NYC Post #9: Brooklyn - Downtown Brooklyn - Fort Greene / Clinton Hill - THE BROOKLYN NAVY YARD

CONCEPT

New York City, First Quest, First Installment

THE NAVY YARD NEIGHBORHOOD

While neighborhood is emphatically important in New York City, boundaries and perceptions are not as strictly set as in Chicago. The city evolves at a much faster pace, with demographics sometimes leapfrogging each other. Moreover, the prominence of Manhattan as the commerical center has reinforced the notion that all outer buroughs are primarily residentially oriented.

This might be why the area identified on maps and in guides as "Downtown Brooklyn" includes only a relatively modest business district and municipal center, which is generally overshadowed in favor of two prominent residential areas: Brooklyn Heights to the southwest and Fort Greene/Clinton Hill to the northeast.

Since Jessica and I live in the latter, it makes sense to start exploring New York City close to home.

THE NAVY YARD NEIGHBORHOOD

There are boundaries set, of a sort, for Fort Greene and Clinton Hill. There is, however, an area connected to this neighborhood to the north but outside of the boundaries, which I am going to call "Navy Yard" after the area's most prominent feature. The "fringe" area is bordered on the south by Myrtle Avenue and on the north by the Navy Yard and Flushing Avenue. The western boundary is Flatbush Avenue, and the east is Classon. It is bisected from east to west by the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, which is elevated about thirty feet above Park Avenue.

Looking east along Park Ave.
Looking west along Park Ave.

North of Park, the neighborhood is primarily residential, being divided between a mixture of apartment buildings and subdivided homes and brownstones, as well as public housing high-rises:

Looking towards the Navy Yard from Adelphi St. Brooklyn-Queens Expressway in the Foreground.
The Walt Whitman Homes from under Park Ave.
A public school.

South of Park, the neighborhood is mixed industrial and residential. Manufacturing interests have probably been located here at least since the turn of the century, taking advantage fo parts demands from the Navy Yard shipyard, as well as the suitable infrastructure.

Another school.
Graffiti on a factory.
The Commodore John Berry Park.
Sacred Heart Church Pictures One and Two. Presently chained and closed, as I learned the hard way on Sunday morning.
Self-Storage America.

THE BROOKLYN NAVY YARD

Half of the area on the map associated with the Navy Yard is the Yard itself. The district has a compelling history; that is, one that goes back to the Revolutionary era, and was one of the most important early sites in Brooklyn during that conflict. I had a golden opportunity to photograph this in late September, when the Navy Yard offered its first ever tour to the public. Unfortunately, the batteries in my camera are dead. Below are some pictures I've taken from the outside, though a few are blurred*. These are followed by an account of the Navy Yard itself.

Building #275.
The sign on Building #280.
The Brooklyn Navy Yard is the home of Sweet N'Low.
A look into the Navy Yard.
The Main Entrance on Cumberland Avenue.
The Navy Yard from Flushing Avenue.
Building #30, Civil War Era.
The Navy Yard from Flushing and Carlton.
Picture One and Two of views into the Navy Yard.
Pictures One and Two of windows.
Pictures One and Two of Building #77, windowless, and originally used for the storage of munitions.
Pictures One and Two of the Steiner Motion Picture Studios and Manhattan in the background.

I was fortunate on the weekend of September 24th to be able to take a tour of the Brooklyn Navy Yard through an "Open House New York," allowing access to off-limit parts of the city in all five buroughs. For weeks I'd considered "slipping in," but until sixty years ago tresspassing as punishible by death**, and they're still incredibly strict.

The land presently occupied by the Navy Yard was originally swampland owned by John Jackson, but the true drama of its history emerged during the Revolutionary War. The British held New York during this period, and most colonial prisoners-of-war were boarded on prison ships. In the lightless, wet, and cramped quarters, disease was epidemic, and around 11,000 prisoners died from sicknesses ranging from typhus to gangrene. The cadavers were thrown over the side and into the swamp bordering Brooklyn, so that for a full century afterward, jagged bones cropped up in the Navy Yard.

There was, of course, no way to properly identify the bodies, so they were lain to rest in a cemetery occupying a corner of the Yard, while several bodies were interred at a special memorial erected in Fort Greene Park. The land, however, was too valuable to remain empty, so the U.S. Navy purchased the land from John Jackson in 1801. During the early years of the United States, it was one of the nations busiest shipyards, emplying from 5,000 to 75,000 workers. Along with literally hundreds of battleships and destroyers, the Navy Yard was also where the Moniter was built, the Union's answer to the Confederate Merrimac and one of the first steam-powered vessels, as well as the Niagara, responsible for setting the first transatlantic cable.

The Navy Yard was at its busiest during World War II, but the Navy began selling off the property to the city beginning in 1966. For many years the property was essentially unused, but a few years ago, the city passed control onto the Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corporation, a nonprofit organization that operates the facities as an industrial park to secure a manufacturing center in central New York City. Today over 220 companies and 4,000 people utilize the Navy Yard's 300 acres. $100 million (including $85 million of electrical reconfiguation) has been spent to modernize the Navy Yard. The goal of the BNYDC is both the most efficient utilization of the space for industry and self-sufficiency. At the outset of the tour we were told that the manufacturing future of the site was secure, since any adjustment would require changes in local, state, and federal law, due to the Yard's unique status.

* * * * *

Our tour began at the Cumberland entrance, and we drove back along Morris Ave. to Dry Dock #1, past the oldest, pre-Civil war sections of the Yard, although many structures are more recent, and there were tracks throughout studded with craneways. The speed limit is 18 throughout, which is a number corresponding to "life" in Hebrew, posted to discourage speeding.

The first major stop was Dry Dock #1 of 4, the smallest, best-functioning of the Yard's Dry Docks and, built in 1851, considered to be one of the oldest in the world. It is one of four "landmarks" in the Yard. The thirty-foot deep depression is built of recessed brick and granite, adjacent to the East River. Locks enclose a damaged or incomplete vessel separate from the river, then pumps excise water into the river so that ships can be repaired. The dry dock is considered an engineering masterwork not only for its age and resilience, and for being one of its kind, but because the design also takes into consideration the upward pressure of subterranean springs, utilizing an inverted arch as a brace.

After exploring the western section, we drove down Paulding St. past Steiner Studios. Dramatically instituted after what was essentially a bidding war between the combined forces of Robert diNiro and Rudy Giuliani and the Steiner family (I am happy to report that the forces of light won out), construction began on what will eventually be the largest recording studio on the East Coast. To date, films such as On the Town, Shaft 2, and Kiss of Death has been filmed here. A Spike Lee joint is currently filming.

In the easternmost extreme are the other three designated landmarks. First, there's a US Naval Hospital, with barred basement rooms for wounded Confederate soldiers. Both exterior and interior were solid and plainly adorned, set stone with, of course, that institutional asbestos smell throughout. The building may eventually be rehability, but due to its mass and the weight-bearing walls, the endeavor would be an incredible expense.

We also toured the Surgeon's residence, which was in questionable shape, though we were told it was structurally sound, and will probably be reahabbed in the near future. Since I don't have photos, I will post the more technical description of these sites from The Landmarks of New York: An Illustrated Record of the City's Historic Buildings by Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel:

Built in 1830-38 the US Naval Hospital (formerly the US Marine Hospital) is a two-story, 125-bed Greek Revival structure in the shape of an E. The refined granite building contains a recessed portico with eight classical piers of stone that reach the full height of the building.

Occupying the same property as the hospital, the Surgeon's House follows the style of the French Second Empire with its low, concave mansard roof and dormer windows. It is a two-story brick structure divided into two main sections, the house proper and a servant's wing, together totaling sixteen rooms. The symmetrical entrance facade has a central doorway flanked by segmental arches and low balustrades. Also on the first floor is a handsome, projecting three-sided bay window; on the second floor, segmental-arched winodws rest on small corbel blocks. The side elevations of the house show both segmental-arched and square-headed windows.

The final Landmark, was the Commandant's house, which we did not visit. Our guides informed us that 7 acres are still owned by the Navy and they are "in awful shape," with the Nurses' Quarters and the Officers' Club onld "held together by the fact that molecules" like each other.

THE LEFFERTS-LAIDLAW HOUSE

South of the Navy Yard, on Clinton near Myrtle, is the last true Greek Revival house built in Brooklyn. It has been restored to its original condition, including clapboard siding and temple front.

From The Landmarks of New York:

In 1836, Rem Lefferts and his brother -in-law John Laidlaw purchased number 136 Clinton Avenue and the adjacent vacant lot. They moved a small, existing house to the read where it became part of the service wing for the villa. Leffert's sister-in-law, Amelia Lefferts, then occupied the house with her three children, including Marshall Lefferts, who became an inventor and a commander during the Civil War. The house was restored in the late 1970s and early 1980s and is still a private residence.

Pictures One and Two of the house.
Corner pilaster and Corithian column.

* The Navy Yard is actually the source of all the images for this blog in Gravitane 28. The background is an old image from Harpers magazine, the square image features the main entrance at Cumberland. The rectangular images reature Buildings #280, #3, and #77.

** Actually, I'm skeptical about the literality of this threat. I suspect its historical basis is that trespassing on a military facility could be considered treason, and high treason is, of course, punishible by death. Post McCarthy, I doubt anyone'd be shot on sight, including me.

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ADDITIONAL SOURCE:
The Landmarks of New York:An Illustrated Record of the City's Historic Buildings
by Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel
Monacelli Press, c. 2005

END OF POST.