They're running out of places to bury people here at St. John Cemetery. In the photo above, we can see the former route of a path that has been removed (before and after) to make room for more graves.
a.k.a. Lucky Luciano, one of a staggering number of prominent mobsters buried here in St. John Cemetery
Angelo Siciliano was a "97-pound weakling" who transformed himself into Charles Atlas, the millionaire muscleman with the famously advertised mail-order fitness course.
From his 1989 NY Times obituary:
Mr. Mapplethorpe first gained widespread notice in the late 1970's for his elegantly composed, beautifully printed black-and-white photographs of the male figure, many of which were explicitly homoerotic. But he photographed the female nude with equal stylishness. Throughout his career he made portraits and still lifes of an almost sublime simplicity and intensity.
His photographs show a remarkable ability to give even the most common photographic subjects the status of icons.
One of Brooklyn's most successful beer brewers and the man behind the spectacular St. Barbara's Church in Bushwick
John Youngaitis stuffs animals large and small, wild and domestic.
This monument (reminiscent in a way of one we saw in Bayside) is a little factually challenged. For one thing, the Korean War ended in 1953, not 1955. As for the most recently added conflict: 1990 was the start of the seven-month-long Gulf War against the state of Iraq, while the War on Terror(ism) commenced in 2001 after the 9/11 attacks.
This tablet, a replica of a 4th-century B.C. stele (photo) that was discovered in Greece in 1932, bears the text of two oaths. The relevant one in this case is the Ephebic Oath, an ancient Athenian oath of citizenship that enjoyed a brief revival as a popular expression of civic virtue in 20th-century America. The oath has since largely fallen into obscurity again, but Brooklyn College still has its students recite this translation of it at graduation:
We will never bring disgrace to our city by any act of dishonesty or cowardice, nor ever desert our suffering comrades in the ranks; we will fight for the ideals and sacred things of the city, both alone and with many; we will revere and obey the city’s laws and do our best to incite a like respect and reverence in those about us who are prone to annul them and set them at naught; we will strive unceasingly to quicken the public’s sense of civic duty; and thus, in all these ways, we will strive to transmit this city not only not less, but greater, better, and more beautiful than it was transmitted to us.
I don't know if you can read the banners above, but Brooklyn College has been transformed into the fictional Townsend College for the TV show The Following.
but up in that light tower is a nest (closer look) belonging to the famed Brooklyn College flock of wild parakeets.
Located across the street from the "Wild Parrot Hot Spot" that is the Brooklyn College athletic field, this playground is appropriately decorated with parakeet silhouettes. (The zany name and animal art are clear signatures of former Parks Commissioner Henry Stern.)
P.S. Check out the crazy rules in effect here!
When this little church was dedicated in 1938, it didn't look much different than it does today.
The dawn redwood is often referred to as a "living fossil". In 1941, a Japanese paleobotanist identified a new genus of redwood in the fossil record. Once spread across large parts of the northern hemisphere, these trees appeared to have gone extinct. Within a few years, however, living specimens were discovered in central China. In the decades since, with seeds distributed around the globe, dawn redwoods have once again taken root in the US and elsewhere, and are now a popular street tree in New York. What seems to be the most well-known one in Brooklyn can be found on Willow Street in Brooklyn Heights (Street View).
(I'm no botanist, but I'm fairly certain the tree above is a dawn redwood. Here are closer looks at its foliage and its trunk.)
This theater (close-up) opened in 1920 and closed around 1959, after which it was converted into a short-lived bowling alley. You can see a couple of old photos of the place here.
According to the internet, Geek Sheep is probably a livestock wholesaler, but could also possibly be a business coaching and consulting firm or a computer repair shop. I thrice tried calling them to ask, but to no avail. The first time, no one picked up and the outgoing message was just the sound of someone rustling papers in the background. The second time, there was about ten seconds of dead silence followed by a busy signal. And on my last attempt, the phone rang six times and then disconnected.
Crub a Dog [I'm pretty sure that's what it says]
Poop Scoop
This store has been declared a city landmark since our last visit. Here's the full landmark report.
I have no idea what this place is/was, but it's looked the same since at least 2007.
"THOMPKINS" and "1989" are written in the sidewalk outside this building, the letters and numbers formed from stones embedded in the concrete. It turns out that the owner of this property from 1978 to 2013 was named Thompkins.
A lingering sign from the days when Gaines Motors occupied this building
Incongruously sited amid the enormous old homes of South Midwood in Victorian Flatbush, this is the first Tenseishinbikai temple built in the United States. Tenseishinbikai is a Japanese "super-religion" whose teachings "specify precise and detailed means, methods, plans and designs to actualize Paradise on Earth. These teachings transcend and encompass all other religions . . . and are worthy of belief by the whole of humanity." You can read much more about Tenseishinbikai on its website — actually, you don't have to read at all, because after starting out with a performance of the "Organization Song", the site will speak aloud to you the full text of each page before automatically advancing to the next one.
Mokichi Okada was the founder of Tenseishinbikai and the developer of Johrei, which the Tenseishinbikai website describes as "the rational and advanced science of the future. Johrei is the method of radiating rays of spiritual light, the light of the fire element, towards the clouds in the spiritual body which are the very cause of disease and other sufferings. . . . Johrei is the sole method for saving people from the great purification action that will engulf the world."
Here's a photo from 1928, the year after this bank opened.
One of the metropolitan area's five "Wonder Theatres" opened by Loew's in 1929-30, the Kings went out of business in 1977 and had been deteriorating for years (interior, exterior) before its recent renovation. It had its grand reopening a few months after I walked by.
Check out these spectacular shots of the restored interior, and scroll down a bit in this NY Times article to view a set of gorgeous 360-degree panoramas, one from each of the five Wonder Theatres.
Like the former Ward bakery in the Bronx, this building has been converted into a self-storage facility.
As we learned when we passed by the Snyder Avenue side of this bakery complex a while back, Ebinger's was a Brooklyn institution most famous for its beloved blackout cake, but also had a long history of racial and religious discrimination.
Tucked behind a rose bush at the back of Building 3S on the campus of the College of Staten Island, beneath a faded number 19 painted inside a circle, is a plaque that reads: "To Honor Those Who Struggled Here on the Grounds of the Willowbrook Institution We Preserve This Former Building Number In Their Respectful Remembrance".
The Willowbrook State School was the country's largest state-run institution for the mentally disabled. By the 1960s, it had over 6,000 residents, 2,000 more than it was designed to accommodate. Underfunded and understaffed, it "offered a mean, often desperate existence" to the people who lived there. After a visit in 1965, Bobby Kennedy described the place as "border[ing] on a snake pit".
But it wasn't until 1972 that the wretched conditions at Willowbrook were brought into the national spotlight, when a TV reporter named Geraldo Rivera snuck into one of the wards with a handheld camera and documented the awful scene: "children lying naked on the floor, their bodies contorted, their feces spread on walls".
This prompted a lawsuit that led to the eventual closing of the institution in 1987. Many of the buildings were taken over and renovated by the College of Staten Island, which opened a new campus — the largest college campus in the city — on the site in 1993.
This one is located at the Institute for Basic Research in Developmental Disabilities, which was built on land that formerly belonged to the Willowbrook State School.
The Staten Island Developmental Disabilities Service Office, like the College of Staten Island, has taken over some of the old Willowbrook State School buildings. This building is home to Lifestyles for the Disabled, hence all the pumpkins from the Lifestyles Woodshop.
For some reason, there is an International Year of Older Persons time capsule on the grounds of the College of Staten Island.
This memorial includes two steel beams from the twin towers and a stone monument listing the 27 alumni of the College of Staten Island who died on 9/11.
