Browsing Tag

Brooklyn History

Food, News

VIDEO: Red Hook Fairway Determined To Come Back Better Than Ever

November 15, 2012

As BHB reported November 9, Red Hook’s Fairway Market suffered major damage from Hurricane Sandy. with the 52,000sf waterfront grocery at the base of Van Brunt taking on 5 feet of water and closed “indefinitely” as rebuilding ensues. Red Hook store General Manager Andy Zuleta has posted a video showing the destruction, cleanup efforts and his optimism for a bigger, badder locale in the near future. See it here, posted on November 13.


Source: Brooklyn Heights Blog
http://brooklynheightsblog.com/archives/51906

From the Web

Downtown Brooklyn

Image Of The Day: Burgers & Franks Along Downtown Brooklyn’s Fulton Mall

October 25, 2012

This Hamburger/Frankfurter joint in Downtown Brooklyn along Fulton Mall—just across from the burgeoning City Point mixed-use project—continues to do stellar business, but as the neighborhood continues to gentrify by the week, will it soon be a memory of bygone times? Digitally enhanced a la 1960s, taken October 2012. (Photo: Chuck Taylor)


Source: Brooklyn Heights Blog
http://brooklynheightsblog.com/archives/49730

From the Web

Brooklyn Heights, Downtown Brooklyn, Landmark Preservation

WSJ: The Long & Storied History Of Gage & Tollner At 374 Fulton Street

October 23, 2012

The storied locale that housed Gage & Tollner restaurant from 1892 through the beginning of the millennium is both an endearing and bittersweet tale of Downtown Brooklyn’s history. New York City landmarked the eatery’s exterior in 1974 and a year later, its interior. It was the first landmarked dining room and the city’s third interior landmark of any kind. The first two were the New York Public Library and Grant’s Tomb.

In a lengthy piece in the Wall Street Journal, writer Barry Newman discusses the 120-year-old heritage of 374 Fulton Street, from the seafood restaurant owner’s purchase of the building in 1919 to its eventual demise. WSJ offers: In 1976, Fulton Street became a pedestrian mall, with no automobile traffic. The streets were scary, and the old crowd began eating elsewhere.” In 1985 then-owner Ed Dewey decided to sell the famous destination. In 1995, it filed for bankruptcy, before closing around 2004.

Since, it has held T.G.I. Friday’s, which lasted until 2007. Arby’s came next, in January 2010. It endured for just eight months. And in the summer of 2011, a discount costume jewelry store opened in the spot. WJS says, “The Landmarks commission says the landlord asked for a permit to make alterations after they were made. It denied the application for lack of detail and, this month, issued a violation. The commission, still lacking a satisfactory response, has issued another violation that can lead to a fine of $5,000 a day.”

Meanwhile, many of the original lighting fixtures from Gage & Tollner were stolen. Some mirrors and arches are said to survive behind bright pink panels. And what of the famous eatery that is no longer? Its last owners, Peter Aschkenasy and Joe Chirico still own the name. The latter says he’d like to reopen the restaurant “in a place where you can get to the front door.” And its Landmarked decor? In New York, he says, a crew can “replicate that in no time.” (Photo: Chuck Taylor/July 2010)


Source: Brooklyn Heights Blog
http://brooklynheightsblog.com/archives/49602

From the Web

Brooklyn Heights

Look Familiar? ABC’s ’666 Park Avenue’ Films Pilot Interiors At Borough Hall

September 30, 2012

While new ABC TV drama-horror series “666 Park Avenue” may be based on New York’s Upper East Side, its pilot episode features interior scenes filmed here in Brooklyn Heights. The show—which launches Sunday at 10 p.m.—stars “Lost’s” Terry O’Quinn and Vanessa Williams, and is based on the Gabriella Pierce novel. It follows couple Gavin and Olivia Doran, owners of UES hotel The Drake, whose corridors and upscale tenants are haunted by a wicked force.

In early August, the main floor of Brooklyn’s iconic mid-1800s Borough Hall was utilized for a scene that we’ll see in the show, with men decked in tuxedos and women in formal evening dress. The Wall Street Journal reports that the hall acts as a stand-in for the mansion of a fictional New York mayor, while the show “showcases some of the city’s most impressive, and at times forbidding, classic architecture.”

Dan Davis, production designer for “666 Park Avenue,” says, “It’s the mythical New York everyone dreams about but no one who lives here really knows.” The series’ primary exterior shots, meanwhile, are filmed at the Ansonia, on Broadway between 73rd and 74th streets. Other NYC locations you’ll see in the series include The Drake’s “secret room” in the basement of the Church of the Intercession at West 155th Street in Washington Heights. The nearby Hispanic Society of America, a 1904 Beaux-Arts library and museum on Audubon Terrace, will also appear; as well as the Flatiron Building.


Source: Brooklyn Heights Blog
http://brooklynheightsblog.com/archives/48480

From the Web

Downtown Brooklyn, History

Take A Look At Me Then: Downtown Brooklyn’s Fulton Street, 1909/1940s

September 6, 2012

Above, “Bird’s Eye View Of Fulton Street,” December 1909. Below, “Fulton Street, the heart of Brooklyn’s shopping district,” 1940s.
(Postcards: Cardcow.com)


Source: Brooklyn Heights Blog
http://brooklynheightsblog.com/archives/47187

From the Web

Brooklyn Heights

Brooklyn Heights Gets A Shout-Out During DNC’s Opening Night

September 5, 2012

Brooklyn Heights got its very own shout-out during the opening night of the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte Tuesday night, as Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley opened his speech with a odd little rant about his home state’s history some 225 years ago.

Within the first minute of his adddress—which aired just before the 10 o’clock hour (no major network coverage, but MSNBC and PBS were on it)—the guv said, “Since the first days of the American Revolution, Maryland has been called the Old Line State because of this true story of a group of soldiers called the Maryland Line: (etc. etc. etc.). It is August 27th, 1776, two months since our Declaration of Independence. Outnumbered and surrounded, Washington’s army is about to be crushed forever at Brooklyn Heights. The British are closing in.”

He goes on for another minute about Maryland’s deep-rooted history, before transitioning into a relevant point: “Together with President Obama, we are moving America forward, not back.” (Read the full text of his speech here.) Go, Brooklyn Heights! Yes we can! (Photo: AP)


Source: Brooklyn Heights Blog
http://brooklynheightsblog.com/archives/47074

From the Web

Downtown Brooklyn

Quote Of the Day: Downtown Brooklyn ‘Back To The Future,’ M. Markowitz

August 31, 2012

From The New York Times article, “National Retailers Discover a Brooklyn Mall,” August 28, 2012.
(Graphic: Chuck Taylor)


Source: Brooklyn Heights Blog
http://brooklynheightsblog.com/archives/46643

From the Web

Brooklyn Heights Then & Now: Colonade Row At 43-49 Willow Place

August 26, 2012

Colonnade Row, built at 43-49 Willow Place in 1846, between Joralemon and State streets, is one of few examples in Brooklyn Heights of a particular style of Greek Revival. It was most popular around the late 1830s, with massive columns running the length of the buildings to give them a good bit of drama. Across the street is a second colonnaded home that is beginning to look more like a haunted house—originally part of four, although the other two have been “renovated” beyond recognition. The architect is unknown.
Vintage photo by Berenice Abbott, 1936. Current photo by Jeff Dobbins, New York Explorer.


Source: Brooklyn Heights Blog
http://brooklynheightsblog.com/archives/45690

From the Web

Brooklyn Heights Then & Now: Colonnade Row At 43-49 Willow Place

August 26, 2012

Colonnade Row, built at 43-49 Willow Place in 1846, between Joralemon & State streets, is one of few examples in Brooklyn Heights of a particular style of Greek Revival. It was most popular in the late 1830s, with massive columns running the length of the buildings to give them a good bit of drama. Across the street is a second Colonnade home that more resembles a haunted house—originally part of four, although the other two have been “renovated” beyond recognition. The architect is unknown.
Vintage photo by Berenice Abbott, 1936. Current photo by Jeff Dobbins, New York Explorer.


Source: Brooklyn Heights Blog
http://brooklynheightsblog.com/archives/45690

From the Web

Brooklyn Heights, Landmark Preservation, Real Estate

NY Observer’s Deep Dish On Willowtown Mansion Sale

August 22, 2012

The manse at 40 Willow Place that sold for $7.3M, as we reported Tuesday, gets a deeper look in a story published by the New York Observer. It begins: “The modern masterpiece may not be able to command a sales price like some of its Brooklyn Heights neighbors—to wit, Truman Capote’s old abode at 70 Willow Street set a borough record when it sold for $12 million in March—but in the eyes of the tax assessor’s office, it is the finest in the borough.”

The Observer reports that new owners Charles Brian and Elizabeth O’Kelley, who moved from a West Village penthouse, will pay a heap of taxes for the 45-foot, 6,500sf home, which has an assessed market value of $6.35M (compared to the Capote house, valued at $5.14M). Sellers William and Kathleen Reiland bought the house for $3.1M in 2005.

Further, the property was first listed by Corcoran broker Deborah Rieders last October, asking $7.5M. It briefly entered contract in late fall, but didn’t close and returned to the market in April. She notes it is one of only three other modern houses in the neighborhood, all built on empty lots in the 1960s. Designed by Mary and Joseph Merz (among BHB’s Top 10 Most Interesting People in 2011), the home was featured in a 1966 issue of Architectural Record and is landmarked, despite its more recent vintage.

Rieders says that typically, it’s the older “grand dames” of the Heights that tend to fetch the neighborhood’s highest prices, in the $10M to $12M range. The five-bedroom, five-bath home has double-height ceilings with skylights, a 1,500-square-foot great room with a slate burning fireplace, a glass penthouse with a Japanese soaking tub and a rear curtain on the living spaces and bedrooms “that brings light streaming into the house all day,” according to the listing.

See more photos in the sideshow at the Observer here. (Photo: New York Observer, via Corcoran)


Source: Brooklyn Heights Blog
http://brooklynheightsblog.com/archives/46202

From the Web