Gloaming Roaming on Atlantic Avenue
I was stumbling in DUMBO on the day after Christmas. It remains a favorite part of town despite the street fairs and flea markets that now dominate it even in the coldest weather. I briefly worked at a temp job in DUMBO in February and March 2015, which turned out to be the last consistently cold and snowy winter to date. And when it’s cold in DUMBO, the wind off the water whips around those old cardboard factories, warehouses and coffee importing buildings. A few years ago I was in DUMBO on what was really the first hot day of the year and it was packed, as I learned trying to get into the Shake Shack at Old Fulton and Water that I had no problems with when working that winter job.
After leaving DUMBO I went back to the subway complex at Barclays Center via Atlantic Ave. That part of the walk was between three and four p.m. and darkness was beginning to settle in.
I began at the new Emily Roebling Plaza which was the final piece in the puzzle with Brooklyn Bridge Park, connecting its western and northern sections under the Brooklyn Bridge. I’ve no doubt that the Bridge will be set off against a much different cityscape 150 years from now as it was when its construction began in 1870, when the tallest tower in downtown Manhattan was Trinity Church.
The first major bridge to span the East River was built between 1870 and 1883 and was designed by John Roebling, who died during construction after suffering a severe injury and tetanus. His son Washington took over for him but contracted caisson disease after working in the compressed air under the East River; he directed construction from his home in Brooklyn Heights, with his wife Emily relaying his instructions to the on-site builders after getting up to speed in engineering. The Brooklyn Bridge remains NYC’s only major stone-clad bridge and only suspension bridge in the area with diagonal cables. These were thought to be necessary during construction but have been retained for their unique appearance. It formerly transported horsecars, trolleys and elevated trains, most or all of which have disappeared from the NYC scene.
Emily Roebling (1843-1903), wife of Washington Roebling, assisted in the Bridge’s construction when her husband Washington was struck down. From her close association with her husband’s work as well as her own education, she knew engineering principles and with his help, she was able to explain his instructions to engineers. When bridge trustees wished to replace Washington Roebling a year before the bridge opened, her powers of persuasion were instrumental in keeping him on. She was on the first carriage to cross the Bridge when it formally opened in 1883.
#1-5 Old Fulton St. at the corner of Water is the home of a Shake Shack, whose price points are more suitable for a copy editor and itinerant street photographer. The corner building was constructed as The Franklin House in 1835 and according to NYC Landmarks was “the most important dining saloon and hotel in the [Fulton Ferry] District during the 19th Century.” For years the ground floor was occupied by Pete’s Downtown Restaurant.
The opening of the Brooklyn Bridge in 1883 caused Fulton Ferry, and the stretch of Fulton Street that led to it, to gradually decline. By 1939, the writers of the WPA Guide to New York City could say: “In the early part of the nineteenth century there was a cluster of houses, taverns stables, shanties, and stores at Fulton Ferry. The region, originally called /the Ferry;’ later ‘Old Ferry’ (when a new ferry was established at the foot of Main Street in 1796), blossomed into a pleasant residential neighborhood. The construction of the Brooklyn Bridge destroyed its beauty and the neighborhood became a slum. Fulton Street, in this section, is now a sort of Brooklyn Bowery, with flophouses, small shops, rancid restaurants, haunted by vagabonds and derelicts. Talleyrand once lived in a Fulton Street farmhouse opposite Hicks Street, and Tom Paine in a house at the corner of Sands and Fulton Streets.”
For decades, the old ferry region at the beginning of Fulton St. was a tomb. The Brooklyn Bridge and the BQE shuttled traffic past it, and it was forgotten by most Brooklynites. For a time, it even lost its name, as the stretch was called Cadman Plaza West, even though this section doesn’t border the lengthy park built as urban renewal in the 1950s.
The only access between Joralemon St. and Doughty St. allowing Brooklyn Heights residents passage to Brooklyn Bridge Park is the Squibb Bridge, originating in Squibb Park on the Columbia Heights cliff. Dr. E.R. Squibb (1819-1900) was a pharmacologist whose lab was located nearby. Squibb became a major commercial manufacturer; its slogan was ”the priceless ingredient in every product is the honor and integrity of its maker.” The company merged with competitor Bristol-Meyers in 1989.
Squibb constructed a large manufacturing plant at 25-30 Columbia Heights in the mid-1920s until most of the company’s plants were relocated to New Brunswick, NJ beginning in the 1960s. Subsequently the plant was purchased by the Jehovah’s Witnesses and became The Watchtower, recognizable by the large red neon sign overlooking the East River. The Witnesses owned a lot of property in Brooklyn Heights in the latter 20th century including the Hotel Bossert on Montague St.
The first Squibb Bridge was built in 2012 with a lot of “give” causing it to swing and sway like Sammy Kaye when crossed, and after a lot of complaints it was indeed found to be structurally deficient. A new bridge that was conventionally rigid was constructed on its original pylons and opened in 2020.
Jumping a few blocks to Atlantic Ave. proper, #179 Atlantic refers the passerby to the home of Homer and Langley Collyer, a brownstone row house on the corner that the two Collyer brothers had occupied for 38 years between 1909-1947. They’d moved to the house with their parents, gynecologist Herman Collyer and his wife Susie; the doctor abandoned his family in 1919, passed away in 1923, and the two sons inherited their parents’ possessions and moved them into the 5th Ave. brownstone. Both brothers were Columbia University graduates, Homer earning a degree in admiralty law and Langley a degree in engineering, though he also apparently aspired to be a concert pianist.
After a series of attempts to burglarize the building by outsiders the brothers became reclusive, boarding up the windows, never throwing out any accumulated possessions and setting elaborate booby traps to foil any intruder. Eventually they’d collected numerous pianos, thousands of newspapers, and a model T Ford (living without gas or electricity, Langley had rigged up a generator from the car engine). Homer suffered a crippling stroke and lost his sight, forcing Langley to scour the neighborhood for scraps or cheap food, with water obtained from Mt. Morris Park fountains. The brownstone became suffused in squalor with dozens of stray cats, rodents and other vermin. The two brothers were finally found dead in the apartment in 1947; Langley had fallen victim to one of his own booby traps while Homer died of malnutrition. It took weeks to find his body amid all the accumulated junk. The authorities followed the stench.
Sahadi’s, 185-189, is the largest and most famous Middle Eastern food store on Atlantic Ave., opening in 1948. The business was instituted in 1895 by Abraham Sahadi on Washington St. in lower Manhattan. Unusually it occupies the ground floor of two separate buildings.
These buildings are in the eastern fringe of the Brooklyn Heights Historic District, the earliest so designated in 1965. All landmark district reports from the Landmarks Preservation Commission are online, and they’re simply scanned versions of the originals, thus the original typewritten 1965 report. While newer Landmarked districts get expansive, intensive reports on area histories with architectural details on every building in the district, the earliest such reports aren’t so thorough. However, #185 was built in the 1840s and #187-189 anywhere from 1880-1895; exact records seem to be absent.
The Brazen Head has been the name of this Atlantic Ave. tavern at #228 since 2000. “Brazen head” refers to one of the world’s first robots, a “talking head” made of brass or other metallic alloys that would answer questions, apparently a myth originating in the medieval period. The bar, though, likely references The Brazen Head pub in Dublin, Ireland, established in 1198 and over 800 years old (so they say).
Patmos is a Greek island in the Aegean Sea, where, by Christian tradition, St. John experienced the strange visions that led him to compose the Book of Revelation (to Catholics, the Book of the Apocalypse). On Atlantic Ave., it’s the name of the owner of this clothing store who vends her designs here, Marcia Patmos.
As a kid my parents and I would take lengthy trips of exploration on local buses, and one of the routes was the B-63 which ran down 5th and Atlantic Aves. to the waterfront. I remember being amused by the factory building at #423 Atlantic near Nevins that was emblazoned “Ex Lax” over its front entrance, since I knew that was the name of the “chocolate laxative” which was then advertised heavily on TV.
It was indeed an Ex-Lax factory, but closed sometime in the 1960s. It was an early residential conversion in 1979, when I was still attending St. Francis College a couple of blocks away. A few years ago I went on an Open House New York tour through one of the ultra-modern residences that have been carved out of the old factory, which once kept a “staff” of monkeys on hand for product testing. The monkeys’ old quarters, in which they were kept in cages, has been incorporated into one of the apartments.
The 34-story, 512-foot tall tower, One Hanson, which can be seen from western Queens, southern Brooklyn, and eastern Manhattan as well as the Bronx (from the Whitestone Bridge) was built as the offices of Williamsburg Bank from 1927-1928 by architects Halsey, McCormack and Helmer. The firm’s Robert Helmer wrote at the time that he was seeking to build a “cathedral dedicated to the furtherance of thrift and prosperity.” It was constructed in a style architectural experts call Byzantine Romanesque, with Art Deco touches, and has one of the largest four-faced clocks in the USA. For most of its existence it was home to offices of the Williamsburg(h) Savings Bank, but also a large collection of dentists and oral surgeons.
The vaulted marble banking hall on the ground floor with 63-foot vaulted ceilings, 40-foot windows and elaborate mosaics is a must-see experience. It was largely converted to condominiums in the early-2000s. It’s no longer the height champion of Brooklyn, but still retains the title of King of All Brooklyn Buildings.
—Kevin Walsh is the webmaster of the award-winning website Forgotten NY, and the author of the books Forgotten New York (HarperCollins, 2006) and also, with the Greater Astoria Historical Society, Forgotten Queens (Arcadia, 2013)