atlantic

Continued from Atlantic Frantic Part 1

WAYFARING: Atlantic Avenue

Early subway architects Heins and LaFarge built this subway headhouse, rather similar to others built along the IRT line in Manhattan in the first decade of the 1900s. The IRT was extended to Brooklyn in 1908 with Atlantic Avenue the original terminus. Unfortunately the subway headhouse was placed in a rather unfortunate position: the triangle formed by Atlantic, Flatbush and 4th Avenues. At first, accessibility wasn't an issue in that the motorcar was in its infancy and it wasn't all that dangerous for pedestrians to cross these three busy avenues, but things got downright hairy as time went on. The building itself suffered all manner of indignities, including being overshadowed by garish 1970s signage (it had earlier been shrouded by the Fifth Avenue El) until finally, early in the 200s, it was removed and restored as part of an overall subway complex restoration.

The old traffic problem is still there though, and subsequently, the building now has no subway entrance at all and is a glorified skylight.


1978		2007

Technically this is the corner of Flatbush Avenue and Hanson Place, but the new building also faces Atlantic Avenue. On the left is the 1907 terminal building of the Brooklyn branch of the Long Island Rail Road. Of course, we've seen that the railroad used to extend to the East River, but by 1907 the railroad had given up any hope of maintaining those operations and ran steam trains on Atlantic Avenue out to Jamaica and points east on Long Island.

Flatbush Avenue terminal exterior, 1978; waiting room interior; concourse and offices. [Art Hunkele]

A new ticket office opened in 2004, and at long last, in 2007 a new LIRR entrance at Flatbush and Hanson is being constructed.

The LIRR terminal was razed in the early 1980s, and, due to economic vagaries as well as political and community wrangling, remained a hole in the ground for over 20 years. At length, Bruce Ratner's Forest City Enterprises (the same organization attempting to build the nearby controversial Atlantic Yards megacomplex, which would include an NBA basketball arena) constructed Atlantic Terminal, a mall anchored by Target, atop the tracks on the site. AT opened in 2004.



Atlantic Avenue widens considerably after crossing Flatbush Avenue, since Long Island Rail Road tracks once went down the middle of the street. In the 1840s steam trains plied the route, were replaced by horse-drawn cars for awhile, and later, steam gradually replaced the horses. By 1940 the tracks had been placed in a tunnel under the street except for a stretch in a valley between Nostrand and Howard Avenues, which was placed on elevated tracks. This section of Atlantic Avenue received its last major overhaul in 1971. Until 2006, The Underberg Building stood at Atlantic and Fifth Avenues. Samuel Underberg is a food supplies company presently located further down Atlantic Avenue at Utica. "Underberg" had been immortalized as the title of the opening section of Jonathan Lethem's novel "The Fortress of Solitude," much of which is set on nearby Dean Street. These days what was the Underberg Building is an empty lot. If the Atlantic Yards project goes as planned, this will be the site of Miss Brooklyn, a Frank Gehry-designed tower that would rival the Williamsburgh Bank Building in height.

Slaughtered


1962 Art Hunkele		2007
	The Shops at Atlantic Center, 590 Atlantic, was the first Forest City Ratner project to open on Atlantic in June 1998. It is anchored by Pathmark and Old Navy stores. Until the late 1970s, the stretch between Fort Greene Place and South Elliott Avenue was Brooklyn's slaughterhouse and meatpacking district; your webmaster remembers walking among hooks swinging sides of meat along the sidewalk while walking to high school here in the early 1970s. In the photo above left, we see an enclosed conveyor track crossing Atlantic Avenue that would bring the contents of elevator cars from an elevated LIRR structure into the Armour packing plant. The el structure had ascended from the vanderbilt Yards running on Atlantic Aveune's south side. LEFT: the remains of two stanchions that supported the conveyor track.

Many of the buidlings in the path of the Atlantic Yards project, like Underberg, have already been razed before various court challenges to the project have been decided, a ploy many developers use. Many can be seen on satanslaundromat's 2003 page.

A large group of websites and blogs discuss the pros and cons of what the massive project would do to the immediate neighborhood. Many Brooklynites cheer it on, hoping for the employment the proect would promote, while many others fear the disruption a large, out-of-scale project and its attendant traffic could cause. Here's a sampler: Forest City Ratner site (pro); Atlantic Yards (pro); Times Ratner Report (anti); Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn (anti); No Land Grab (anti); Neil DeMause's Field of Schemes (anti)

Projects Big and Small


	The conventionally Corbusian tower at Adelphi and Atlantic was completed in the mid-1970s while Atlantic Commons, between Fulton St., Atlantic Avenue, and S. Portland and Carlton Avenues, one of the few new projects that made an attempt to match the scale and style of its surroundings, was completed in the 1990s.


	Is this the largest painted sign in NYC? It stretches a few hundred feet along a warehouse, actually two buildings, on the SW corner of Atlantic and Underhill Avenues. In any case, the peculiar ornamentation announces that the building on the right once had a much different use, but what?



I'm always googling to find out the buzz at Cathedral Condominiums, my old high school at 555 Washington Avenue and Atlantic. The building dates to 1914 and was a preparatory seminary until 1985, when attendance dropped below the Mendoza line. Your webmaster never explored the surrounding area when I attended the place in the Savage Seventies; I was told I'd get knifed or shot. Our newspaper wasn't called The Spire for nothing. In 1998 I could have picked up a 2-bedroom here for $198K, but, like Mary Hopkin says, those were the days. As the area has improved, apartments have inflated in price -- good news for current owners. It seems to be undergoing a major reno; here's a shot from a few years ago.


One of the Rules of Architecture states that parking garages have to be butt-ugly. This one on the south side of Atlantic west of Grand was apparently built before the rule came into effect.		When your webmaster attended HS here I had no idea there was a White Castle was nearby. It may be a recent development. Dr. Nick's Transmissions is more representative of what you'll find along this stretch of Atlantic. Because of the LIRR running down the middle of the street until 1940, very few retail business or residences ventured here.


LIRR Substation #1, constructed as part of the LIRR electrification between Flatbush Avenue and Rockaway Beach in 1905		Select Paper and Tablet. As a kid your webmaster would obtain these small drawing tablets that came in 5 colors and would fill them with drawings. Of lampposts.


Sherita the lipsticked dinosaur has presided over the NE corner of Atlantic and Classon Avenues, representing a heating oil concern, for a number of decades now.		Restaurant supplies and fuel oil, Atlantic Avenue east of Classon.

In possibly the only single-track operation in the NYC Subways, the Franklin Shuttle crosses Atlantic Avenue. Long given up to deteriorate, the shuttle was rescued and rehabilitated from 1999-2000.

It was originally built as a surface line in the 1880s as part of the Brooklyn, Flatbush and Coney Island Railway, which desired to connect with the LIRR at Atlantic Avenue. In 1896 the line was connected to the Fulton Street El after the LIRR terminated its agreement.

Your webmaster, by this time, was beginning to droop a bit on an 84-degree day in May, and I had attained my desired destination. But there were still a few items to chronicle.


			The 23rd Regiment Armory, 1322 Bedford Avenue, was built from 1891-1895 and takes up most of the block between Atlantic Avenue, Pacific Street and Franklin and Bedford Avenues. The regiment was organized during the Civil War and was housed in a nearby armory on Clermont Avenue from 1873-1895. It may boast Brooklyn's most prominent corner tower, a 136-foot beauty. Architects Fowler and Hough emphasized uneven sandstone that would create highlighting shadows in the afternoon sun.

The armory, like many in the NYC area, is being used as a homeless residence.

Grant Square

After walking the relatively pedestrian Atlantic Avenue east of Washington, coming upon the Grant Square area, where Rogers Avenue meets its daddy, Bedford Avenue, at Pacific and Dean Streets is a revelation as you find several examples of beautiful late 1800s buildings.

The immense, landmarked Imperial Apartments at 1198 Pacific (above) was constructed in 1892 by architect Montrose W. Morris, who built other magnificent apartment complexes in nearby Bed-Stuy, the Alhambra and Renaissance. When built the apartments were very large indeed but they have since been divided. How many peaks and dormers are there? Victorian architects put everything--including kitchen sinks-- in their buildings, but they never look garish or out of proportion.


	The Union League Club of Brooklyn, with its Abe Lincoln and Ulysses Grant brownstone portraits, was built in 1889-90 by architect P.J. Lauritzen. It originally housed a private club, much like Park Slope's famed Montauk Club. As you might expect the Union League was founded by Union supporters in 1863 at the height of the Civil War. Like the Montauk, this building had, at one time, bowling alleys, shooting galleries, billiards room, a gymnasium and a rooftop lounge. It's now a senior center. You might think that Grant is modestly turning away from his equestrian statue opposite the club, but the statue came later, in 1896, paid for by club members.

By all accounts Grant was a great general -- even after quitting the military after fighting the Mexican War and returning to lead the Union against the South--but his presidency was rocked by scandal. Yet he was very popular in New York City, where the Ohioan was entombed upon his death in 1885. William Ordway Partridge's 1896 equestrian statue was paid for by the Union League. He also sculpted the Alexander Hamilton portrait that can be found at Hamilton's residence, Hamilton Grange, in Hamilton Heights, Manhattan, and Samuel Tilden at Riverside drive and West 112th Street.

SOURCES:

An Architectural Guidebook to Brooklyn, Francis Morrone, Gibbs-Smith 2001
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New York's Historic Armories, an Illustrated History, Nancy L. Todd, SUNY Press 2006
BUY this book at Amazon.COM

Atlantic Avenue Betterment Association's Atlantic Avenue Walking Guide

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