of the Dime Savings Bank — remember the interior?
The last remaining block of one of Brooklyn's oldest roads
It's a fairly nondescript row house at first glance, but as the glances add up you start to wonder about the blacked-out windows, unusual front doors, and bright red subway standpipe connection (which is blocked from view by that little black hatchback).
As it turns out, this building is actually an incognito fan plant and emergency exit for the subway system. It stands above the Brooklyn end of the Joralemon Street Tunnel, which carries the 4 and 5 trains between Brooklyn and Manhattan, and it was converted from a residential building into a ventilation station around 1908 when the tunnel opened. (Pay no mind to the post-9/11 paranoiac security concerns voiced in the NY Times article linked above. This structure's location is hardly a secret; in fact, the Times itself had printed its address previously.)
In the early years of the 20th century, the city began installing networks of high-pressure water mains and hydrants in the business districts of Manhattan and Brooklyn and in Coney Island to improve firefighting capabilities in those areas. The mains were pressurized by pumping stations like this one on Joralemon Street. This station was also equipped to draw salt water from the nearby harbor in the event that the supply of fresh water from the city were cut off by some accident or disaster.
Advances in fire-truck pumping technology eventually rendered the high-pressure system redundant. The pumping stations were abandoned by the late 1950s; the old Joralemon station has since been converted into the rather dopily named Pumphouse Mews town houses.
While these goofy dancing bears are an obvious sign of Henry Stern's influence, a more subtle trace of his unusual personality can be found in the very name of the park in which said bears are doing their frolicking. It was once known as Atlantic Playground, simply (and boringly) inheriting the name of an adjacent street: Atlantic Avenue. But, as we've learned, Mr. Stern was not a fan of straightforward, unimaginative appellations. As told on the Parks Department's website, here's the tortuous route he took to get to Palmetto:
Palmetto Playground’s nomenclature was inspired by the names of the surrounding streets: Atlantic Avenue, Columbia Place, and State Street. Columbia is the capitol of South Carolina, an Atlantic state, and the state tree is the Cabbage Palmetto, hence, Palmetto Playground.UPDATE: On May 3, 2013, Palmetto Playground was renamed Adam Yauch Park in honor of the late member of the Beastie Boys.
