Admiral's Row, Brooklyn Navy Yard, Brooklyn

Admiral's Row (also called Officer's Row) is a row of Second Empire-style homes (1864-1901), some dating back to the Civil War, formerly used by Naval officers at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, now owned by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on a plot of 8 acres. In 2001, the last of the Brooklyn Navy Yard was signed over to the City with one exception - Admiral's Row. While the Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corp. has declared that the residences have been damaged beyond repair, the report by the USACE (http://www.nan.usace.army.mil/business/buslinks/admiral/index.php) refutes this claim and meet all eligibility requirements for the National Register of Historic Places.

These sadly abandoned buildings are visible through the brush and vines along Flatbush Ave. starting at Navy St. The designation of the buildings is labelled Quarters B through L (Quarters A is not located on the row and is happily a well-preserved Federal style mansion off of Little St. (see blog). Quarters B was occupied by Commodore Matthew C. Perry while he was Commandant of the Brooklyn Navy Yard. As can be seen from the photos taken of the barely visible front facades of the homes, through the iron fence on Flatbush Ave., the homes are dilapidated, open to the elements and animals, as well as vandals.

The Officer's Row Project is collecting photos, which can be seen at http://www.officersrow.org/. One project is interviewing former tenants, called the Admiral's Row Oral History (AROH). The Kingston Lounge (who advertise as guerilla preservationists and urban archeologists) have fabulous photos at
http://kingstonlounge.blogspot.com/2008/02/admirals-row.html and http://kingstonlounge.blogspot.com/2008/03/admirals-row-further-exploration.html.

Still hungry for more photos ? go to the Pasilalinic-Sympathetic Compass at

http://sympathetic-compass.blogspot.com/2008/03/admirals-row-introduction.html.

1838 Marine Hospital Annex, Brooklyn Navy Yard, Brooklyn

Deep in the heart of Brooklyn lies some urban archeology that is the closest thing New York City has to Cambodia's Angkor Wat. The Navy Yard Hospital Building and the Surgeon's Residence are both designated as NYC Landmark buildings. Technically, they lie outside of the Brooklyn Navy Yard and can be viewed through the gates on Flushing Ave. - they were referred to as an "Annex of the U.S. Naval Receiving Station, Brooklyn, NY." The property was acquired in 1966 by the City of New York and administered by the Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corp.

During the Civil War, the hospital would supply over 1/3 of the medicines used by the Union troops.

According to the AIA Guide to NYC, the Greek Revival hospital is made of marble quarried locally (Sing Sing) by those hapless prisoners. AIA suggests that such buildings were inspirational for Albert Speer's visions for Hitler's Berlin. Martin E. Thompson was a talented Greek Revivalist architect. Excellent photos of both the Hospital and the French Empire Surgeon's House (with a concave-profiled mansard roof) appear on the web inadvertently uploaded to the Quarters A NRHP site at http://pdfhost.focus.nps.gov/docs/NHLS/Photos/74001252.pdf. A tall flagpole and obscure memorial commemorating soldiers who died in the Canton River (now Guangzhou and Pearl River) in 1856 during the Battle of the Barrier Forts at the beginning of the 2nd Opium War are the only clues of a stately lawn long forgotten. A photo in Berner's The Brooklyn Naval Yard shows the Canton memorial originally stood at the Sands St. gate.

The Kingston Lounge (who advertise as guerrilla preservationists and urban archeologist's) have fabulous photos of the Annex at http://kingstonlounge.blogspot.com/2009/02/brooklyn-navy-yard-hospital-complex.html.

DUMBO & Vinegar Hill, Brooklyn

DUMBO (Down Under Manhattan Bridge Overpass) and adjacent Vinegar Hill lie east of the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Spectacular views abound of the bridge, especially a shot I took on Washington St. (at Water St.) showing the Empire State Building framed by the columns of the bridge.
Nearby, at the Brooklyn Bridge park, it is hard not to see brides & grooms posing for photos. Heading towards Vinegar Hill, there is a fabulous mural on Water St. (at Jay St.).

Vinegar Hill is very quiet, with tree lined cobble stone streets comprised of 1860s Belgian bricks. The neighborhood is named after a battle of Irish Independence, since the local population was largely Irish in the 1800s.

Rounding the corner from Evans St. onto Little St., is a breathtaking Navy Yard commandant's mansion, in the Federal style, known as Quarters A, possibly built in 1806 by Charles Bulfinch (architect of the U.S. Capital). The National Register of Historic Places application is on the web at http://pdfhost.focus.nps.gov/docs/NHLS/Text/74001252.pdf and http://pdfhost.focus.nps.gov/docs/NHLS/Photos/74001252.pdf and indicates Bulfinch designed the house in association with John McComb, Jr. All the nails are handmade of wrought iron. The most noted resident (1841-1843) was Commodore Matthew C. Perry, who lived in the house 10 years prior to his opening of Japan. I have a brass and glass encased mantel clock that was believed to be on Perry's ship to Japan. You can see an abandoned 1950s Studebaker behind the gates. This house was forfeited by the Navy in 1966 when the yard was decommissioned, but, uniquely was sold to a private individual. The balance of the Yard was acquired by the City of New York for one dollar.

West Indian American Day Carnival & Parade, Eastern Parkway, Crown Heights, Brooklyn

Labor Day saw the 43rd annual West Indian American Day Carnival & Parade, which has been taking place in Brooklyn since the 1960s. The earliest known Carnival street activity in New York was held during the 1940's on the streets of Harlem. During the 1960s, a Trinidadian - Rufus Goring, brought Carnival to Brooklyn. It is the biggest cultural event in New York City, attracting upwards of 3 million people. It is organized by the West Indian American Day Carnival Association (http://www.wiadca.com/ ). The parade goes along Eastern Parkway from Utica Ave. west to Grand Army Plaza. Olmsted's grand malled parkway is the ideal venue for a parade that is mind boggling in size. This is the closest that America gets to Carnival in Trinidad. Just like in Port-o-Spain, the parade route is filled with flat bed trucks loaded with gigantic generators powering bone-crushing speakers - the base notes rattle your body. The dancers "play mas" dressed in their lavish costumes.

The Parade is also complemented by "J’ouvert," the starting festivities of the Carnival. including the Steel Band Panorama Competition on Saturday night at the Brooklyn Museum. J'ouvert is a contraction of Jour ouvert or daybreak/dawn.

Bay Ridge, Brooklyn

Bay Ridge sits on a bluff overlooking New York Bay, making it an attractive summer playground for Manhattan's wealthy in the late 1800s. Very little remains of the old mansions, but the area has great views of the water and the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge.

The pier at Bay Ridge Ave. gives spectacular views of lower Manhattan, the Statue of Liberty, and New Jersey. Brooklyn's 9/11 Memorial is here, a copper statue in the shape of an 18th-century fire-fighter's trumpet. You can walk or bike all the way to the bridge along the shore, a spot where scenes from Saturday Night Fever were filmed.

Notable homes appear on 76th St., one of which was built by the Founder of Blue Cross in 1900. The other house with circular porch dates to 1865. Most interesting is a rare example of Arts & Crafts architecture on Narrows Ave. (82nd-83rd Sts.), the Howard E. and Jessie Jones House (1916).

Overlook Historic District, Federal Hill, Bristol, Connecticut

After years of painstaking legwork, the City of Bristol adopted a Local Historic District on Federal Hill called the Overlook Local Historic District, so named due to the hilltop elevation of many of the industrialist mansions built in the period 1915-1930. It was adopted by the City of Bristol Feb 13, 2007.

Two of the Georgian Revivals shown here, the Townsend G. Treadway house and Marlborough House (Edward Ingraham mansion) were both designed by Madison Ave. firm Murphy & Dana in 1915 and 1918 respectively. Dana was a scion of noted men of letters Richard Henry Dana (author Two Years Before the Mast) and poet Henry Wordsworth Longfellow. The Treadway house was featured in Architecture (xxxv, May, 1917) and has a matching Carriage House. Treadway was a banker and Ingraham a mantel clock maker.

The white Neoclassical mansion featuring a colossal tetrastyle portico comprised of rare Scamozzi columns was built by Ernest R. Burwell (VP New Departure Co., manufacturer of bicycle bells) and designed by New Britain architect Walter Crabtree. It was featured in Modern Connecticut Homes and Homecrafts (1925).

The Tudor mansion (1930) is Chimney Crest (named for good reason as it features 4 massive corbelled chimneys) and was built by Harry Clarke Barnes at the height of the Depression and designed by New Britain firm Perry & Bishop. The adjacent Georgian Revival Copper Ledges (1924), home of Fuller Forbes Barnes, was the pièce de résistance of Bristol architect Harold Hayden and has a unique siting on top of what was once a copper mine. The dramatically situated pool is under repair (see loggia). The Barnes family was an early manufacturer of springs. The Barnes Co. was founded in 1857 and still exists today as Barnes Group Inc. with global operations in aerospace and industrial sectors.

Manhattan Bridge, DUMBO, Brooklyn

DUMBO, or Directly Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass, is resplendent with spectacular views everywhere you look. Walking the pedestrian walkway on the Manhattan Bridge is a very different experience than the Brooklyn Bridge. The walkway is narrow and is alongside the train, which comes every minute or two and is very VERY loud. Approaching the pedestrian stair one passes through the Brooklyn Bridge Park, which, believe it or not, has a beach, albeit rocky, fronting the East River. Hard to imagine swimming there, but it is a neat place to hang out.

The Manhattan Bridge was the last of the East River crossings, built in 1910. was designed by Leon Moisseiff, who later designed the infamous original Tacoma Narrows Bridge that opened and collapsed in 1940. Now get this - since the tracks were on the outer part of the bridge, passing trains caused the structure to tilt and sway. The wobble worsened as trains became longer and heavier. The City failed to maintain the bridge properly, and the tracks were closed for repairs beginning in 1986, blocking the paths of trains that crossed the bridge and reducing the number of trains passing between Manhattan and Brooklyn. Repairs lasted 18 years. Safety aside, the beautiful symmetry of the cables, viewed up close from the walkway, is amazing. This is a colossal structure. The Bridge is featured prominently in director Sergio Leone's gangster epic Once Upon a Time in America.