Off the Beaten Path in Brooklyn & Manhattan

By: Sharon & Marty Samson 16 Nov 2015

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Brooklyn Facts

• One of five boroughs in NYC• If Brooklyn were a separate city it would be 4th largest city in US. • Many entertainment greats - Mel Brooks, Phil Silvers, Woody Allen,

and Neil Simon among them • Veritable melting pot, with West Indians, Hasidic Jews, Russians,

Italians and Arabs living side by side• There are 28 designated historic districts in Brooklyn, including the residential districts of Park Slope, Ditmas Park & Brooklyn Heights.

Airbnb Hostess in Lefferts Manor Historic District

home

Sheepshead Bay, named for an edible fish found in the bay’s waters.

Rumor has it this is a Russian Mafia home in Manhattan Beach

NYC’s first public memorial to the Holocaust (1985)

Eternal light shines in lasting memory of those who perished and as a beacon of hope for the future.

A field of granite markers are inscribed with names, places & historical evens related to the Holocaust.

The Sheepshead Bay Methodist Episcopal Church,

built in 1884.Now home to a Korean

congregation

Union Square Facts

• Opened in 1839• Name because it joined Broadway & Park Ave• Park became popular with soapbox orators• Noted for its impressive equestrian statue of George

Washington (1856)• During the peak seasons, the Greenmarket serves more

than 250K customers per week, who purchase the more than one thousand varieties of fruits and vegetables that can be found there.

Union Square Green Market,Year round M-W-F-Sat

George Washington 1856

First American equestrian sculpture cast in bronze; the historic moment depicted is Evacuation Day, November 25, 1783, when the British left the city and General Washington triumphantly led his troops back into the city.

Subway Art

Broadway at 51st St.

Broadway Theater on Broadway

Tip on buying tickets to Broadway shows:There is a half price ticket booth in Brooklyn with very short lines.

Chelsea Market (food hall, shopping mall, office bldg. & television production facility), built in former Nabisco Biscuit Co. factory complex, where the Oreo cookie was invented & produced.

High Line Park

A linear (1.45 miles long) public park built on a disused freight rail line elevated above the streets on Manhattan’s West Side.

South end of the High Line Park

Woolworth Building

A white, wedding cake style skyscraper. Seen frequently in movies, it was the tallest building in the world from 1913-1929. This neo-gothic building was a central figure in the great skyscraper race of the first few decades of the 20th Century and was called the “Cathedral of Commerce.” It had an observation deck until 1941 and high speed elevators, which were state of the art at the time. It was sold by the Woolworth Company in 1998 for $155 million. A significant portion of the tenants are residents.

Park near the Civic Center & the entrance to the Brooklyn Bridge on the Manhattan side.

Surrogate’s Court, Hall of Records(1899-1911)A Beaux Arts triumph, the Hall of Records holds public records dating back to 1664

Manhattan Municipal Bldg (1914)(Beaux-arts)Topped by Civic Fame, a 20 ft tall copper statue that holds a 5-pointed crown to represent 5 boroughs

City Hall (1812)Federal-style

City Hall Park Nathan Hale, aboveHorace Greeley, right

Brooklyn Bridge Facts

• Built from 1869-1883• The Brooklyn Bridge is 5,989 ft. long. The pedestrian walkway across

the bridge is slightly over 1.1 miles, or 1.6 kilometers long.• Towers: Made of Maine Granite, 276 feet (84 meters) above the

water. Style: Neo-Gothic-open truss design.• Cables: Made of steel wire. 4 gigantic cables, with over 5,000 steel

wires within the massive cables.• 600 workers, over 30 deaths, including the chief engineer, John

Roebling• $15 million• River span: 1,595 feet (486 meters)• Carries Motor vehicles (cars only) (Pedestrians and bicycles-

pedestrian walkway was intentionally built above the roadway.• Over 150,000 people crossed on opening day in 1883.• Elevated trains (until 1944).• Streetcars (until 1950).

“Love Locks”

Couples leave padlocks on the bridge and throw the keys into the river as a show of everlasting love.

Manhattan Bridge

Subway routes between Brooklyn and Lower Manhattan

Marty reading a “QR code” with a “bar code scanner” app on his cell phone at the bus stop which takes you to the MTA website and tells you when the next 3 busses will arrive.

Bicycle rental

Car2Go rental

Escalator for your shopping cart in Target

Barclays Center (2012) is a multi-purpose indoor arena in Brooklyn.

Brooklyn College • Senior college of the City University of New York (CUNY)

• Established in 1930 by the New York City Board of Higher Education, Brooklyn College became the first public coeducational liberal arts college in New York City.

• The 26-acre campus is known for its great beauty, and is often regarded as "the poor man's Harvard" because of its low tuition and reputation for academic excellence (former President, Robert Hess, responded to the moniker by saying "I like to think of Harvard as the rich man's Brooklyn College").

• The school was ranked as the most beautiful campus and in the top ten for value, diversity, and location by The Princeton Review in 2003 and in the top fifty for value in 2009.

Opera concert at Brooklyn College

One of the many “bodegas” in Brooklyn

Brooklyn Botanical Gardens (BBG) Facts

• Founded in 1910 , 52 acres and located in the Prospect Park neighborhood, • Includes a number of specialty "gardens within the Garden“: Rock garden,

Shakespeare Garden, Cherry Esplanade, Fragrance, Rose Garden• The Steinhardt Conservatory has three climate-themed plant pavilions: tropical,

warm temperate, and desert floras, a white cast-iron and glass aquatic plant house, and a bonsai museum

• The Garden holds over 10,000 taxa of plants and each year has over 900,000 visitors

• BBG has more than 200 cherry trees of forty-two Asian species and cultivated varieties, making it one of the foremost cherry-viewing sites outside of Japan.

• BBG's Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden was the first Japanese garden to be created in an American public garden.

• The BBG Children's Garden is the oldest continually operating children's garden within a botanic garden in the world. It was opened in 1914.

• Free on Tuesdays

This is a straight sidewalk when photographed using the Camera’s “panorama” feature looking 180 degrees.Marty could not resist trying this out.

Sandy RemixInteractive sculpture constructed entirely of salvaged natural material from the Garden, including dozens of trees felled by Hurricanes Sandy and Irene

The Rock Garden is built around 18 boulders left behind by the glacier during the Ice Age

WilliamsburgA Brooklyn neighborhood with excellent access to Manhattan that is experiencing a steady gentrification that has lead to rising housing costs and boisterous nightlife. Hasidic Jews first moved to the neighborhood in the years prior to WWII

Our son Mark singing on stage at the Iguana Club

Green-Wood Cemetery Facts

• Founded in 1838 as a rural cemetery in King’s County

• It was a popular tourist attraction in the 1850s and was the place most famous New Yorkers who died during the second half of the nineteenth century were buried.

• It is still an operating cemetery with approximately 600,000 graves spread out over 478 acres

• The rolling hills and dales, several ponds and an on-site chapel provide an environment that still draws visitor

• Quote from the New York Times in 1866: “It is the ambition of the New Yorker to live upon Fifth Avenue, to take his airings in the [Central] Park, and to sleep with his fathers in Green-Wood.”

• Many famous permanent residents: Augustus Allen, Henry Ward Beecher, Leonard Bernstein, Louis Comfort Tiffany, Duncan Phyfe, Henry Steinway, Elias Howe, Samuel Morse, Colgate, Wesson, Squib

Main entrance to Green-Wood Cemetery

Chapel constructed in 1910-1911

Gothic Revival arch entrance constructed in 1860s.

A colony of monk parakeets nest in the landmarked gatehouse’s gothic spires. These blue-green parrots, native to the mountainous regions of Argentina, are classified as released exotics. Legend has it that the now-wild birds escaped in the 1960s when a crate of caged monk parakeet broke open at JFK airport.

DeWitt Clinton

The grave of DeWitt Clinton, mayor of NYC and governor of New York state, became Green-Wood’s first tourist attraction.

Unusual pyramid-shaped mausoleum of author Albert Ross Parsons mixes Christian religious statuary with Egyptian symbolism

Battle of Brooklyn

August 27, 1776

The first battle after the Declaration of Independence & the largest battle of the entire American Revolution. It was fought across much of Brooklyn, including this ground.

Civil War Soldier’s Monument (erected in 1869) on Battle Hill (highest elevation in Brooklyn and site of Revolutionary War battle)

Civil War soldiers with drummer boy statute in background on the right. Statue is a tribute to Clarence Mackenzie, who at age 13 , became Brooklyn’s first war casualty.

The Prentiss brothers fought on different sides in the Civil War but were buried together

William H Beard (1824-1900), painter of Bulls and Bears representing the market cycle

Do-Hum-Me was the eighteen-year-old daughter of a chief of the Sac Indians, died of complications of a cold

Pyramid-shaped tomb of ASPCA founder Henry Bergh

In 2006, the bas-relief sculpture commemorating Bergh was unveiled to the public in a ceremony in which people were allowed for the first time in over a century to bring their pets into the cemetery

Bucolic setting of Green-Wood was originally unused farmland

Hillside mausoleums

Roosevelt Family plot

Gravestone of the infamous William Magear “Boss” Tweed

Steinway MausoleumThe structure is sometimes opened for cemetery events such as Open House New York and a Steinway piano is brought in to provide music.

John MatthewsFather of the soft drink industry

His monument , which he helped to design , was voted “mortuary monument of the year” in 1870

View across Sylvan Water, one of four lakes in Green-Wood

View of chapel from across Valley Water

In the 19th C, snow removal was unheard of in winter months so bodies were store in special receiving vaults to await burial in the spring.

Joire Swarovski cut crystal chandelier (15,000 crystals), cascades 35 feet

Magnolia Bakery in Rockefeller Plaza

Rockefeller Plaza

Lego store displayof Rockefeller

Plaza

Cab ride through Hasidic section of Williamsburg, coming into Brooklyn from LaGuardia Airport

Mark’s apartment near Brooklyn College

• Outside patio

• View of Brooklyn Bridge from the roof

• interior

George E. Gale House, 1905Classic Revival

John C. Woodull House, 1905Queen Anne/Colonial Revival

Examples of apartment housing in Brooklyn

Pendant HallApartment building (right) was built in 1926

Prospect Park Facts

• 585 acre urban park; opened to the public on October 19, 1867

• Designed by Frederick Olmsted and Calvert Vaux after their completion of Manhattan's Central Park. They were more pleased with Prospect Park

• During the American Revolution the Park was a site of the Battle of Long Island, also known as the Battle of Brooklyn

• About 8 million visitors annually

• Main attractions include 90 acre Long Meadow, the Boat House, a zoo, Brooklyn’s only lake, bandshell (hosts free concerts), the Ravine, an extensive man-made watercourse.

Abraham Lincoln Memorial in Concert Grove, with Oriental Pavilion in the background

WWI Monument

Concert Grove

Oriental Pavilion, built in 1870’sVery much in need of restoration now

Cleft Ridge Arch

The Camperdown Elm

Was planted in 1872. It’s one of only a few surviving trees in the world grafted from an elm on the estate of the Earl of Camperdown in Scotland.

It’s unique in that it cannot reproduce by itself, and its branches grow nearly parallel to the ground. A beneficial side effect of this “new” elm species, is it’s immunity to Dutch Elm disease which decimated the species in North America in the last 1800’s.

The Boathouse (1904) on Lullwater

This is the third carousel in Prospect Park. Previous two both burned. This one was installed in 1952, built from parts of two Coney Island carousels (dating from 1912).

The Malkin Band Organ is a Wurlitzer Model 153 Organ Band, originally manufactured circa 1916 and completely restored in 1990.)

Built by a Dutch family in the 18th-century farming village of Flatbush, Lefferts Historic House features a working garden, historic artifacts, period rooms and exhibits. It is used as an educational outreach program to depict in the 1820’s.

Prospect Park Zoo (12 acre) opened in 1936. Completely renovated from 1988-1993

Looking north towards Long Meadowon East Drive (only open to northbound vehicles M-F 7-9AM)

Dogs are permitted off-leash from 5-9AM and 9-1AM in Long Meadow, Nethermead, and the Peninsula Meadow.

Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Arch (1892) in Grand Army Plaza at north of the park

Central branch of the Brooklyn Public Library is in Prospect Park. Art Deco building is shaped like an open book with 50 foot high entry portico

Bust of John F. Kennedy

Grand Army Plaza

Bailey Fountain (1932), third at this site. Renovated in 1956 & 2006

Lower East Side Tenement Museum

• National historic site located at 97 Orchard Street in the Lower East Side The five-story brick Manhattan.

• The five-story brick tenement building was home to an estimated 7,000 people, from over 20 nations, between 1863 and 1935.

• It was modified several times to conform with the city’s developing housing laws. Modifications over the years included the installation of indoor plumbing (cold running water, two toilets per floor), an air shaft, and gas followed by electricity.

• In 1935, rather than continue to modify the building, the landlord evicted the residents, boarded the upper windows, and sealed the upper floors, leaving only the stoop-level and basement storefronts open for business. No further changes were made until the Lower East Side Tenement Museum became involved with the building in 1988. As such, the building stands as a kind of time capsule, reflecting 19th and early 20th century living conditions and the changing notions of what constitutes acceptable housing.

Eldridge Street Synagogue

Built in 1887, this was the first large temple built in the US by European Jews

Chinatown

Little ItalyOnce known for its large population of Italians, today the neighborhood consists of only a few Italian stores and restaurants.

Brooklyn Museum

• At 560,000 square feet , it is NYC’s third largest art museum in physical size and holds an art collection with roughly 1.5 million works.

• founded in 1895, the Beaux-Arts building, designed by was planned to be the largest art museum in the world.

• Significant areas of the collection include antiquities, specifically their collection of Egyptian antiquities spanning over 3,000 years. American art is heavily represented, starting at the Colonial period. Also, extensive Decorative Arts Galleries and Period Rooms (such as the Moorish Smoking Room from the John D. Rockefeller House) and even entire houses.

• Target First Saturdays offers free art and entertainment programs every month (except September) from 5 to 11 p.m.

Jan Martense Schenck House, Flatlands, Brooklyn,circa 1675-1676

The Dinner Party

• An installation artwork by feminist art Judy Chicago, with the goal to "end the ongoing cycle of omission in which women were written out of the historical record….

• Widely regarded as the first epic feminist artwork, it functions as a symbolic history of women in Western civilization.

• There are 39 elaborate place settings arranged along a triangular table for 39 mythical and historical Eleanor of Aquitaine, and Margaret Sanger are among the guests.

• The completed Dinner Party took six years and $250,000 to complete, not including volunteer labor

Reform Protestant Dutch of Flatbush, founded in 1654, under the direction Peter Stuyvesant

Tombstone for a Van Der Bilt. Wording is in Dutch

• Four year public high school on Flatbush Ave

• Founded in 1786 as Erasmus Hall Academy

• First secondary school chartered by the New York State Regents

• Turned over to the public school system in 1896

• The original academy bldg still stands in the middle of the courtyard of the current school

Erasmus Hall High School

The clap-board-sided, Georgian-Federal-style original Academy building (Below)

Art Deco Sears, Roebuck Store in Flatbush, Brooklyn, built in 1932

King’s Theater

• As one of the five original “Loew’s Wonder Theatres,” the Kings was one of the most exquisite theatres in the nation and officially opened its doors to the public September 7th, 1929

• originally ordained a movie and live performance theatre of epic proportion. • The Loew’s Kings Theatre would become the epicenter of cinema and live performance in

the thriving Brooklyn arts and shopping district along Flatbush Avenue.

• With the depression and the decline of vaudeville in the early 1930s, the theatre converted to showing only feature films. From the 1950s through the mid-1970s, the Loew’s Kings Theatre faced a steady decline. With the onset of multiplexes, it was nearly impossible for the Kings to compete with only a single screen in its arsenal.

• Due to low attendance, high maintenance costs, and the decline of the surrounding neighborhood, Loew’s dropped the Kings Theatre. It officially closed its doors on August 30th, 1977 and sat shuttered for more than 37 years.

• Today, the $95 million project features an authentic restoration of the original 1929 design.

and the transcendent theatre will host hundreds of performances annually and has begun a revitalization of the neighborhood

http://www.kingstheatre.com/multimedia/virtual-tours

http://www.kingstheatre.com/multimedia/virtual-tours

Brooklyn Heights

• An affluent residential neighborhood

• Originally referred to as Brooklyn Village, it has been a prominent area of Brooklyn since 1834.

• neighborhood is noted for its low-rise architecture and its many brownstone rowhouses, most of them built prior to the Civil War (nearly 700) . A great range of architectural styles is represented, including Greek Revival, Italianate, Second Empire, Victorian Gothic, Classical Revival, and a few late Federal from the early 19th century.

• In 1965, a large part of Brooklyn Heights was protected from unchecked development by the creation of the Brooklyn Heights Historic District, the first such district in New York City. The district was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1966.

Brooklyn Heights PromenadeA pedestrian walkway over an interstate highway

That’s all folks!!