Once home to Brooklyn's first chess club, founded in 1869
This fine-dining establishment calls to mind that mysterious shack known as Klein's.
So reads a sign just out of frame at the top of the photo. I was attempting to capture both the sign and the face of Dashi the dog in a single image, but I failed to get either, thanks to an enthusiastic hunt for affection on the part of a certain canine friend of ours.
Sitting up there on the steps above Dashi is Scott Witter, the proprietor and curator of B.O.M.B. The tiny museum, contained inside this row house, is only officially open from 7 PM to 9 PM on Tuesdays, but before I knew it — I don't think I had said much more than "I like the name" — Scott was heading next door to fetch the keys (and his last two cold Budweisers) so he could show me around the place (and give me a cold Budweiser).
A "discordant but impassioned love song", the museum consists in large part of artifacts that Scott has dug up, pulled out of dumpsters, spotted on the beach of Coney Island Creek, salvaged from demolition sites, or, in the case of a military practice bomb perched above the stairwell, found in the Utah desert. He once, on the spur of the moment, bought the front 20 feet of an architecturally distinguished meat market that was about to be torn down so he could dismantle it himself and save it from being trucked off to the landfill or the scrap yard. He also purchased 60 tons of the facade of the Long Island Rail Road's old Flatbush Avenue Terminal after losing a battle to keep the building from being razed. His dream is to find like-minded buyers interested in reassembling these structures, but he comes up with other uses for his relics in the meantime — an ornate concrete oculus window from the rail terminal's post office once served as his daughter's kiddie pool, for example.
Scott's current mission, also reflected inside the museum (and, more visibly, on the sidewalk outside), is to keep the city from destroying 9 of the 11 buildings on Admiral's Row to make way for a giant supermarket and some other commercial and industrial spaces. He's authored a piece for an NY Times blog about the importance of preserving the 19th-century naval officers’ quarters, and he's also written his opinions on the side of a nearby building in blue painter's tape. The latter form of expression tends to be more inflammatory in its criticism of the development-minded Mayor Bloomberg, referring to him alternately as Mayor Moo Moo ("because he milks his constituency") and Pirate Mike ("because he is stealing our national, state, and local heritage").
After an hour or so, Scott sent me on my way with a handful of materials promoting the fight against the demolition of Admiral's Row and an invitation to stop by any Tuesday for "Museum Night". I'd recommend dropping by yourself if you're in the area. Scott's a one-of-a-kind guy with an endearing appreciation for the overlooked. And judging by the collection of empty beer cans in the bathroom and the well-used pool table that stands in the middle of the cluttered exhibition room, I'd say Museum Night must be a pretty good time.
Cast in Seville, Spain in 1720, this cannon now sits on the campus of the Pratt Institute. The giant head looming behind it is Leucantha by Philip Grausman.
This set of sculptures by Raphael Zollinger was the most arresting piece I saw on the grounds of Pratt. According to the artist, this 2006 work was "a commentary and protest on recent events". The figures, their hands bound, are archetypal images, "symbols of the abuse humans visit on one another". The original installation featured an additional element: a neon sign proclaiming "Welcome".
This 1912 structure (more photos here), an "accurate translation of the 12th century Norman porch and staircase at King's School, Canterbury Cathedral", originally served as the entranceway to the children's reading room (the first library room for children in the US) at the Pratt Institute Free Library (the first free public library in Brooklyn). In 1982, Pratt was planning to tear down the portico to allow for an expansion of the library when — who else? — our new friend Scott Witter, a Pratt alumnus, stepped in and led a group of neighbors in relocating the 140-ton structure to a spot on the other side of campus. They had to do it all on a shoestring budget, and Scott sunk a fair amount of his own money into the project, because Pratt was only willing to pay them the $3000 it had budgeted for demolition.
At first glance, this dim, grimy space beneath the rumbling Brooklyn-Queens Expressway seems like a weird home for a grand piano from the Sing for Hope project (which wasn't yet underway when I took this photo, hence the bolted-down tarp and locked-up keyboard), but it starts to feel more fitting when you realize the piano is parked next to Soundwaves, a muralized visual representation of nine local pianists playing Beethoven's "Moonlight" Sonata.
Always glad to stumble across his work, and always glad to re-read this interview with him.
After shuttering its famous Lower East Side retail shop several years ago, Gertel's hauled its neon sign to Brooklyn and opened up a wholesale operation here on Steuben Street.
at the 1891-92 Boys' High School, whose notable alumni include, among many others, Isaac Asimov, Norman Mailer, Man Ray, Aaron Copland, and Max Roach, his "hands shimmering on the legs of rain". The architect of this "monumental example of the mature Romanesque Revival style which became popular in the United States in the last quarter of the 19th century" was James W. Naughton, Brooklyn's superintendent of school buildings for almost 20 years. (My photo doesn't begin to do the place justice; it is truly monumental.) After the consolidation of the five boroughs in 1898, the school came under the purview of our friend Charles B.J. Snyder, the city's chief school architect, who designed a couple of early 20th-century additions to the building.
This message
for that person
who STOLE the
most beautiful
plant from my
garden. God
saw you!!!
You will be judge
SHAME ON
:( YOU
A predecessor of this bridge plays the role of antagonist in one of my favorite stories that I've learned on this walk.
Fred was a one-armed tennis coach who gave Althea Gibson her first lesson.
In 1934, this tap-dancing "mayor of Harlem", who lived across the street in the Dunbar Apartments (and now, as we've seen, resides in the Evergreens Cemetery), convinced John D. Rockefeller Jr. to deed this land to the city as a public park. The mural above, complete with "a shadow cast by an actual period street lamp of the type that existed in Harlem during Robinson’s heyday", shows Bojangles performing his famous "stair dance".
Like the trough we saw outside the ASPCA's old headquarters in Brooklyn, this fountain dates back to the days when thirsty horses filled the streets of New York City. It was built in 1894 with funds willed by the "civic-minded businessman" John Hooper for the construction of two fountains, one each in the then-separate cities of New York and Brooklyn, "whereat man and beast can drink" (note the different basins for horses, dogs, and people).
The Brooklyn fountain was dismantled long ago, as "horse and sturdy ox . . . vanished in a cloud of gasoline exhalations”, but this one held strong, "stand[ing] there in the traffic with the serene inconsequence of a megatherium on Broadway." It was removed and put in storage for two decades after being partially destroyed by an act of column-toppling vandalism in the early 1980s, but it persevered and was eventually restored and reconstructed. There's now a standard water fountain head for the humans, while the horse and dog basins appear to be inoperative. (A couple of lucky equines did get to lap water from the fountain at its 2001 ribbon-cutting ceremony*, however.)
* If you read the linked article, you'll notice a profusion of nicknames in use — classic Henry (StarQuest) Stern.
This public housing development, completed in 1968, stands on the former site of the Polo Grounds, the stadium most famously known as the home of the New York Giants baseball team. It was here that Willie Mays made The Catch and Bobby Thomson hit the Shot Heard 'Round the World and Bonehead Merkle never touched second. The Giants left New York for San Francisco after the 1957 season, and the Polo Grounds was demolished in 1964 with the same wrecking ball, painted to resemble a baseball, that had been used four years earlier to knock down Ebbets Field (which was also replaced with apartment towers).
over the 1895 Macombs Dam Bridge. This railing was made by Brooklyn's Hecla Iron Works.
No feature of the original Yankee Stadium defined its architectural look more than the gently curving frieze that crowned the upper deck. The elegant topping of the three-tiered House That Ruth Built oxidized early in its life, but the green patina only made it more memorable.Having just crossed the Macombs Dam Bridge over the Harlem River from the former site of the Polo Grounds in Manhattan, I find myself wandering around Heritage Field in the Bronx, a new public ballpark built where the old Yankee Stadium once stood (that's the new stadium visible in the background), looking at a preserved section of the mid-'70s-era concrete replacement frieze, one of many features incorporated into the design of Heritage Field that offer reminders of the baseball legends who once played here.
The frieze cast an unusual shadow on the field in late afternoons and became a part of history when Mickey Mantle hit a home run to right field in 1963 that nearly hit the top of it.
Someone — the architects at Osborn Engineering in Cleveland or the Yankees' visionary owners, Jacob Ruppert and Tillinghast L. Huston — intuitively understood magnificence.
"The shape of it came from out of nowhere," said John Pastier, an architectural critic and expert on stadiums. "It was quite original. It’s not like they copied a classical design."
Philip Lowry, the author of "Green Cathedrals," a well-regarded survey of baseball stadiums, said via e-mail, "Just as shiny bumpers are the jewelry of a car, the third-deck frieze was the ornamental jewelry of Yankee Stadium." He called it unique among stadiums and ballparks that generally "followed a functional rather than an ornamental design."
The frieze lasted 50 years, until it was stripped away during the [stadium's] 1974-75 renovation and replaced by an ersatz version beyond the outfield fence and above the bleachers.
"That was a horrible architectural mistake," Lowry wrote.
Turning again to the NY Times:
When the new Yankee Stadium opened in 2009, not even the loudest of Yankee fanatics could drown out the outraged howls over its costly tickets, its tax-exempt financing and, of course, its construction atop two city parks.
But now, in an unabashed bid for redemption, New York City officials have spared no expense to deliver on a long-promised, $50.8 million public ballpark across the street from the stadium to make amends for their part in a bitter struggle over lost parkland that pitted Bronx residents against their most famous neighbor.
Heritage Field opened this week [in April of 2012], more than a year behind schedule, on the site of the old Yankee Stadium — the last of which was demolished in 2010 — and nearly every inch, from the pavement stones underfoot to the three natural grass ball fields, has been elaborately designed to pay homage to the Yankees and their celebrated former home. Even the sod is the same that the Yankees, professional baseball’s biggest spender, chose for their new stadium.
There are a number of these pole-mounted, View-Master-like stereoscopic slide viewers stationed around Heritage Field, each offering several binocular glimpses of notable moments in the history of Yankee Stadium. (The slide-turning wheel is missing on this one.) The next two photos were taken peering into these devices.
Manager Billy Martin expresses his displeasure with the home plate umpire.
Here we see the Yankees' fiery manager performing his patented dirt-kicking routine.
On Lou Gehrig Appreciation Day, the Yankee icon gives his "Luckiest Man" speech.
From our visit to Lou's final residence in Fieldston:
This is the house where the humble and beloved Lou Gehrig died in 1941 at the age of 37. The Yankees' legendary first baseman was a man of prodigious talent, one of the greatest hitters the game has ever seen. He became a regular in the Yankees' lineup in 1925, two years into his career, and never took a day off from that point forward. Playing through injury and illness, he had appeared in 2,130 consecutive games when he took his final swing, an unheard-of accomplishment that stood as a record for 56 years.
His unmatched toughness and reliability earned him the nickname "The Iron Horse", but even he was no match for the disease that now bears his name, which began ravaging his body in the prime of his life and knocked him out of baseball less than a year after he first began to notice its effects. Despite his extraordinary athletic achievements, Lou is best remembered for his moving retirement speech, telling the teary-eyed crowd packed into Yankee Stadium: "Fans, for the past two weeks you have been reading about the bad break I got. Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth."
Initially, I thought these might be seats salvaged from the old Yankee Stadium bleachers, the former home of the Bleacher Creatures, but, after poking around on the web for a bit, I can see that they're not. My search wasn't entirely in vain, however, as it led me to this 1956 poem by a young John Updike:
Tao in the Yankee Stadium Bleachers
Distance brings proportion. From here
the populated tiers
as much as players seem part of the show:
a constructed stage beast, three folds of Dante’s rose,
or a Chinese military hat
cunningly chased with bodies.
“Falling from his chariot, a drunk man is unhurt
because his soul is intact. Not knowing his fall,
he is unastonished, he is invulnerable.”
So, too, the “pure man”—“pure”
in the sense of undisturbed water.
“It is not necessary to seek out
a wasteland, swamp, or thicket.”
The opposing pitcher’s pertinent hesitations,
the sky, this meadow, Mantle’s thick baked neck,
the old men who in the changing rosters see
a personal mutability,
green slats, wet stone are all to me
as when an emperor commands
a performance with a gesture of his eyes.
“No king on his throne has the joy of the dead,”
the skull told Chuang-tzu.
The thought of death is peppermint to you
when games begin with patriotic song
and a democratic sun beats broadly down.
The Inner Journey seems unjudgeably long
when small boys purchase cups of ice
and, distant as a paradise,
experts, passionate and deft,
hold motionless while Berra flies to left.
"I thought it would be nice to take the stars and de-brand them in a way."
This piece by Ellen Harvey (more photos and info here) lines a passageway at the Yankee Stadium Metro-North station. According to the artist:
The mosaic consists of eleven 18 ft. by 6.75 ft. panels. The panels show a sunset and moon and star rise in 15 minute increments, starting at 6.30pm (the time most Yankee fans would be arriving at the train station for an evening game) and ending at 9 pm. The sky depicted is based on watercolors based on photographs of a typically spectacular Bronx sunset and the location of the sun, moon and stars are those that viewers would experience gazing in the direction of the walkway wall in April of 2009 (the completion date of the new Yankee Stadium). Of course, given the light pollution of the city, the stars in the final panels of the mosaic would never actually be visible to the naked eye.
This was merely an exhaust stack for the old Yankee Stadium until Joe Garagiola Jr. reportedly had the idea to ask Hillerich & Bradsby, the company that makes Louisville Sluggers, to stick a knob-like protrusion on the top and turn it into a gigantic Babe Ruth-model bat. Predating the peeling tape on the handle, supersized versions of the batmaker's logo and the Babe's signature once adorned the shaft, but seem to have been lost to subsequent paint jobs. The Bat became a popular meeting place for fans outside the old stadium, and, while the stadium has since been torn down, The Bat remains, now towering above Heritage Field and the passageway to the new Metro-North station.
From left to right, starting at the top: Puerto Rico (x5), Dominican Republic, Cuba, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Mexico, Honduras, the Pan-African flag, Guatemala, Ecuador, and the US
The Harlem River lighthouse is now orange! It was repainted by a self-storage firm that has taken over the property since our last visit.
This hillside array of grates, located near the Bronx end of the Concourse Tunnel (which carries the B and D trains beneath the Harlem River), is presumably used for subway ventilation.
The former Grammar School No. 91, "one of the finest examples of the [Romanesque Revival] style in the Bronx", was built in 1889 "of brick and Harlem River stone". It was designed by George W. Debevoise, the predecessor of Charles B.J. Snyder.
In 1895, when the school was "known for its cleanliness, the entire building being especially inviting", a delegation of visiting school officers was "entertained at assembly by singing from the school, solos from two young lady pupils, and an attractive drill with umbrellas and dumb bells. The visitors expressed their gratification with the discipline of the school and the uniformly neat and refined appearance of the children."
Meanwhile, on the other end of the spectrum...
Or is this the other end of the spectrum? More precise spectrum definition needed!
On several occasions, I've seen vehicles pull up to open fire hydrants and drive really slowly through the spray. It seems like this would only get about one-third of your car clean-ish (and you can't turn around to wash the other side on these one-way streets), but, hey, who doesn't love free stuff?
To walk all around the neighborhood of Highbridge is to walk up and down ten million stairs. Ahead: one of many precipitous drops I would encounter on my route today.
