglaries in the area:
A March 30, 1900 article, Attempt to Rob Bolles' Home, is a report on burglaries in the area:
Mr. Bolles is one of a committee of three of the Matthews Park Association, appointed to visit the Police Board to find out why there are so few policeman in that section. Matthews Park extends from Beverley road to Avenue C, and from Coney Island avenue to Fifteenth street.A March 5, 1902 article, Sign Posts for Matthews Park, describes the submission of "a design for cast iron sign posts to be placed on all corners of Beverley and Cortelyou Roads, from East Eleventh to East Fifteenth Streets, inclusive." The same article also mentions that "it is intended to adopt on these blocks the same names at present in vogue for the same streets in Prospect Park South," which is today a landmarked Historic District just up the block from us. So the numbered streets - East 11th through 15th Streets - became named Streets: Stratford, Westminster, Argyle, Rugby and Marlborough. Tony sounding, eh? Or, if you prefer, the acronym SWARM.
Links
- Brooklyn Public Library, Brooklyn Daily Eagle Online
- Matthew's Park? Where's that?, Erin Joslyn, writing for Living in Victorian Flatbush, August 22, 2007
2006-05-19
Flatbush
The place name "Flatbush" is an Anglicization of one of the early Dutch names for the area. I've seen the Dutch variously given as vlacke bos, vladbos, and flakkebos. I've seen this translated as "wooded plain", "wooded land" and "flat woods". In other words, the name describes the landscape prior to Dutch colonization of the area in the 1600s.
Much of the area remained farmland and relatively undeveloped through the 19th Century. The last vestiges of these original woods were lost with Victorian-era development in the 1890s.
Much of the area remained farmland and relatively undeveloped through the 19th Century. The last vestiges of these original woods were lost with Victorian-era development in the 1890s.
Related Content
Other Flatbush postsLinks
Generations of Dynamism in Flatbush, Francis Morrone, NY Sun, October 13, 20062001-10-15
Without God
Posted on September 11, 2010, the 9th Anniversary of the attacks.
October 15, 2001
An open letter to Joanna Tipple, pastor of the Craryville and Copake Churches in New York State.
Dear Joanna:
Sorry I missed you when you came to the city to deliver the bears. I've been wanting to write you. I've found it hard to write at all. There are no words.
I want to thank you and the congregations of the Craryville and Copake churches for welcoming me at your services that first Sunday after September 11. While it may have helped to be the preacher's wife, I know there was more to it than that! It was comforting to feel held there, knowing that John and I had to return to our homes in New York City that afternoon. I didn't know what we'd be returning to. I wept during both services. I've wept a lot since.
I work two blocks from where the towers were. I've seen it from the street, from the roof of my office building, from our lunch room twenty-seven floors up. I try to approach my presence in the city at this time as a naturalist, observing and recording changes in the physical environment and the behavior of its inhabitants. I want to remain present without withdrawing, so I can bear witness.
The fires still burn. Smoke still scents the surrounding streets and buildings. While rain has rinsed most of the gutters, ash still coats statues, windows and rooftops. In low and sheltered areas, the rain and ash mixed with shredded documents from the towers to create a gray papier mache. The "Missing Person" posters - and only those closest to them held any hope they would be "found" - and sidewalk memorials of candles and the poetry of anguish, rage, and hope, are slowly eroding.
I've been thinking a lot about something you said during one of your sermons that Sunday. I think it was at the Copake service, while speaking to the shock and terrible loss of the preceding week, you said something like "I don't know how someone could get through this without God." I heard this as a question. I want to respond. I want to give something back to you and the congregations. For myself, once again I must make sense of senseless loss.
The Friday after John and I got back to the city was my first visit back to my office, and downtown. Power had been restored to our buildings and some of us went in to ready our offices and equipment for our colleagues' return that Monday, two weeks after the attacks. My colleagues and I hugged when we saw each other. In a conversation that day with one of our vice presidents, she observed "Nothing is permanent, except God." What struck me was that she seemed to be realizing this for the first time.
Nothing lasts. Not the smoke and ash, not the wreckage of the towers, not even our grief or the memorials we will erect. Everything that is, all we experience, survive, and celebrate, occurs without God. Nothing is always. This makes it all the more mysterious, not less, all the more wonderful, precious and beautiful.
Most of my twenty-three years in New York City I've been surrounded, touched, by death. Death from AIDS. Death from suicide. Death from overdose. The slow deaths of addiction, of abuse. I do not consider death a friend, but it is not my enemy. It is familiar to me. I have grieved, and grieved again, and more, and each new loss touches all the others through me. Through countless repeated uses over the years, my grief has become burnished, polished through use like a favorite tool. Comfortable to hold. Fitting my hand. Perfectly balanced for the task. I can pick it up when I need to. I can set it down when this work is done.
In the past I've described myself as a rabid atheist. John has known me a long time and can attest to the accuracy of this assessment. I've mellowed somewhat over the years, but nothing in my experience has yet to dissuade me from my fundamental disbelief. By the age of ten I realized that what was being taught to me as the Word of God was simply wrong. Not wrong as in incorrect, but immoral, unethical, unjust. The vision of heaven conveyed to me was no place I'd want to be. The God I was supposed to worship was nothing I could respect. Growing up gay in a world rife with homophobic cultures didn't change my disbelief. If I were to believe so-called religious leaders, my love is an abomination, my kind deserving of extermination. There seems little point to believing in any of their hateful Gods.
Again, and still, horrors are committed in the name of God. A month ago, more than five thousand people lost their lives in a smoking crater, killed in the name of God. It makes no difference to me whether the banner reads "Holy War" or "God Bless America." This crisis has brought out both the best and worst in people. Like any tool, the idea of God is used for evil as well as good. Then what good is God?
A problem with the word "atheist" is that it simply means "without god." The word doesn't summon anything new. It doesn't suggest any alternatives. It doesn't address your question. It's as useless and inadequate as "non-white." There are within me other beliefs, moral convictions, even something I am sometimes willing to call spirituality, which transcend God.
As I tend my garden, I recall how it was a minute, a day, a year ago. That flower was, or was not, blooming yesterday. This plant has grown over the years and now crowds its neighbors. A label in the ground shows where another plant has vanished. Should I replace it, or try something new? I weed. I plant. I water. I sit. The garden asks me to see it as it really is, not just how I remember it, or how I wish it to be. Gardening continues to teach me many lessons. Gardening is my prayer.
So I must be in the world. Remembering what was. Observing what is. Hoping for what can be. Acting to bring it into being. When we struggle to understand, we question what is. Science can ask, and eventually answer, "What?" and "How?" It cannot answer the one question that matters, the question for which Man created God: "Why?" Now, as with each new loss, I ask again: Why am I here? Why am I alive?
The only answer I've come across which satisfies me at all comes from Zen: The purpose of life is to relieve suffering. Not to relieve pain, or grief, or loss. These cannot be avoided. But to relieve suffering, which we ourselves bring into the world. Because death is senseless, the only sense to be found is that which we manifest in our own lives. The only meaning there can be in life is what we impart.
Or, as someone else might say, the kingdom of god is within each of us.
[bit.ly]
October 15, 2001
An open letter to Joanna Tipple, pastor of the Craryville and Copake Churches in New York State.
Dear Joanna:
Sorry I missed you when you came to the city to deliver the bears. I've been wanting to write you. I've found it hard to write at all. There are no words.
I want to thank you and the congregations of the Craryville and Copake churches for welcoming me at your services that first Sunday after September 11. While it may have helped to be the preacher's wife, I know there was more to it than that! It was comforting to feel held there, knowing that John and I had to return to our homes in New York City that afternoon. I didn't know what we'd be returning to. I wept during both services. I've wept a lot since.
I work two blocks from where the towers were. I've seen it from the street, from the roof of my office building, from our lunch room twenty-seven floors up. I try to approach my presence in the city at this time as a naturalist, observing and recording changes in the physical environment and the behavior of its inhabitants. I want to remain present without withdrawing, so I can bear witness.
The fires still burn. Smoke still scents the surrounding streets and buildings. While rain has rinsed most of the gutters, ash still coats statues, windows and rooftops. In low and sheltered areas, the rain and ash mixed with shredded documents from the towers to create a gray papier mache. The "Missing Person" posters - and only those closest to them held any hope they would be "found" - and sidewalk memorials of candles and the poetry of anguish, rage, and hope, are slowly eroding.
I've been thinking a lot about something you said during one of your sermons that Sunday. I think it was at the Copake service, while speaking to the shock and terrible loss of the preceding week, you said something like "I don't know how someone could get through this without God." I heard this as a question. I want to respond. I want to give something back to you and the congregations. For myself, once again I must make sense of senseless loss.
The Friday after John and I got back to the city was my first visit back to my office, and downtown. Power had been restored to our buildings and some of us went in to ready our offices and equipment for our colleagues' return that Monday, two weeks after the attacks. My colleagues and I hugged when we saw each other. In a conversation that day with one of our vice presidents, she observed "Nothing is permanent, except God." What struck me was that she seemed to be realizing this for the first time.
Nothing lasts. Not the smoke and ash, not the wreckage of the towers, not even our grief or the memorials we will erect. Everything that is, all we experience, survive, and celebrate, occurs without God. Nothing is always. This makes it all the more mysterious, not less, all the more wonderful, precious and beautiful.
Most of my twenty-three years in New York City I've been surrounded, touched, by death. Death from AIDS. Death from suicide. Death from overdose. The slow deaths of addiction, of abuse. I do not consider death a friend, but it is not my enemy. It is familiar to me. I have grieved, and grieved again, and more, and each new loss touches all the others through me. Through countless repeated uses over the years, my grief has become burnished, polished through use like a favorite tool. Comfortable to hold. Fitting my hand. Perfectly balanced for the task. I can pick it up when I need to. I can set it down when this work is done.
In the past I've described myself as a rabid atheist. John has known me a long time and can attest to the accuracy of this assessment. I've mellowed somewhat over the years, but nothing in my experience has yet to dissuade me from my fundamental disbelief. By the age of ten I realized that what was being taught to me as the Word of God was simply wrong. Not wrong as in incorrect, but immoral, unethical, unjust. The vision of heaven conveyed to me was no place I'd want to be. The God I was supposed to worship was nothing I could respect. Growing up gay in a world rife with homophobic cultures didn't change my disbelief. If I were to believe so-called religious leaders, my love is an abomination, my kind deserving of extermination. There seems little point to believing in any of their hateful Gods.
Again, and still, horrors are committed in the name of God. A month ago, more than five thousand people lost their lives in a smoking crater, killed in the name of God. It makes no difference to me whether the banner reads "Holy War" or "God Bless America." This crisis has brought out both the best and worst in people. Like any tool, the idea of God is used for evil as well as good. Then what good is God?
A problem with the word "atheist" is that it simply means "without god." The word doesn't summon anything new. It doesn't suggest any alternatives. It doesn't address your question. It's as useless and inadequate as "non-white." There are within me other beliefs, moral convictions, even something I am sometimes willing to call spirituality, which transcend God.
As I tend my garden, I recall how it was a minute, a day, a year ago. That flower was, or was not, blooming yesterday. This plant has grown over the years and now crowds its neighbors. A label in the ground shows where another plant has vanished. Should I replace it, or try something new? I weed. I plant. I water. I sit. The garden asks me to see it as it really is, not just how I remember it, or how I wish it to be. Gardening continues to teach me many lessons. Gardening is my prayer.
So I must be in the world. Remembering what was. Observing what is. Hoping for what can be. Acting to bring it into being. When we struggle to understand, we question what is. Science can ask, and eventually answer, "What?" and "How?" It cannot answer the one question that matters, the question for which Man created God: "Why?" Now, as with each new loss, I ask again: Why am I here? Why am I alive?
The only answer I've come across which satisfies me at all comes from Zen: The purpose of life is to relieve suffering. Not to relieve pain, or grief, or loss. These cannot be avoided. But to relieve suffering, which we ourselves bring into the world. Because death is senseless, the only sense to be found is that which we manifest in our own lives. The only meaning there can be in life is what we impart.
Or, as someone else might say, the kingdom of god is within each of us.
[bit.ly]
2001-09-14
This Week in History
Posted on September 11, 2010, the 9th Anniversary of the attacks. This is the text of an email I sent to all my contacts the week of the attacks.
September 14, 2001
Some of you've I've already corresponded with, or spoken with, this week. Most of you I have not.
I was not in New York City at the time of the attacks. Monday, September 10, John and I went on the road for a week-long vacation we've been planning for months. As I write this on Friday, we're still on the road, visiting John's mother for two nights. On Sunday, John has two preaching gigs in the area before we return to the City.
Monday we drove to Mohonk Mountain House, a grand and rustic retreat in the Shawangunk Mountains outside of New Paltz. None of the rooms have televisions. Our room had a wood-burning fireplace. Our balcony looked over Mohonk Lake to the surrounding cliffs and mountains. Mostly I said "Wow" a lot.
Across the lake from the lodge a peak, called Sky Top, rises several hundred feet above the lake. On Sky Top is a stone observation tower which looks over the lake, the lodge, and the surrounding cliffs and mountains. Tuesday morning John and I hiked to the peak and climbed to the top of the tower. On the way to the trailhead I overheard one woman saying to another something about a plane being hijacked. I didn't think anything about it at the time. John and I were joyful to be together in such a beautiful setting. We were at peace with each other, and surrounded by nature.
As we climbed down the stairs inside the tower I was singing, "I love to go a-wandering ..." As we turned the third flight of stairs down, we met an old man climbing up. I joked to him "Don't mind me." He looked up at us. His eyes were welled with tears. He said to us "Did you hear what happened?" That's how John and I first learned that both towers of the World Trade Center had been struck by hijacked planes.
By the time we got back to the lodge, the staff had setup several televisions in public rooms. None of these went unattended before we left on Wednesday. Most of the afternoon and evening activities at Mohonk were cancelled. The evening's scheduled film, "Deep Impact," in which the world is struck by an asteroid, destroying the eastern seaboard cities of the United States, was replaced by "City Slickers." By sundown, the flag flying over Mohonk Mountain House's highest tower was at half-mast.
Sometime Tuesday morning the initial denial had broken and I was able to watch one of the large-screen videos setup in one of the rooms. As I watched for the first of many times the South Tower explode and crumble. I was able to send off two e-mails Tuesday afternoon before I was no longer able to get an outside line. I sent one to my family to let them know I was okay. I sent another to my colleagues at work to let them know I was thinking of them. It was surreal to be among all that natural beauty and have the images of destruction flashing through my mind, trying to wrap my mind around two seemingly discordant realities at once.
The week has continued to unfold in slow motion. Driving along the local roads of upstate New York, the reminders are constant. U.S. flags are everywhere, on buildings, along the road, on car antennas, and at half-mast on flagpoles. In Wappingers Falls, yellow ribbons have joined the flags. The commercial street-side signs of replaceable letters have been converted to expressions of national pride and pleas for prayer. In front of firehouses, fire-fighting gear have been set out to commemorate the firefighters lost in the towers' collapse. Churches stand with their doors wide, with signs explaining they are open for prayer.
My first waking thought each morning has been of the images of the fireballs and the progressive collapse of the towers. The buildings where I work are just two and three blocks from ground zero. Until a few hours ago, when I was able to get my e-mail and make some phone calls, I didn't know if the people I work with were okay or not. I don't yet know if I will be going to work on Monday morning, and if so, how I will get there. I'm concerned about the impact of the asbestos-laden fallout blowing across Brooklyn and Queens, and possibly my neighborhood, my home, my garden.
Like an earthquake, the initial shocks have affected each of us differently, and to different degrees. The aftershocks will continue for months. The effects will ripple out for decades. If I believed there was anyone to listen, let alone, answer, I would pray that each of us gets whatever we need to come through healthy and whole. I would pray that, individually and collectively, we respond to this violence with compassion, wisdom, courage and strength.
[bit.ly]
September 14, 2001
Some of you've I've already corresponded with, or spoken with, this week. Most of you I have not.
I was not in New York City at the time of the attacks. Monday, September 10, John and I went on the road for a week-long vacation we've been planning for months. As I write this on Friday, we're still on the road, visiting John's mother for two nights. On Sunday, John has two preaching gigs in the area before we return to the City.
Monday we drove to Mohonk Mountain House, a grand and rustic retreat in the Shawangunk Mountains outside of New Paltz. None of the rooms have televisions. Our room had a wood-burning fireplace. Our balcony looked over Mohonk Lake to the surrounding cliffs and mountains. Mostly I said "Wow" a lot.
Across the lake from the lodge a peak, called Sky Top, rises several hundred feet above the lake. On Sky Top is a stone observation tower which looks over the lake, the lodge, and the surrounding cliffs and mountains. Tuesday morning John and I hiked to the peak and climbed to the top of the tower. On the way to the trailhead I overheard one woman saying to another something about a plane being hijacked. I didn't think anything about it at the time. John and I were joyful to be together in such a beautiful setting. We were at peace with each other, and surrounded by nature.
As we climbed down the stairs inside the tower I was singing, "I love to go a-wandering ..." As we turned the third flight of stairs down, we met an old man climbing up. I joked to him "Don't mind me." He looked up at us. His eyes were welled with tears. He said to us "Did you hear what happened?" That's how John and I first learned that both towers of the World Trade Center had been struck by hijacked planes.
By the time we got back to the lodge, the staff had setup several televisions in public rooms. None of these went unattended before we left on Wednesday. Most of the afternoon and evening activities at Mohonk were cancelled. The evening's scheduled film, "Deep Impact," in which the world is struck by an asteroid, destroying the eastern seaboard cities of the United States, was replaced by "City Slickers." By sundown, the flag flying over Mohonk Mountain House's highest tower was at half-mast.
Sometime Tuesday morning the initial denial had broken and I was able to watch one of the large-screen videos setup in one of the rooms. As I watched for the first of many times the South Tower explode and crumble. I was able to send off two e-mails Tuesday afternoon before I was no longer able to get an outside line. I sent one to my family to let them know I was okay. I sent another to my colleagues at work to let them know I was thinking of them. It was surreal to be among all that natural beauty and have the images of destruction flashing through my mind, trying to wrap my mind around two seemingly discordant realities at once.
The week has continued to unfold in slow motion. Driving along the local roads of upstate New York, the reminders are constant. U.S. flags are everywhere, on buildings, along the road, on car antennas, and at half-mast on flagpoles. In Wappingers Falls, yellow ribbons have joined the flags. The commercial street-side signs of replaceable letters have been converted to expressions of national pride and pleas for prayer. In front of firehouses, fire-fighting gear have been set out to commemorate the firefighters lost in the towers' collapse. Churches stand with their doors wide, with signs explaining they are open for prayer.
My first waking thought each morning has been of the images of the fireballs and the progressive collapse of the towers. The buildings where I work are just two and three blocks from ground zero. Until a few hours ago, when I was able to get my e-mail and make some phone calls, I didn't know if the people I work with were okay or not. I don't yet know if I will be going to work on Monday morning, and if so, how I will get there. I'm concerned about the impact of the asbestos-laden fallout blowing across Brooklyn and Queens, and possibly my neighborhood, my home, my garden.
Like an earthquake, the initial shocks have affected each of us differently, and to different degrees. The aftershocks will continue for months. The effects will ripple out for decades. If I believed there was anyone to listen, let alone, answer, I would pray that each of us gets whatever we need to come through healthy and whole. I would pray that, individually and collectively, we respond to this violence with compassion, wisdom, courage and strength.
[bit.ly]
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